Now, that is Radical Hospitality, welcome that may even mean taking the risk of going out to find those who have lost their way to God's table so thoroughly that they have forgotten that it is even there. Over the past two days, first our Vestry, and then too the chairs of many of our parish committees, gathered at Virginia Theological Seminary for our annual retreat. And at the center of our gathering each day was our attempt to learn to live more faithfully in all our varied places and roles in the household of faith, and among the communities in which we live.

I thought quite often of this text, and how each of us plays a part in our parish household - and how each of us sees the story of St. Thomas' Parish only from our own perspective. Whether we are the younger children feeling privileged and spoiled, or the older child feeling settled and entitled to the family inheritance, I celebrated the knowledge that each of us is called each week to this table, and to the banquet of God's Eucharistic Feast. Or, whether we are the younger child who feels like the afterthought, the one who just gets scraps after the best is taken, or the older child who has worked so hard and been so responsible and who has received so little credit, I reveled in remembering that God finds each of us worth giving everything for, so that we can know we, too, are welcome in the household of faith that is St. Thomas' Parish.

We discovered in our stories about ourselves, and in laying out our plans and pictures and anxieties about the future, that we indeed are on the way to becoming an authentic community of radical hospitality and being newly challenged about what it means to be faithful stewards of who we are and whose we are. For we are a place that is ever being shaped and formed in the image of Christ, who are ever being called into being by God who looked at each of us and sees just one thing - God's beloved child who is worth whatever it takes to bring them home again ... and again ... and again.

It was hard to believe in Jesus' time, and it is no easier to believe today, that God indeed has no favorites, that God does not take sides, that God does not welcome some and leave others alone and hungry in the dark. It is the miracle of the Good News of the Gospel that God offers at this table a place of dignity and integrity and honor to each and every one of us, not because we deserve it more than others, but because God's hospitality is radically extended to all God's children, at whatever the cost.  

We move into the exciting future of St. Thomas' Parish knowing for certain only that the radical hospitality of God's grace continues to call us all around this table, with no partiality shown to any, and no dismissal of any. And so we find ourselves on this Lenten journey to discover not just who we are, and who we have been called to be, but to find out whom else God has already invited to the table here in this Parish. And we are challenged to ask ourselves: how does each of us live into an ever-deepening journey of faith so that our doors will be open with the radical hospitality of the arms of Christ?