Sermon:  Phoenix Affirmation 5:  From Hostility to Hospitality

Texts:  Genesis 1:27; 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, 12-27; 1 John 4:7-12, 16b

Date: February 11, 2007

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, EagleHarbor Congregational Church

Phoenix Affirmation #5: Loving our neighbor includes engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class.

            I was walking up to the ferry a couple of weeks ago (on the Bainbridge side) when a couple of well-dressed, neatly coiffed middle-aged women got my attention.  They were stopped on the ramp, looking back at the boat and talking in rather agitated tones.  I didn’t stop to listen, but what I caught on the way by was one saying to the other that she was really “creeped out” by the man who was standing on the “pickle fork” that sticks out over the car ramp.  The other woman agreed that he was creepy, the way he was standing there just watching each car drive on, and she wondered if he was up to something, and wondered aloud if they should call someone.  I couldn’t say who the women were, or exactly what they were saying, but I could say for sure that there were waves of anxiety and suspicion emanating from the twosome.

            Naturally I was curious to see the man inspiring this anxiety attack, so I took a look at him as I got on the boat.  Have you formed a picture of him in your mind’s eye?  He was standing quietly with one hand in his pockets and the other resting on the rail, watching the ramp.  He was slender, in his 20’s, easy on the eye, dressed appropriately for the weather, carrying nothing that I recall.  What do you suppose was so creepy?  Have you guessed?  He looked like he might have been of Middle-Eastern descent.  

            I didn’t engage any of the people in this mini-drama, just walked on by thinking, “Omigod,” or “For Pete’s Sake” or “Omiforpetesakegod” or something like that.  I’ve heard of the offenses of “running while black” or “holding hands while gay” but I was frankly startled that “standing around on public transportation while looking vaguely Arabic” was considered offensive right here on Bainbridge Island.  As my Swedish grandpa might have said, “Oy yoy yoy!”

            Even though the episode irritated me, I’m trying hard not to fall into the trap of looking down on the frightened women on the boat ramp from some exalted pedestal of moral superiority.  Every one of us has reacted fearfully to a human being we did not know for no particularly good reason.  I have, for example, hurriedly locked my car doors on more than one occasion based on seeing a raggedy black man on the sidewalk.  Locking my doors is not something I think about; it’s an ugly reflex, deeply embarrassing.  I believe that I have stepped away from the path of Jesus when I do something like that, but I have yet to be healed of all my fear.

            Henri Nouwen writes in a helpful way about being called as disciples of Christ to a life of hospitality toward strangers in an atmosphere that cultivates hostility more than hospitality.  “It’s important to realize,” he says kindly, “that our spontaneous feelings toward strangers are quite ambivalent.”  Lately strangers have become more and more subject to hostility rather than hospitality.  We are more apt to learn hostility than hospitality in our culture, the water we swim in.  Nouwen writes,

In our world the assumption is that strangers are a potential danger and that it is up to them to disprove it.  When we travel we keep a careful eye on our luggage; when we walk the streets we are aware of where we keep our money; and when we walk at night in a dark park our whole body is tense with fear of an attack.  Our heart might desire to help others: to feed the hungry, visit the prisoners and offer shelter to travelers; but meanwhile we have surrounded ourselves with a wall of fear and hostile feelings, instinctively avoiding people and places where we might be reminded of our good intentions.[1]

The good news is that we don’t have to be prisoners of fear and hostility.  Once we have become sensitive to what Nouwen calls “the painful contours of our hostility” we can intentionally move toward the opposite: hospitality.  Nouwen lifts up the German and Dutch words for hospitality.  The German, gastfreundschaft, means friendship for the guest.  The Dutch, gastorijheid, means the freedom of the guest.  Nouwen interprets this by saying that to the Dutch people, hospitality wants to offer friendship without binding the guest and freedom without leaving him or her alone.  “Hospitality, therefore, means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.  Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.  It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.”[2]

            When we speak of hospitality, we generally think of concrete acts of hospitality, like having someone over for dinner.  But there is a kind of hospitality that takes place on the inside of a person that may or may not result in action.  One can create free space on in one’s heart or mind where a stranger might enter and become a friend instead of an enemy without ever even engaging the person in a conversation.  If we can slow or stop reflexively hostile reaction to a stranger, we can make room for her or him to register as “neighbor” instead of “boogey-man” in the confines of the soul, even if the space-making never results in an actual relationship.  That creation of space for friendship within is a prerequisite for actual engagement or hospitality.

            Scripture provides us with a useful, easy-to-remember lens through which to peer at strangers, if we can just keep the lens from getting fogged up by fear or hostility: that is, the notion that we are all made in the image of God.   All, all, all made in the image of God.  Writer Anne Lamott has a priest friend who said sometimes he thinks that heaven is just a new pair of glasses.  Anne says she keeps trying to remember to wear them; trying to spend less time thinking about what she sees and more time thinking about why she thinks that way.  She was writing in that particular essay about having compassion for her sturdy, high-functioning thighs which have some feta-cheese-like dimpling issues and tend to keep on moving after she has come to a full stop.   I mention that because our text from 1 Corinthians uses the metaphor of the Body of Christ to remind us that even our less-respectable members, the ones we want to cover up, are needed and honored.  Anne wants to keep wearing the glasses of love when looking at her own body; just as Christ calls us to keep wearing the lens of love when considering the members of the church or the body of humanity as a whole.  When we look at someone as if they were made in the image of God, we  make space for them to enter our lives as friends instead of as enemies.

            I’m grateful that the Bible offers this foundational teaching that we are all made in the image of God.  I’m grateful for the many reminders about love and interdependence and “judging not” and so forth.  Such texts encourage us to move from hostility to hospitality when we encounter strangers from other races, genders, social classes, nationalities, etc.  There are other voices in the Bible for which I am not grateful.  What are we to do with the texts that seem to encourage hostility more than hospitality?  For example: the subject of homosexuality.  I’m going to talk a little more about this because of all the categories named in Phoenix Affirmation #5, it’s the one that still troubles many.  Homosexuality, or words pointing in the direction of that modern word, comes up specifically five times in the Bible, and in each case, the take on it is pretty negative.  Now, five verses, that’s not much, but I think you’d agree with me that they have been amplified by the worldwide church as it wrestles with sexuality.  Never mind that there are at least 2000 verses that have to do with wealth and poverty and a godly response to the poor—ya think our interests and priorities are maybe a little bit skewed?  Anyway, we do have to deal with these scriptures and with the heartbreaking divisions in the Body of Christ over their interpretation.          

Are we free to set aside the scriptures as our guide?  I do not feel free to do that—we are people of the Book.  I do feel free, though, to consider divergent voices in the Bible (e.g.“Committing an abomination” vs. “”Now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” [Romans7:6] ).  I also feel free to consider other sources of truth.  Here’s something I had the confirmation class write down the last week that you might have heard of.  It’s called the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.”  I learned this in my Methodist youth.  John Wesley taught that there are four sources of knowledge for us as we engage in theological reflection.  First, Scripture.  Second, Tradition.  Third, Reason.  Fourth, Experience. 

            We try to understand what scripture teaches us.  We supplement that guidance with what the traditions of the church teach us.  You might have noticed that the tradition of the church shifted around, among other things, charging interest on loans, owning slaves, and allowing women to talk in church.  The scriptures that used to be quoted by slave holders are still there, but the tradition and teaching of the church appropriately evolved to give those scriptures less weight in contemporary theological reflection.  The tradition in the United Church of Christ has evolved in a similar way with regard to welcoming gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered  people into our churches, seminaries, and ministries.

            We then supplement scripture and tradition with reason.  We apply other fields of knowledge and our intelligence to the theological issue at hand.  With regard to homosexuality, we would want to absorb the insights of current brain research and psychological and sociological research.  I’ve done some reading in this field, and it seems from what we have learned so far that the way sexual orientation manifests itself is a complex interaction between body and environment, with will or choice entering in to vastly differing degrees among different people.  It is not a simple matter to determine how sexual orientation comes to be; it is a simple matter, though, to err on the side of love, to give the folk that are different from me what the Dutch would call “the freedom of the guest,” to let them be who they are.  That seems like a reasonable approach when we cannot fully know how differences come to be.

            We then add to scripture, tradition and reason the dimension of experience.  I am not gay, lesbian or bisexual, but I have close friends who are, who have helped me understand their experience.  And I have experienced them as loving, kind, generous, faithful, spirit-led people.  I take that experience into account when weighing the five verses of scripture. 

And I take my experience of Christ as a living, loving, indwelling guide to put the five texts in context.  I have to be careful about this.  As far as the written record is concerned, Jesus was silent about gay and lesbian people.  It’s tempting to write in whatever I would agree with on that blank space in the gospels, and let’s face it, Christians do that all the time.  Still, I think it’s fair to use my imagination to picture Jesus at the table with a sexual minority person; and I imagine him welcoming him or her as he welcomed so many other outcast, oppressed and denigrated people in his society.   I know full well that other Christians imagine that scene of Jesus with a sexual minority person and see a healing or an exorcism, and for now, until the tradition of the worldwide Church shifts more dramatically, I guess we’ll just not see eye to eye.

            So that’s what I think we can do with scripture: listen to other voices in scripture that may bring balance; and listen to tradition, reason and experience as important additional sources of theological wisdom.  Here’s what I think it’s wrong to do with scripture: use it as another brick in the wall of fear we find ourselves behind when engaging someone who is strange to us.  I don’t think the Bible was ever meant to build us a fortress behind which we can cower and lob flaming arrows at people we don’t like.  It really burns me when I see it used that way.  The Word of God, living and active, is meant to dismantle our walls of fear and hostility, not reinforce them.  The Word of God is meant to soften our hardened hearts, not calcify them further.   The Word is meant to help us see the beauty in others, not blind us to it.

            It boils down to this.  God has made space in God’s heart to love each of us with a perfect love.  Beloved, as God has loved us, let us love one another, and not just the one-anothers we already recognize as friends.  Beloved, as Christ risked everything out of love for God and God’s people, let us risk making space for strangers in our hearts which will show up in concrete acts of hospitality, or at least a abeyance of hostility. 

            Listen to these words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:  “This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, they more they possess of that precious, nourishing love from which flowers and children have their strength and which could help all human beings if they could take it without doubting.”[3]

[1] Nouwen, Henri  Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life New York: Image Books, 1975, p. 69

[2] Ibid. p. 71

[3] Rilke, Rainer Maria  “It’s a Miracle” quoted in God’s Treasury of Virtues Tulsa, OK: Honor Books, 1995, p. 28