[Thank you to Imam Horsed Noah, Outreach Director of Abubakar Mosque, for bringing us this message during our Courageous Peace Witness worship series.]

And so we are saved not just from personal wrongdoings, but we are saved from this whole way of building a false peace. We are saved from needing to cast out anyone. We are saved from scapegoating. We are saved from building crosses and preserving our own power by putting others on them. As the apostle Paul wrote over and over again, it is something within us that needs to be crucified, so we can stop projecting it onto someone else. And it is through that death of the old way of being that we are raised with Christ and become part of a new creation.

Who are your friends who would tear apart a roof for you? We can never successfully seek healing alone. It’s important to find companions to travel on the journey with you, whatever that may be. Independence is a lie sold to you by people who see you as purely a cog in the capitalist system, existing only to make money and buy things.

We are the spiritual descendants of that people.  We are a people founded on choosing hospitality over hostility.  Taking the risk of hospitality.  Hospitality as a strategy toward solidarity.  Watching the unexpected gifts that follow, with Jesus as a model host and guest, washing his disciples’ feet, breaking bread for the multitudes, entrusting himself as a guest in the homes of those considered ‘sinners.’