On 1st September a good congregation gathered at Trinity Methodist Church, Felixstowe to welcome a new minister into our midst. In his sermon, the District Chair, the Reverend Julian Pursehouse spoke challengingly about hospitality. Hospitality is important at many levels.
Many of you will be familiar with the feeding miracles in the gospels; talk of loaves and fishes takes us back to childhood bible story reading. Hospitality was the setting for the first breaking of bread and sharing fish was the background to Jesus’s challenge to Peter to ‘feed my sheep’.
On a different scale, God fed the Israelites with manna in the wilderness as they journeyed from captivity to freedom. Today’s lectionary reading is 2 Kings 4:42-44, another miracle in which bread brought by a man from Baal Shalisha fed a hundred people with some barley bread. He was encouraged from his reluctance, just as the disciples were in Galilee years later, only to discover that God is generous and effects miracles through his faithful followers.
The hospitality industry is in the news sometimes. It has a history of being a poor payer to its employees but it also plays a part in our lives, whether for big occasions, occasional treats or to meet a need while we travel. Worldwide, the place for a thriving hospitality industry is significant and will remain so.
The habit of welcoming people into our homes to share meals is one that seems to me to have diminished in popularity through my life – or is it just me? Sometimes our sense of privacy hides our innate generosity and suppresses the simple joy of sharing round the dinner table. Affordable ‘eating out’ has exacerbated the trend but that may change. Proper remuneration for all employees, rising energy and food costs are all likely to contribute to diminishing affordability and, who knows, possibly a corresponding return to greater sharing at home. As we face a more expensive autumn and winter perhaps we should revisit the concept of invitations to ‘come to supper’ or ‘come to lunch’.
Miracles of affordability and provision happen when faithfully we do what otherwise we are reluctant to do.
A prayer
God, sharer of manna in the desert, bread on the hillside and fish by the lake, you offer to feed us for life. Give us the grace to accept the food we need in order to live and the food we need in order to nourish our souls and to be grateful for both as they enhance each other by your gracious provision. Amen.