My first sermon before this congregation was preached on the 8th of July, 2001, which in the liturgical calendar was Year C, Proper 9, the 5th Sunday after Pentecost. Thus, as of today, I have entered my fourth liturgical year with Saint James.

I thought at first of simply re-preaching my first sermon, to see if anybody noticed. But it is so obviously an inaugural sermon I figured I couldn't entirely get away with that, even if I have the convenient excuse that I've just returned from a vacation in California. Besides, today is Independence Day, and any sermon omitting that fact could be judged lacking.

While that first sermon doesn't bear repeating, its themes are worth revisiting, for they are as timely today as they were three years ago. Today's gospel lesson has two major themes: proclamation and hospitality, the same hospitality on which I preached three years ago. Inherent in the proclamation of the Kingdom of God is the message of peace, and inherent in the practice of hospitality are invitation and challenge.

According to the gospel, when I enter your house, I'm supposed to do something very, very important. I must proclaim "peace to this house!" And so I say to you, peace to this house. As Jesus says, if you are a people of peace, peace will rest upon you.

But what does it mean for peace to rest upon us? Does it mean we'll always agree, never be angry with each other, avoid all conflicts at all costs? Does it mean we will never encounter violence, living instead in a world of bucolic security? Two months and three days after preaching my first sermon at Saint James, the answer to that question was a resounding "No!" as we experienced the horrors of September 11th. Jesus never guaranteed we would be exempted from violence, war, or terrorism. In the face of a warring world, therefore, what kind of peace can we expect from proclaiming Christ?

As I've tried to indicate in other sermons, the peace of Christ is a reconciling peace, and waging reconciliation is far more difficult than waging war-especially since we cannot wait for wars to cease before the work of reconciliation begins. Were we to wait, Christ's reconciling peace would never emerge from the debris of terror.

The big question, therefore, is: where do we begin this reconciling work? In this morning's gospel, that work begins with the proclamation that "the kingdom of God has come near." The seventy are to proclaim that "the kingdom is near" in "every town and place where Jesus himself intended to go." When the crown prince, the heir, is near, the kingdom is near. And that's a big part of what the seventy are proclaiming: God is near in God's Son. In the incarnation of Jesus, God's redeeming and reconciling reign is near. As that familiar Easter hymn, Hymn 182, celebrates:

Not throned above, remotely high,
Untouched, unmoved by human pains,
But daily, in the midst of life,
Our Savior with the Father reigns.

Jesus is near at hand, here in Monkton, here in Baltimore County. His kingdom is near. And that is truly good news.

What, then, should our response to this good news be? Our response has a lot to do with the second thing this passage is all about: hospitality. Hospitality, at heart, is both an invitation and a challenge: an invitation to be a part of a community, and a challenge to allow community to challenge us to grow as we nurture others' growth.

This parish has the hospitality thing down pretty well. But it is always good to be reminded of why we are hospitable people, so that we may be more intentional about making hospitality a spiritual discipline, for Christian hospitality is always more than mere politeness.

When I first preached at Saint James three years ago, I spoke about a couple of the most formative experiences of hospitality-and inhospitality-in my own life, about how I almost didn't become an Episcopalian, and about how once I did, I almost didn't remain in the church. Had it not been for these experiences, I would not be standing here before you today. This story, I think, bears repeating, because it gives just a glimmer of how lives are changed in the most unexpected ways when we practice hospitality and proclaim peace.

At the end of my sophomore year of college I was asked to head the campus Christian fellowship the next year. Being a pastor's kid, I was reluctant to do so. You see, I had no intention of entering any kind of formal ministry. I wanted to be a lawyer, and perhaps even a politician.

Nevertheless, I was persuaded to take up the challenge, but I wanted to find some place to pray for a vision for the group I would be leading. I asked my best friend, Michael, a Southern Baptist, where I should go to do that, and he replied "I don't know, what about a monastery or something?" Neither of us knew anything about what one actually did in a monastery, but I thought Michael had a pretty good idea.

Although I grew up the son of a minister in another tradition, I knew my grandfather Gleason Humphrey had been a devout Episcopalian during his life, so the first place I looked into was an Episcopal monastery. After considering my request, they politely declined. Their hospitality apparently did not extend far out enough to reach people such as I, and I got the sense that I had failed their tests of whether or not I was a member of their "club." I was not "their kind of people."

A friend of mine then told me about a Roman Catholic monastery with a summer program. So I called Fr. Martin, the prior, and explained that although the summer program brochure said it was intended for Roman Catholic laymen between the ages of 21 and 35, I was a nondenominational protestant who would turn 19 that summer. Fr. Martin listened to me, paused about five seconds, and then said "Well, come anyway." That was my first taste of Benedictine hospitality.

St. Benedict, the founder of western monasticism, wrote in his Rule that his monks should "Greet each person as Christ." A simple standard, but hard to live up to all of the time. This standard is as applicable to Monkton as it is to the monks. When we greet each person as Christ, we are sharing the peace of Christ and proclaiming in our actions the nearness of God's kingdom.

Because of the Christ-like witness of those monks, I might have ended up in the Roman Catholic Church, a monk rather than in Monkton. But it just so happened that these monks were also close friends with an Episcopal bishop who had visited there every year from the time he was a young curate around my age. I cornered him one day at the only meal where we were allowed to talk, and asked him all sorts of questions about the Episcopal Church. After he found out I lived near St. Anne's parish in Annapolis, he asked, "Well, why don't you go to St. Anne's and find the answers to your questions there for yourself?" That was hospitality as well-- a challenge and an invitation. That bishop, by the way, who was then bishop of Chicago, is Frank Griswold, now our presiding bishop. I've told him it was his fault I went into the ordained ministry. Somehow, I don't think he feels too guilty about it.

Here at Saint James we are called to practice hospitality, to offer peace to whomever we meet, greeting each one as Christ, and proclaiming the nearness of the kingdom of God. And so today I want to offer you a challenge and an invitation to enter more deeply into the mission of the church, which is to join with God in the reconciling work of restoring unity with God and each other through Jesus Christ. We do that by building relationships founded not in common interests or social status, but in the love of God and the passionate desire to proclaim the reconciling peace of Christ.

Now is the time to offer that peace, that proclamation, that hospitality to all those whom you meet. Who do you know that needs that reconciling peace? Whom do you know is yearning for the nearness of God's kingdom? Thanks be to God that you and I have what it takes to share that good news. All it takes to begin that work of reconciliation is a greeting and a simple announcement:

Peace to this house! The kingdom of God has come near to you! Amen.