One of the best songs of all time, imho, is Hotel California. I’m not even that much of an Eagles fan or necessarily a fan of 70’s rock. I love this song in part because it is honest about a reality of affluent life that is so rarely named.

 

Do you remember this song? It tells the story of a traveler on a dark desert highway with cool wind in their hair. Ring any bells? The traveler pulls over for the night and checks in at the Hotel California, which is full of the “beautiful people” who are feasting and dancing. Yet they are caught in a pretend, shallow world of disconnection that they can never leave.  

 

It’s the story of the prison we create for ourselves when prioritize money, comfort, and settle for the mere appearance of freedom and joy. This thin, fake freedom and joy are a sort of prison where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave … until you are saved. Until that moment, we are stuck.

 

I imagine Jesus might say, “Woe to you who are stuck in Hotel California.”

 

In truth, I know Jesus is saying to me, “Woe to you, Sarah, when you’re stuck in Hotel California.” I say that as a Christian who wrestles with the gospel and follows Christ to the best of my capacity, like all of us here. Also, like all of us, I’m not in just in one category or the other, either inside or outside Hotel California, because we do regularly forget what salvation looks like, feels like, and where it comes from despite our best intentions.

 

In Hebrew, the word for peace is shalom. However, shalom is a bigger word than just peace. It is the peace that is a bone-deep sense of sufficiency, belonging, and everything being right in the world – and not just for us, but for everyone. It’s not the absence of violence, hard feelings, or resolution of misunderstandings. It is those things, but also the presence of God in the midst of us, who brings wholeness, calm, and connection.

 

But shalom, by definition, is not shalom for one. Your shalom is entwined with the health and wellness of your family, community, and world. Without their shalom, your shalom is limited. Without their freedom and joy, so too is your freedom and joy.

 

What strikes me about Hotel California is that there is this sense of disconnection from the reality of the world. The Eagles paint this picture of a hotel of reveling people in the middle of the desert, disconnected from the world, disconnected from their natural surroundings, with “Tiffany-twisted minds” and so-called friends. Whether they are dancing to remember or forget, they are not dancing to connect with each other, with the joy of movement, or just to have fun and be present in the moment. They are not dancing in shalom, but in avoidance of life.  

 

In the Hotel California, there is no shalom, despite beautiful surroundings and beautiful people drinking pink champagne.

 

It’s important to note, shalom is also not necessarily dependent on everything being OK in our external worlds. In the Jeremiah text, we hear, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. ⁸ They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

 

Jeremiah doesn’t say for those who trust in the Lord, they will never again experience drought or relentless heat. He does say that we will be supported, nourished, calm, and fruitful despite the droughts and heat. We will live in shalom in the world as it is when we live in trust of the Lord.

 

How often, though, do we flip this around? How often do we focus on making everything look pretty and then hold our breath, hoping that our pretense will work? This is how I used to clean my room as a kid, by the way. I’d shove everything under the bed or in the closet, smooth out the bed cover, vacuum so that the carpet has that nice “just vacuumed look” and just hope that mom doesn’t look too close. There’s no shalom in just shoving stuff under the bed and pretending it’s done.

 

There is no shalom when we deny reality. There’s no blessing to be had when we pretend that our shalom, our peace, our salvation is not undeniably connected to the rest of the world.

 

In our gospel, Jesus blesses the people who are not attempting to escape reality. Blessed are you who are poor. Blessed are you who are here with your community in an honest expression of what is so and asking for help. Yours is the kingdom of God. There is shalom, there is peace in admitting reality and asking for the help that is needed.   

 

The gospel today is an invitation to reality, to be in the place where it may feel hard to be and yet find salvation there. The people coming to see Jesus are poor. They are hungry. They are grieved. They are coming to Jesus for teaching, healing, and hope. But even after he’s cured them all, their realities of life are still with them. They are poor and he’s not giving them 7 easy steps to get out of their poverty. He blesses them as they are, in the place they are, without flinching or denying their reality. And amid that hard reality, they are blessed.

 

They are living in shalom with him, with each other, and with life itself. The ones who insist on their bubbles of wealth or do not feel the hunger of a desperate world around them, pretending that everything is just fine despite the hard realities, these are the ones living without shalom. Woe to them who are rich, are fed, and are laughing now amid oppression and desperation.

 

Woe, indeed, because at any given moment, the world is going to break that bubble. At any given moment, we’ll drop out of our Hotel California dream and we’ll find we’re living in an uninhabited salt land, like Jeremiah tells us. At any given moment, mom is going to look under the bed and the jig will be up.

 

Thankfully, God is never done with us. Thankfully, God never says, “You’ve been in Hotel California for too long and there’s no redemption for you.” We can always open ourselves to the reality of our situations, admit our limitations, come to Jesus, and ask for help. We can admit our hunger, our grief, and poverty. And we can admit and acknowledge the poverty, hunger, and suffering of our fellow human beings and Creation. We can admit how we’ve been wrong or been wronged by someone else. Having the courage to see beyond our comfortable, constructed bubbles is a big step towards shalom, towards the Kingdom of God. Helping each other see outside our bubbles is tender, scary, and yet holy work.

 

It’s a tricky balance at times to name an important reality outside our bubbles in a way that people can hear. Communicating across divisions of realities doesn’t always go well, but it can also be worth the risk, particularly when we’re advocating for those without power – the poor, the hungry, and the ones who mourn.

 

Several years ago now, I was at a gathering of Reno’s largest, most influential business networking group. I was there as a nonprofit fundraiser, so already a relative peon in that room of maybe 600+ business leaders and politicians. Some CEO of some whiz-bang tech company that was new to Reno was giving a presentation about all the whiz-bang tech we could to look forward to, like nanobots in our blood keeping moment to moment track of our cholesterol which we could check on our phones. Wild stuff.

 

In my humble opinion, it was a disturbing picture he was painting, even though his intention was to delight us. Nanobots, AI, and human-tech fusion disturbs me. I’m a luddite, I suppose. But I was particularly disturbed because I had just read about the thousands of children involved in cobalt mining, using their bare hands and basic hand tools. The devices we already have and the many more devices to come he was so excited about all need cobalt to function. This whiz-bang, shiny future being crafted for the rich is going to be dependent on children’s small fingers working in pit mines in poor countries.

 

So, when it was time for questions, I was surprised to be selected from this sea of people to ask my question. I don’t know if I was articulate in asking about how they intended to move towards humane mining practices. I doubt if he gave a satisfactory answer. I was so scared, I don’t remember. And no one said a thing to me afterwards about my comment. As awkward as it was, I remain hopeful that my question burst the bubble of that whiz-bang future even by the tiniest bit by reminding Reno’s fanciest that our future doo-dads would come at the expense of children.

 

As small and inconsequential as it was, I think it was the one of the bravest things I’ve ever done. Maybe the most foolish, as well. Let’s just say we didn’t get any new corporate sponsors out of that event.

 

It is hard and awkward to remind people of the painful realities that exist outside our bubbles of comfort, the realities that exist outside our own “Hotel Californias.” It is hard to stay open and present to those realities. Even though I had a moment of bravery several years ago, that doesn’t mean I don’t float in and out of bubbles of privilege all the time.

 

Always Jesus is inviting us to step out of those bubbles and into reality.

 

Jesus’ promise to us, speaking to us in this gospel not from on high but from our own level, is that we are blessed in our poverty, our hunger, and our grief. We are blessed when we admit and acknowledge what is so, particularly so when it is not pleasant. We are blessed. This is an invitation to reality and to trust that God is indeed there, or rather here. So, when we are ready to leave Hotel California, God is there to save us, bring us into reality, and show us the blessings and the shalom that are already here for us all. It is a holy and trustworthy promise for us all.

 

AMEN