This sermon is being preached because our island was hit by the worst hurricane to come here in the past 131 years. In 1885 a hurricane which no one knew was coming completely flooded every inch of Hilton Head in an enormous and probably unprecedented storm surge. Between Savannah and Charleston over 2500 people were killed, most of them by drowning. But for accumulated material losses, Matthew shall far outdistance that long-ago unnamed hurricane on a then-thinly-populated island. On Hilton Head Island alone there will be tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. However, it was not primarily because of flooding, but mostly as a result of the thousands of trees which crashed down in the Category 2 winds. A complete clean-up will take several months, and Hilton Head will never again look quite the same as it did before Matthew made his visit. So we begin with the theological and philosophical question, Are Natural Disasters “Natural”? The answer to that question is quite simply, “Yes, all natural disasters are natural.” They are acts of nature, and only of nature. They are never acts of God.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is perhaps the best known of all Jesus’ parables. I believe it also is the greatest of all his many parables. It describes in exquisite detail an essential part of the nature of God, namely His extravagant forgiveness.

No one ever would have heard of Muhammad of Mecca had there been no Jesus of Nazareth. And no one ever would have heard of Jesus had there been no Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, no Moses or David or Isaiah. There are three major religions in the Western World. They are, in historical order, first Judaism, then Christianity, and then Islam. Without Judaism, there would be no Christianity, and without Judaism and Christianity, there would be no Islam. All the adherents of those three religions are called “The People of the Book.” And they are called that by none other than Muhammad himself in the Book of Islam, the Quran.

Weeks ago I decided on the title for this sermon. It was to be Is Hospitality a Religious Necessity? When I started writing the sermon last Tuesday, I concluded that isn’t truly the question I wanted to ask. Instead, what I really want for all of us to think about is this: Is Hospitality a Religious Obligation? In other words, is there a moral imperative in extending hospitality? If we want to try to be Christians, ought we to extend hospitality?

You may not have thought about this before, but there is a rapidly shrinking group of older clergy and other older lay people who address God as “Thou” rather than as “You.” But then, you probably have had no reason to think about that. There also is a much, much larger group of clergy and others, who are also shrinking, but far more slowly, who still refer to God in the third-person as “He.” I am in both groups, and this morning I want to try to tell you why.

The Hebrew Bible is an astonishing collection of writings. It paints portraits of people as they were, not as we might like them to be. There is no one of whom that sober observation is more valid than is seen in the personage of King David himself. He is portrayed in all his grandeur and gore, his fame and fallacies, his spiritual heights and his sinful depths. But in the end, in the end, David always returned to God in humble faith and contrition.

Jesus is many things to many different Christians. He is Christ (or the Messiah), the Son of God, God Incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity, and the Savior of the world, among other titles or concepts. During the time Jesus lived, he was probably perceived by his followers to be few if any of those things, except perhaps the Messiah. But one thing almost everyone would understand Jesus to be was a wisdom teacher. Even those first-century Galilean Jews who rejected him as well as his message would agree that he was undeniably a dispenser of wisdom in the long tradition of wisdom teachers throughout the history of Israel.

Is God close to you, or is He far away? Do you feel His presence with you daily, or does He seem removed from your daily life? What, for you, is the proximity of God?

The biggest mass murder in our nation’s history happened in Orlando three weeks ago. Yet another apparently mentally unstable man used an assault rifle and a semi-automatic military pistol to kill 49 people and to wound more than 50 others. And still the Congress has done nothing to outlaw assault rifles and pistols in the hands of ordinary citizens, or even to put up any serious obstacles to purchasing them. After the third-to-last mass murder in America, The Times of London had this cartoon on its editorial page. It shows the American flag. The 50 stars in the blue upper-left rectangle are bullet holes, and the white stripes have red running down into them, representing the blood that was shed by the victims. Is the USA a nation in peril?

Today I want to address another important subject, namely, the relationship we hope to establish between The Cypress and The Chapel Without Walls. This it addressed equally to those who have attended The Chapel for a long time as well as Cypress residents who have attended it for the first time during any of the previous three Sundays. All of us need to understand and appreciate the grace-filled decision of The Cypress administration and staff to approve our holding services here. I want everyone to know we are aware that the Cypress hospitality was offered to us both as a risk and as a sacrifice.

You know how, when you try a new medication or you buy a new electrical gizmo, the label tells you the potential dangers involved in using the medication or apparatus improperly? You are warned that you could acquire these or those complications, or, if you tried hard enough, you could actually kill yourself by using this particular product. Well, I feel compelled to warn you that I hope this sermon will be very instructive, and you will learn things that you haven’t thought about before, but you many not find it very inspirational. In fact, if we both are not careful, it could be downright depressing. With that caveat having been “caveated,” we press on.

The Chapel Without Walls is an interdenominational congregation. What on earth does that mean? It doesn’t mean we were chartered by two or more denominations at our inception, like some interdenominational churches. We weren’t. We weren’t chartered by any denomination or denominations. Like Topsy, we just started. We were legally established as a 501C3 organization. Thus we are officially recognized by both the State of South Carolinas and the Internal Revenue Service as a not-for-profit institution. We have a set of by-laws, because becoming a 501C3 requires that, but we don’t have any ecclesiastical laws or statutes or regulations. For better, none. For worse, none.

Today we come to the eighth and the last of the Beatitudes of Jesus. The word “beatitude” means “blessed or bless-ed,” depending on how you choose to pronounce that word. Various people are blessed for various things they do or are, said Jesus. People are blessed who mourn or who make peace with everyone around them, especially their enemies, and they are also blessed for being poor in spirit, meek, pure in heart, and for hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

When Jesus said in the seventh beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God,” the absence of international hostilities was not the kind of peace he was talking about, even though it is what we usually think about when we contemplate what peace truly means. The peasants who listened to Jesus had no ability to create peace among nations. But they, and all of us, do have the capacity to establish peace on earth, starting with us.

In the sixth Beatitude, I suspect Jesus was not referring to something we can work to acquire. Either we have purity of heart, or we don’t. And, unless I am too jaundiced in my assessment of most of the human race, I think most of us don’t have it on a permanent basis, nor can we effectively work to create it in ourselves. It would be wonderful if we could do it, but we can’t. Getting purity of heart is like getting great athletic prowess or extraordinary intellectual ability; either you have it, or you don’t. You might make some improvements in the purity of heart department, but it isn’t a quality one can truly attempt to emulate.

Mercy is not normally considered to be a requirement in the behavior of anyone who seeks to live a Christian life. Instead it is thought of more as a bonus, an add-on, a second-mile gift to someone who may not deserve mercy, but who nonetheless would benefit greatly from it.

In the third Beatitude, Jesus said something which, on the face of it, sounds absurd: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Why would he who was deliberately anything but meek say that the meek are blessed so much that they shall inherit the earth? And what does the word meek mean, anyway? And what did Jesus mean when he said that the meek “shall inherit the earth”?

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Mourners are blessed because they mourn! At such agonizing times, they know they have no one other than God to lift them out of their chasm of grief! Furthermore, they shall be comforted! It is a guarantee from God! However, we must internally allow it to happen if it is to happen. We can thwart God’s gentle blessings if we refuse to accept His beatitudes.

Today we are beginning a sermon series on what have always been known as the Beatitudes. The word beatitude simply means blessed. And you can pronounce that word either “bless-ed” or “blest.” I say “bless-ed” when reciting the Beatitudes because that is how I heard them pronounced as a young child, and it has stuck with me that way ever since. But either pronunciation is correct, especially in 2016, when anybody can say anything any way and it will probably be OK, at least with somebody else.

In none of the Gospels is the purportedly empty tomb the end of the story. That can’t be the end of the story. And why? It is because Easter is never over. It is because we are confronted by the claims of Easter every time someone close to us dies, and when we contemplate our own deaths. It is because every Easter we must question it all yet again.