"The Hurt Locker" won best picture at the Academy Awards last night. Our family watched this movie last week. If you haven't seen the movie, the setting is in 2004 post invasion Iraq. A team of US soldiers defuses bombs which creates very tense scenes.
Without giving too much of the movie plot away, the lead character, Sergeant William James, who has nerves of steel to do this work, befriends an Iraqi boy who tries to make money buy selling CDs to the US soldiers. During one of the bomb threats, Sergeant James believes that a boy's body that he has found is the same boy that he had befriended.
This causes Sergeant James to take matters in his own hands. Thinking that if he finds this boy's home, he might find the people wh0 killed the boy, he sneaks into the house and points his gun at a man who claims that he is only a professor at the university and doesn't know who this boy is.
The reason I point out this scene is because even though Sergeant James is threatening to kill this man who he thinks is a terrorist, this professor attempts to calmly explain that there's a mistake. He then offers hospitality to the sergeant by inviting him to sit down and provide food for him. On one hand, this Iraqi professor is doing this to save his own life, but in this scene, the movie does a great job of showing how important hospitality is to people in the Middle East.
Hospitality is one of the five core values of the church where we are to always extend an unconditional welcome and a safe space to strangers as well as to friends. For this professor to offer radical hospitality even with a gun pointed at him in a very dangerous situation just goes to show to what degree people in the Middle East are willing to go to welcome others.
During Holy Week, which is only a few weeks away, churches will participate in Maundy Thursday services in which we reflect on on Jesus' last supper with his disciples. In the Middle East, table fellowship isn't just about eating food. It's about offering hospitality and sharing in a covenant together.
When Jesus was gathered around the table with his disciples during the final hours before his crucifixion, imagine the shock and horror when Jesus revealed that one of them would betray him and that all of them would at some point forsake him. This all came out in the open during table fellowship, a sacred time of hospitality when the disciples were sharing in a special covenant with Jesus.
And yet, even with Judas' hidden agenda and Jesus knowing that the disciples would end up forsaking him, Jesus was still willing to offer them the bread and the cup as an extension of his grace and mercy to them.
The next time we gather at the church to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion and receive the bread and cup, let's not forget that God's mercy is being extended to us, to sinners who have not always been faithful to Christ, and to a people who have broken covenant with him by what we have done and by what we have left undone.
We know deep down that we shouldn't be around that table with him. And yet, there is always an open space and these words of invitation, "The body of Christ of Christ broken for you. The blood of Christ shed for you."
Shocked to hear such words of grace, we extend our hands, and receive.
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Hospitality runs deep with this God.
