St.
Paul’s United Church
Sunday,
September 18, 2005
The Aroma of Hospitality – Rev. David Mundy
Exodus
16: 2-15 Matthew 20:1-16
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We have all heard that when we are selling a house it is a good idea to
make it smell like a home. The aroma of fresh baking when prospective buyers
walk through the door is supposedly the right touch to send them rushing to
arrange a mortgage.
We have friends who figured out how to give this “homey” touch to their
lovely but rambling house as they attempted to sell it. She went out and purchased
a case of apple pies from a store which shall remain nameless but has the
initials M & M..
Every time the real estate agent called about a viewing she put another
pie in the oven. Her husband complained that he was putting on weight from
eating the evidence!
It was a clever tactic although it was somewhat ironic. This couple was
among the most hospitable we had ever met. There always seemed to be gatherings
at their home with prodigious amounts of food that she had prepared. Her
friends were always amazed and a little intimidated by the spread at her
parties because she worked full-time outside the home. So the production pies
seemed a little out of character. Still, they were the easiest route to what we
might call the aroma of hospitality, the right smell of welcome to help “seal
the deal” with those who might choose the house as their next home.
Do many congregations have an aroma
about them that sends the message of hospitality? It is an important question
to answer in a day when many people claim that they are spiritual but don’t
have a religious home. And nearly every congregation wants more people in the
pews and more help and more money. What does it mean
to be authentically hospitable? Someone has described hospitality in this way:
The Christian practice of hospitality is the practice of providing
a space to take in a stranger. It also encompasses the skills of welcoming
friends and family to our tables, to claim the joy of homecoming In the
Bible, offering hospitality is a moral imperative. God's people remember that
they were once strangers and refugees who were taken in by God.
Our Visioning and Strategic Planning committee had been talking about
how we can be more welcoming and hospitable as a congregation, especially when
we see the rapid growth of our community. Statistics from a five-year period
show that more than a quarter of the families in Bowmanville
have moved here from elsewhere. As they arrive in the community they must
search out a new doctor and dentist and mechanic and plumber. Their kids will
go to a new school. And maybe, if there is enough energy left they will search
out a new church where they can be spiritually nourished for the week ahead.
We heard about some people who were on the move in our first scripture
lesson today and as they wandered in the wilderness without much sense of where
they were going and without enough food in their bellies they started to
grumble and talking
about the “good old days.” Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing and the remembered
aroma of the cooking pots of Egypt caused them to block out the oppression of
slavery and revise their dark experience into a happy time around the campfire.
Their leaders, Moses and Aaron have to put up with this moaning and
groaning, but it turns out that God is listening as well. We can almost hear
God’s big sigh, then the promise that they will have enough to eat every day.
No doubt it didn’t take long for them to complain “manna and quail again”
but it is clear in this story that God is the provider, even in the
inhospitable and hostile environment of the wilderness. Our God makes sure that
we have enough for the journey, although maybe just enough for that day. And
there is a sense that the God who provides for us anticipates that we will provide
for others.
When we look to the
life of Jesus, we find someone who seemed to be constantly
sharing meals with others, right up to the last night of his earthly life.
Jesus regularly took on the role of both host and guest at the table.
Again, what aromas do we anticipate in church communities. There are
some that have the musty smell of a museum. It’s not a bad smell, but it the
fragrance of things past, of artifacts which may be a
fascinating window on the way things used to be rather than a functioning
community of the present moment. Often those congregations manage to find the
money to make sure that their buildings are beautiful and look great to the passerby or visitor but you get the feeling that no family
is living there.
There are also congregations that have a sour odour about them. They may
have the reputation for being grumbly and
bad-tempered or just cold. One of the congregations I served spent a year and a
half with an interim minister before I arrived. They were known as fairly staid
and chilly when it came to newcomers but a significant shift took place in
those eighteen months before I got there. On the second Sunday of his interim
term my predecessor calmly but pointedly told the congregation that the
previous week his wife was sitting in the congregation and came to the
fellowship time afterward and not one person had spoken to her. If this was the
case with the minister’s spouse, what was it like for other newcomers?
Fortunately his comments were a wake-up call.
Some congregations have managed to come up with just the right aroma but
we wonder whether everything has been carefully planned to lure folk in and
then “seal the deal,” like my friends with the store-bought pies. A St. Paul’s
family sent their children to a Vacation Bible School at another church this
summer and everything built toward a barbeque on the Sunday morning in lieu of
a regular church service. There was a
strong sense that the food was there to entice the kids and their parents.
Actually, to extend the grace which allows a guest to feel at home at
Christ’s table and within the Christian community is more of an art than we
might imagine. HHospitality is a habit, a practice and a way of life,
which doesn’t necessarily come easily. When we are hospitable our focus in not on the folk whose family has
been here for four generations and know all the church history, even though
their memory is important for our continuity.
When we are hospitable, we don’t just applaud the efforts of those
people who seem to do fifteen different jobs in the church, although we should
remember them with gratitude in our prayers every night!
When we are hospitable as a congregation we are already making room for
the person who
isn’t here yet, and who may have nothing to offer but their presence, at least
to begin with. We accept that person as the stranger who will become a friend
if we greet them in Christ’s name. One congregation which has managed to
reinvent itself did so by establishing a dozen principles and assumptions for
change. Three of them are directly related to hospitality: radical welcome,
not a club and bias toward the next person through the door.
So much of this is “counterintuitive” to use the jargon of our day,
although we could argue that Jesus was “counterintuitive” two thousand years
ago. When he told the parable of the landowner who hired people through the day
and paid those who had worked the least first, he was turning the social order
of its ear. When he says “the last will be first, and the first will be
last” you can hear his audience muttering to one another “that’s the
trouble when you speak without notes. He meant to say the first will be first
and the last will be last.” There
was no mistake. Jesus knew what he was saying. He wanted his listeners to
wrestle with the radical choice to honour those might otherwise be last.
One last question this morning. Does our congregation pass the
“smell test” for hospitality? We should probably ask some of our newcomers
about how they have been welcomed here at St. Paul’s and whether they have been
given opportunities to share their gifts within the life of our community. I
can say that the Mundy family appreciates the aroma of this place, but we have
to admit that we do have a special “in.”
Those of you who have come into our midst recently might let us know what we
could do better. Please be gentle!
For those of us how have been around for a while we can ask whether we
make the effort to go beyond our comfortable circle to make room for newcomers.
If we are grateful for what we have received in the love of Christ, we will
find a way to share it with others. At our last board meeting we asked all the
committees of our church board to consider how we will make St. Paul’s the most welcoming place possible so that everyone is
fed and nourished in their relationship with Christ.
I’ll finish up by telling you that several years ago my wife Ruth and I
visited the city of Boston for a couple of days and we roamed around the
downtown of the city on foot. We stopped into several churches, although in a
couple of cases we realized that the buildings which had once housed
congregations are now condominiums and offices. The one which really impressed
us could have easily smelled like a museum, and a very fine one at that. It was
an Episcopalian or Anglican church dating back to the
1730's. The interior of the church is impressive, almost intimidating, with a
huge carved pulpit and stained-glass windows which are considered among the
finest in North America. A minister from
the past wrote the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
Yet it was not a stuffy place. Everywhere we looked there was evidence
of a community that was alive and people-oriented, from the signs on the street
welcoming visitors to come in and look around, to the bulletin boards
advertising events for Christian formation, to the book store with many
resources. We both thought that if we were living in Boston we would want to be
part of that congregation.
Within the entranceway of this church there is a huge, framed invitation
which is worth recalling as we consider what it means to be welcoming and
hospitable.
If you are curious and have come to see
If you are weary and have come to rest
If you are grateful and have come to share
If you are hurting and have come for solace
If you are listening and have come to pray
If you are seeking and have come for answers
Welcome
We can always make room for others on our journey and pray that this
house will smell like a home. And we can say “welcome.”