Sermon: The Practice of Hospitality

Text: Luke 10:1-11; Luke 24:28-35; Hebrews 13:1-2

Date: January 20, 2008

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, EagleHarbor Congregational Church

            Writer Gina Lee has a story to tell about the practice of hospitality in her family.  When she was nine years old, her cousin came to live with her family.  She was a teenager, pregnant and unwed, and her parents responded to her crisis by kicking her out.  She literally had no place else to go.  Gina says she thanks God that her mom was the type of Christian who opened her home to others in need.  This particular cousin was not the first person in trouble to stay at their home, nor was she the last. 

            The family had very little in the way of money, but Gina’s mom always managed to feed the parade of relatives, friends, and neighbors who found their way to the door.  Gina remembers one night when Mom woke Gina up and told her to move over because a neighbor girl needed a place to sleep.  Gina and her sister were already sharing the bed, but they moved over.  Based on this kind of experience of her childhood, Gina urges her readers to embrace the idea of hospitality.  The title of her little article: “Scoot Over.”

            I read quite a bit about the practice of hospitality as I prepared to speak today, and I have concluded that the title of Gina Lee’s article pretty much contains the essential directive of hospitality: Scoot over!  Make some room for someone else.  Make some room in your home, at your table, in your neighborhood, in your citizenry, in your church, in your pew, and more than anything, make some room in your heart.  You don’t need to take up all the space available.  Scoot over.    

            Joan Chittister describes hospitality in a scooting-over way: “Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts.  Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves.”  Another writer says, “Guests are crucial to the making of any heart.”[1]  We are called to the practice of hospitality not only because there are people in need of shelter, welcome and sustenance of many kinds but also because practicing hospitality helps our hearts grow and deepens the life of the spirit.

            The practice of hospitality is deeply rooted in Jewish and Christian culture.  In the desert regions where Judaism took root, hospitality was essential to survival.  Offering a wayfarer water and food in that harsh landscape might mean the difference between life and death.  So there was a code of hospitality that developed in that culture that linked hospitality with honor.  On the other hand, there was wariness of strangers who might prove to be enemies.  A person who was not a member of the tribe, an alien, was definitely an object of suspicion.  So there is a paradox apparent in the Old Testament: what Walter Burghart identifies as “theoretical hostility and practical friendliness.”  There is a passage in Deuteronomy that challenges God’s people to overcome their fear of the stranger, saying, “For the Lord your God is god of gods…the great God, mighty and awesome, who has no favorites, accepts no bribes; who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and befriends the stranger, feeding and clothing him.  So you too must befriend the stranger, for you were once strangers yourselves in the land of Egypt.” [Deuteronomy 10:17-9]

            Hospitality is a keynote in Jesus’ ministry.  One of the radical features of his practice was eating with anyone in a society where tables were terribly socially segregated between the clean and the unclean, the socially acceptable and the unacceptable.  Strangers are always showing up in Jesus’ stories as the heroes who get the message about God’s inclusive kingdom long before the insiders do.  It was very clear in Jesus’ teaching that the way we treat other people—especially strangers and outsiders—signals the manner in which we treat God.  Expansive hospitality was for Jesus an essential part of healthy spirituality.

            Jesus was forever challenging the religious practitioners of his day—his fellow Jews—to scoot over and make room for those whom they had excluded because of their social status or nationality or faith practice.  It wasn’t a message that was received gladly by those who were “insiders” partly because hostility and suspicion of those who did not practice a particular kind of Judaism was ingrained into the lessons and rituals of their faith.  Their natural suspicion of strangers had been sanctified by rituals meant to highlight and strengthen the barriers between Jew and Gentile, or between this kind of Jew and that kind of Jew.  “Choseness” had  come to mean “separateness” in their minds.  So a great deal of what Jesus said and did signifying the inclusivity of God’s realm seemed extremely radical.

            We may not have the same kind of rigid stratifications in our society that Jesus had in his, but practicing hospitality is still pretty radical in our day.  We suffer from suspicion of the stranger in our generation every bit as much as any past generation has.   Lynne Hundley puts it this way: “My head and heart say a stranger is one whose bread I have yet to eat, whose road I have yet to walk, whose heartbreak I have yet to share.  The fear in me says strangers are the shadowy, faceless ones who force terrible things on me.”[2]  We don’t typically invite strangers into our homes or into our cars because fear rules the day most of the time.  There are good reasons behind some of our fears; we live in violent times.  On the other hand, defensiveness and fear can squeeze out hospitality, leaving people in need out in the cold and leaving our hearts in cold storage as well.

            I’m not going to stand here and advocate picking up hitchhikers because we love Jesus.  But I do think we need to confront our fear of strangers and face up to our disinterest in practicing hospitality.  I think “disinterest” is the appropriate word here.  We are all busy with what we’re doing, and we may feel pretty comfortable with our networks of friends and associates and our cozy church community.  I’m thinking back to Gina, comfortably asleep with her sister in her warm bed, safe and snug.  And then the voice of Mom, probably accompanied by a gentle push, “Scoot over.”  Did Gina resist?  Maybe, just a little, before making room for her neighbor in need?  We would understand, wouldn’t we, if she did—it’s only natural to relax into what is already so comfortable, be it a bed or a warm network of familiar faces.   

            God certainly understands what we do naturally—birds of a feather flocking together, and so on.  But as you know there is that paradox in the spiritual life that God loves us just the way we are, and loves us too much to let us stay that way.  God knows the needs of those on the outside of our comfortable circles, and knows the richness of being in relationship with the stranger who has gifts to bring and lessons to teach.  Henri Nouwen has written, “When hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers can become guests.”[3]  The process of conversion starts with God’s gentle but firm encouragement to “Scoot over.”

            What does it mean to be hospitable?  C. Welton Gaddy, leader of the Interfaith Alliance, wrote about hospitality in a way that I can’t improve on, so I want to share his perspective with you.  He writes, “Hospitality is an attitude—a perspective on life that involves openness to others, receptivity to new relationships.  A hospitable individual desires to explore new possibilities for friendships including the establishment of relationships with individuals who may be very different from them, who may be strangers to them.”  This takes some effort, since friendships are created more easily on common ground than on differences.  Yet anyone who has been able to sustain a relationship with someone who is very different from oneself can recognize the great potential for learning and growth there.

            Gaddy continues, “Hospitality is also an activity—creating a free, friendly, safe environment into which others are invited for the purpose of getting to know them and become friends with them.  This environment may be a physical place or a personal relationship.”[4]  I think this is one of our goals as a free church; we want to create a safe environment, both physically and soulfully, into which we invite others for the purpose of friendship. 

We don’t practice hospitality in our church for the purpose of converting people to our way of belief.  We don’t practice hospitality as a cover for convincing people to join so there will be a few more people around to help pay the bills.  We practice hospitality as a way of creating a space for the fullness of the family of God to be realized.  This means leaving a lot of space for people to be themselves, with all their quirks and ideas and irritating habits.  It means giving a lot of latitude for people to discover their unique path to God.  I love the way Kathleen Norris has written about Benedictine monasteries which have a common way of life but do not produce “cookie-cutter monks and nuns.”  She says, “Monasteries have a unity that is remarkably unrestrained by uniformity…”  I think that is what we are seeking in this kind of church—unity that is unrestrained by uniformity, a safe place to be yourself, and to let others be themselves, with the love of Christ at the center.

            In a church that practices true hospitality the identity of guest and host is not entirely clear.  Henri Nouwen suggests that after strangers become guests, “the distinction between guest and host proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of newfound unity.”[5]  I chose the scriptures from Luke today because in them Jesus teaches about both being a guest and being a host.  In the first, the missionaries are sent out without a lot of luggage and money because Jesus wants them to rely on the hospitality of the communities to which they are going.  He tells them to graciously accept what is served them, and stay in one place rather (we presume) than moving around town looking for better and better digs.   Being a gracious guest is as important in Christian community as being a gracious host.  In a hospitable community we receive the gifts others have to offer us, and we gladly accept our dependence on others.  No Lone Rangers!  Part of the “making space” of hospitality is making space in ourselves to receive the ministry of our companions.

            In the second story, the disciples model hospitality by urging Jesus to stay with them and share a meal with them.  And though they did not recognize him all day as they walked and talked, the moment they broke bread their eyes were opened and they realized it was Christ with them.  This happens over and over again when we offer hospitality.  Christ appears in the space between people when love is being shared, and both host and guest are blessed. 

            The risen Christ morphs from guest to host in the Emmaus road story, and I imagine that the missionaries morphed from being guests to hosts in their experiences as they accepted the food offered them and offered the Bread of Life in the good news of the Kingdom of God they had come to share.  There is fluidity, even deliberate confusion between guest and host in the Christian tradition.  This is an important thing to keep in mind when we are trying to create a hospitable church. Most of us are more comfortable in the role of host, I imagine, and we might even be so comfortable as hosts in our church home that we think we own it.  We might unconsciously be limiting our hospitality to those who are going to be compliant guests, looking and acting and thinking like ourselves.  I was watching a dumb movie last week in which one character was hosting another in his apartment and was really miffed when the guest had the audacity to move his furniture in order accomplish the task they had set out to do more effectively.  The rearrangement made a lot of sense and helped them work together better, but it still made the host mad.  It was his furniture!  She didn’t ask permission! 

            Church members—long-timers, especially—can react the same way about our habitual ways of doing things in a church.  New folks in the pews are all well and good until they start moving the furniture around, metaphorically speaking.  It’s not always easy to make space for new ideas that come with new friends (you want to sing what?).  But we are not always the hosts, even if we played the part of host to deliberately make space for new friends.  Christ is the true host, and we are guests at Christ’s table and visitors in God’s house and sojourners on the Spirit’s road.  When we offer hospitality in this place we do so as stand-ins for the true host, not as owners of the place.

              God is still creating the Body of Christ that is the Church, one person at a time.  The Spirit is poured out on the people of God, plural.  Marcia Schwartz wrote this poem titled, “The Community of Saints.” Listen:

I see a jigsaw puzzle

And each of us

Only a knobby piece of

The whole.  Sometimes

Our cardboard edges get ruffled

Where the smooth fitting

Together of the saints

Took some pushing and prying.

Why can’t God and I be complete

Alone—

Without all the wavy lines

Breaking the serene

Face of the picture

Like cracks on

An old da Vinci?[6]

We may occasionally long for that church of one, like the “Army of One” in a recent military advertising campaign.  But the true beauty is in the big picture of God’s people, the Spirit resting in many hearts, Christ revealed in friendships that form over the crackling sound of the breaking of bread.  My hope is that we will welcome every person who comes in our door as if they were the missing piece of the puzzle that will complete this work of art, this family of God’s children.   When you see that knobby, colorful character come down the aisle, listen to Mama God.  She’s saying, “Scoot over.”

[1] Quoted in Christianity for the Rest of Us by Diana Butler Bass  New York: HarperOne, 2006, p. 84

[2] Hundley, Lynne “No More Strangers” Alive Now November/December 1988

[3] Op. cit. p. 86

[4] Gaddy, C. Welton  “Responding to Outsiders: A Spiritual Challenge, A Personal Pilgrimage” The Living Pulpit, October-December 2004, p. 22

[5] Op cit. Bass, p. 86

[6] Schwartz, Marcia  “The Community of Saints” Alive Now May/June 1990, p. 65