Hospitality
September 15, 2002
The Rev. Gretchen Woods
READING from Henri Nouwen
Hospitality 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. It is not to lead
our neighbor into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a
wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment. It is not an educated
intimidation with good books, good stories, and good works, but the liberation
of fearful hearts so that words can find roots and bear ample fruit. It is not
a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the
opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way. The
paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create an emptiness, not a fearful
emptiness, but a friendly emptiness, where strangers can enter and discover
themselves created free, free to sing their own songs, speak their own
languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own
vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the life style of
the host, but the gift of a change for the guest to find his or her own.
SERMON: Hospitality
On this eve of Yom Kippur, I
should like to tell an old Jewish story:
Once upon a time there was a
traveler who came to a small town. She had no money left and she was very
hungry, so she stopped at a house and asked if she could work for a meal. The
owner of the house said she did not need labor just then, but she was happy to
offer a meal and a bed for the night. The traveler was surprised and delighted
by this response. The next morning, as the traveler prepared to continue her
journey, the owner of the house offered her a small sum of money to help her on
her way. The traveler was astonished, thanked the homeowner for her generosity,
and asked why she was so hospitable. The home-owner replied that she did this
“just in case one of my visitors is an angel: a person bringing a special gift
for my life.” (Now the sweetsy image of an angel may curdle your blood as it
has mine for years, but, just this morning, let’s pretend that “angel” is a
metaphor for a person who brings us wider understanding and deeper love.)
This old story carries with
it the essence of hospitality, a concept that has power in many cultures. Jews
are very clear about the place of hospitality in religious practice. This Yom
Kippur, we are reminded:
The Synagogue was much more than a place for
divine service. It was a center for study and charity and social work.
Strangers were fed there, hence Kiddush was recited on Friday and Festival
evenings during the service, save on the first two evenings of Passover, when
strangers would be given hospitality not in the Synagogue, but in private homes
because of the domestic paschal ritual. ( A Rabbinic Anthology, eds.
C.G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, Schocken Books, p. 380.)
The practice of hospitality
had roots deep in Jewish tradition long before the existence of synagogues.
Concern for the stranger and the call to generous response to a stranger takes
different forms in different cultures. Native Americans who met the Pilgrims
offered hospitality: teaching the Pilgrims native foods, telling them where to
hunt and fish, and remaining silent about practices of the Pilgrims that
confused and startled the Indians. In contrast, our citizens currently have an
ambivalent response to the notion of hospitality, as we make life considerably
more difficult for recent immigrants to this country. We assume certain
rights because our arrival is less recent than theirs. Are we less hospitable
than our forbears?
Hospitality is worthy of our
consideration as religious people who
place welcoming and inclusion high among our values. We open our hearts
and spaces to strangers who come to us seeking a religious home. We hold the
Unitarian Universalist franchise for Corvallis and its environs. We aim to hold
it with hospitality. Therefore, we need to continue to be intentional in our
hospitality, making room for all those who may find a religious home with us.
Some, perhaps all, may prove to be angels bringing gifts unimagined.
I remember returning from
the mountain on my first Vision Quest. As I reached the lower levels where day
hikers walked through beautiful trees along a river, I encountered a couple who
had sporadically attended a congregation I had been serving. I recalled that
the husband rarely came, but the wife had attended choir, as well as services.
The couple greeted me pleasantly, and we exchanged courtesies. Then the woman
remarked, “You know I never really connected with the people of the congregation.
It would have only taken one more person than you to have made me feel at
home!” IT WOULD HAVE ONLY TAKEN ONE MORE PERSON!!
This reminded me, yet again,
that hospitality is a function of a community, not just the minister; it is the
function of the ministry of the whole congregation. No matter how warm and
inclusive I try to be, all of us need to notice the stranger and welcome her or
him. We need to welcome, to include, and to create healthy boundaries for
exploration.
Now I know Sunday morning
may be the only time we get to see some of our friends, or that we may have
business of the church in mind, AND I genuinely believe that hospitality calls
us to make space for the stranger in our midst. We need to welcome newcomers,
determine if they want or need help in connecting with us. We may make a new
friend or find someone with special gifts to share: an angel unaware.
There are some simple things
we can do to be welcoming: 1. Don’t come through the door to the foyer and
STOP. Move in to make room for others. You may think about this figuratively as
well as literally. 2. Face the door when you gather with friends, rather than
creating a circle which keeps strangers out. 3. Yes, we have designated
greeters, and we truly all need to be greeters, if we are serious about
being hospitable. Look around during coffee hour and see who is standing alone.
4. Let’s consider NOT doing any church business the last fifteen minutes before
a service and the first fifteen minutes after, so we can meet and greet those whom
we don’t yet know. 5. Try to learn the name of one person new to you each
Sunday. This person may be a long time member. SO WHAT! We all need to feel
welcomed. Each of us may be an angel unaware. 5. Probably the hardest - or most
advanced - park toward the back of the parking lot, so visitors will not be
greeted by an apparently full parking lot. These are all simple welcoming
activities that can welcome all of our angels.
Next, there are some simple
things we can do to include newcomers: Join a Covenant Group or Extended Family
and invite others to do so as well. Small groups help us to know each other
more intimately and to feel more deeply connected. Parents Time Off helps our
new families with toddlers to connect and to get a break at the same time. Invite
a newcomer to help you in some task in your committee work, then invite them to
join, thus giving them a chance to succeed before placing responsibility on
them. One wise man taught me there is a huge difference between empowerment and
abdication. We want to offer the former, not the latter. All of this is
hospitality. All of it is ministry. We are quick to claim the priesthood of all
believers. Is each one of us willing to live it with our hospitality?
I believe that gestures of
hospitality, offering caring concern to strangers, provide the core of healthy
community. Parker Palmer, the Quaker scholar of community, notes the first key
steps in the process of creating community: “1. Strangers meet on common
ground. 2. Fear of the stranger is faced and dealt with. 3. Scarce resources
are shared and abundance is generated.” (The Company of Strangers,
Parker J. Palmer, pp. 40-43.) I really
appreciate that Palmer does not deny the fear of the stranger. We are afraid
that the stranger will change us - and we are right. A stranger will
change us. In true interpersonal interchange, all are transformed. Yet, isn’t
this essential to religious process: to be transformed by interchange -
hopefully for the better, if we bring out the best in each other. Here we recognize
that strangers offer something as well: they offer an opportunity for
transformation.
Now I do not believe we have
the right to hold strangers hostage. It is said in Recovery Groups, that those
who are not healthy don’t have relationships, they take hostages! With true
hospitality, there is give and take. As we gather together and share our
particular talents and gifts, Palmer notes, “abundance is generated!”
Certainly, our newcomers bring us many gifts, even as our long-timers offer us
theirs - and continuity. All are needed for healthy community.
We also need to be sure we
have healthy boundaries around the community that do not allow strangers to
abuse hospitality. Anyone who is a danger to children or the vulnerable needs
to be kept under observation so that the vulnerable are not endangered. As
Parker Palmer says, in healthy communities “People are empowered and protected
from power.”
Recently, Doug Davis has
agreed to co-chair one of our committees. Elizabeth Wyatt organized the Parents
Time Off and facilitated our summer children’s programs. Not so long ago, these
folks were strangers. Now they are bringing abundance to our ongoing life as a
religious community. Who knows what abundance our next newcomers may bring us.
All of our activities benefit as our newcomers become friends.
We also need to be aware
that there are times when hospitality includes providing a safe place and time
simply to rest. Not everyone can work for a religious community all the time.
Newcomers and our long-timers alike may need blessed rest as part of their
involvement with our religious community.
Which brings me to my last
point: Hospitality can be freeing. As we welcome strangers among us and share
with them, we are stimulated to greater heights ourselves. As we offer, not
rigid structure to which they must conform, but safe haven in which they may
grow in their own way, we all benefit. Their energies charge our own. And ours
invite them to risk and to grow. That’s a win-win for all, as Henri Nouwen has
noted in today’s reading.
This does not mean that we
invite strangers to come and abuse us. This does not ask us to enable unhealthy
dramas. All of this assumes that we are in a healthy system, a truly religious
system that calls us to become the very best we can be. Certainly our Unitarian
Universalist Purposes and Principles, which we shall consider over the next
weeks, offer the foundation for just such a system, one in which we move from
respect for the inherent worth and dignity of each individual through all the
affirmations to valuing the interdependent web of ALL existence of which we are
a part. In such a system, we need not fear the stranger, for each of us knows
and owns our own power, and we can use it together to bring greater justice,
equity and compassion to all human relations - not “just in case” our strangers
might be angels, but because we believe that persons of value will be drawn to
such a community and find ways to become friends and contributing members.
What does hospitality offer
us: the opportunity to meet, to connect, to find our place in the bigger
picture, to work together with others to affirm the values we know to be
life-giving. Through hospitality, we join the rational mind of Unitarianism,
which tells us what to do, with the great heart of Universalism, which tells us
how to do it with loving care.
What is the pay-off? Perhaps Judy Chicago put it
best:
And then all that has divided us will merge
And
then compassion will be wedded to power
And
then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And
then both men and women will be gentle
And
then both women and men will be strong
And
then no person will be subject to another’s will
And
then all will be rich and free and varied
And
then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And
then all will share equally in Earth’s abundance
And
then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And
then all will nourish the young
And
then all will cherish life’s creatures
And then
all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth
And
then everywhere will be called Eden once again
So Be It! Blessed Be!