St. Paul’s United
Church Sunday, August 22, 2010
Holy Hospitality! – Rev. David Mundy
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15,16
Luke 14:1, 7-14
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the end of June I attended an educational event on the
importance of water as a matter of faith and as a practicality of everyday
life. It was interesting because the group of 45 participants gathered in the
high desert of New Mexico, where water is scarce. While it seemed like an
improbable location, it was actually helpful to consider water in a setting
where it is a precious commodity.
We got up very early one morning and drove to the community of
Ohkay Owingeh, a historic
Pueblo Indian community which dates back at least 800 years. It was June 24th,
San Juan or John the Baptist day, and we attended an early morning ceremony in
the Roman Catholic church where the priest conducted a
service for the blessing of the waters. We then walked to the nearby Rio Grande
river with women leading the way, carrying statues,
including one of John the Baptist. Water was drawn from the river to bless us
all.
We returned to the church for the morning mass and at the end
of the service the governor of the pueblo welcomed visitors and said with a big
smile that we were all welcome to his home at midday to join in a meal. I assumed that he was joking, but our leader told
us afterward that because it was a feast day many homes were open to visitors.
Their “open door policy” was literally an open door, and an invitation to come
on in.
I had no intention of following up on this hospitality and I
wandered around town, enjoying the market and the spectacular dancing with
hundreds of participants. At noon I ran into our leader and he pointed me
toward the governor’s house and gave me an address. I decided to at least find
the place and perhaps take a photo of the exterior, but when I got there I went
into what was a modest adobe building.
A woman came out of the kitchen and pointed me to a couch
along one wall, so I dutifully sat down. The room was full of members of the
community who obviously knew one another. There were young couples with
children and a few elderly people. And I was the big, tall white guy, the only
stranger and only non-white person in the room. There were a few smiles but
their conversations continued. Awkward.
Eventually some of the folks who were eating in the kitchen
left and I was beckoned to the big table laden with food. By that time two
others from our group had arrived and we rather tentatively went in together. I
recognized nothing on the table but it was all delicious. I got talking to one
of the young couples and it turned out they were shy but friendly.
The hostess was one of several women who were working
incredibly hard to keep the table filled with food but she stopped for a moment
to chat with me. I complimented her on the bread and told her that my wife,
Ruth, is a bread maker. Well, she immediately uncovered a big wicker basket of
round loaves and encouraged me to take a loaf for her. This gesture was really
touching, but I explained that I was a Canadian and that it wouldn’t be
possible, and she seemed disappointed. In the end, though, we took a loaf which
we froze and used for our final communion service.
So much of my program that week was stimulating and
worthwhile, but that totally unexpected meal was a highlight and a holy moment.
It felt more like communion than many communion services. There I was, a
stranger, a foreigner, someone with different coloured skin, but I was
welcomed. Isn’t true, generous hospitality remarkable?
This morning we listened to two passages which are about
hospitality. In the book of Hebrews there is the wonderful, mysterious
instruction “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing
that some have entertained strangers without knowing it.” This reference to
angels probably relates back to the story in Genesis of the three visitors,
perhaps angels, who are shown hospitality and fed by Abraham and Sarah. Hospitality was and is very important in
Judaism and in the Greek translation of the older testament, as well as the new testament, the word xenos
is used to describe a foreigner, or a stranger, or even enemies. Now, in our English vocabulary xenophobia is
the fear of strangers. Well xenophilia is the love of
strangers, and in the bible xenophilia is a virtue
In Luke’s gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles the sharing
of meals and the theme of hospitality is important as well. There are half a
dozen stories in each of these books built around meals, and we heard one of
them today. Jesus is invited to dinner by a group of religious leaders who are
Pharisees and we’re told that they are keeping a watchful eye on him. Earlier
in Luke they criticized Jesus for chowing down with
the riffraff, so now they want to see how he behaves when he shares a meal with
those who are kosher.
When in doubt, tell a story, is Jesus’ motto. He speaks of a
wedding banquet where guests are carefully jockeying for position at the
tables, not wanting to make a faux pas by taking a spot to which they are not entitled.
One of our daughters has been to a few weddings of friends this past year and
mentioned recently that she hates being at the ”spares” table where you get
stuck with a bunch of people you don’t know. Well, this parable is about not
knowing quite where to take one’s place.
Jesus brings it all home by saying to
his host: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame,
and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you
will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
This couldn’t have gone over well, but Jesus makes his point.
Hospitality isn’t just a nice gesture or a formal “I’ll scratch your back if
you scratch mine.” It is a holy opportunity, and in some mystical way God is
the host.
It is good to be reminded about hospitality at this time of
the year, isn’t it? This is the season to mooch off friends and family as we
travel to and fro. Let me reframe that comment. This is the season when we give
and receive the blessings of hospitality with those who are important in our
lives. We often rearrange schedules and sleeping arrangements for those who are
on the road past our door.
So can we take on the mind set and the heart set of holy
hospitality? Jesus brings home to us once again that hospitality is both a
charisma, a spiritual gift, and a spiritual discipline, because being welcoming
can be hard work.
Perhaps there is a set of questions which we can regularly ask
ourselves in our life together, to keep our “eyes on the prize” of the welcome
in Christ’s name.
Are we as welcoming as we would like to think we are? How can we be more effective in our
welcome of those who are new in our midst? Whenever someone tells me that they
feel at home at St. Paul’s and that they are fitting right in I’m proud that we
are a welcoming congregation.
When a person says that they feel awkward here, or that they
have been ignored, or even shunned I am tempted to think “it must be them,
not us.” They must be a little shy
about getting connected here, or they misunderstood the person or persons who
seemed cold. It’s important to try not
to go the way of excuses and instead humbly ask ourselves how we can be more
inviting to newcomers.
Can we be hospitable to those who are unconventional? This week several people will meet to
discuss starting a community kitchen for those who live in some of the rooming
houses in downtown Bowmanville, as an extension of
the important work already being done by Making
Connections Clarington. Some of these folk have what we might call unusual
social skills, yet many of them yearn to belong and most of them enjoy eating.
Is our community hospitality shaped by our fears about
perceived strangers? Last week I was driving along King St. in Courtice, just down the road from here I saw, somewhat to
my surprise, that a small church building on the north side of the highway now
has a sign saying Islamic Centre of Clarington. This faith
community has a website which tells us that they are now serving the Muslims of
this region. In our post-911 world will we be suspicious, xenophobic, or will
we have open minds and hearts?
Will we let Christ the host inspire us, and touch our
imaginations in the way we practice radical hospitality? No doubt most of us have formed
opinions about the shipload of Sri Lankans which was escorted into a British
Columbia port last week. My immediate reaction was that we need to be a country
that welcomes refugees and immigrants, but “jumping the queue” is not the
Canadian way. I’m still there, but Jesus is making me do some thinking about
all of this. What do I actually know about these people,
or about our protocols for refugee claimants? Even though there are nearly 500
people on this ship, that number represents just two percent of those who seek
refugee status in the course of a year. Instead of rushing to judgement, I can
leave the door of my opinions open at least a crack.
We all need to remember
that at the heart of our faith story there is a table and a meal over which
Jesus, the Christ presides. Jesus welcomes us to this table and feeds us there,
and satisfies our deepest thirst. It is through this gift of brokeness, broken bread, shared wine that we are healed,
made whole, raised up in resurrection promise. He extends grace through radical
acceptance, and if Jesus chooses to break bread with me, who knows who else he
will invite to the table and what I can learn from them.
Ana Maria Pineda is a theologian who has written a great deal
on Christian hospitality and she offers this: “To welcome the stranger is to
acknowledge him as a human being made in God’s image: it is to treat her as one
of equal worth with ourselves – indeed, as one who may teach us something out
of the richness of experiences different from our own.”
I will leave you today
with three more questions to ponder in the days ahead:
When have you been blessed by unexpected hospitality?
When have you been hospitable “in spite of yourself?”
When were you aware of God’s presence in a “holy moment” of
hospitality?
Holy hospitality! We just don’t know what Jesus will say and
do next, but the welcome mat is always at the open door. Thanks be to God.