Hospitality not Hostility

Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13

Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

There are several of our parents and a good many of my friends for whom sending children off to college has become an acute reality. For them, one of the very most important days will be the Freshmen Move-in Day, that day when nervous parents descend upon campuses across the nation with their precious children in tow.

For most freshmen, this will be the first time they have lived away from their parents for any length of time. They are in a new place and surrounded by thousands of other young adults. Everyone is nervous that he or she will not be as talented or as popular or as smart as the next freshmen. Inside their heads, anxieties swirl around: “Will I be liked?” “Will I make friends?” “Will I succeed?” “Will I be accepted as I am?”

Parents have their own set of anxieties. For eighteen years they have done their best to nurture, teach, support, protect, and love their children. And in the depths of their souls, they know that no one can perform that job as well as they can. Yet, these parents also know that the only way for their children to become the independent adults that God intends them to be is for the them to let go. Inside their heads, questions swirl with just as much abandon as in the child’s: “Will Emily find people who like her and whom she likes?” “Will Johnny be able to get himself up every morning to get to class?” And perhaps most importantly, “Will he ever change the sheets?”

I remember my freshman move-in day. My dad had dropped me off at the dorm early in the morning and moved my belonging into the dorm. We had lunch together and then he headed back to Melbourne. Later in the afternoon, with some anxiety, I went to the student union – mostly, I imagine, to find something to eat. But when I arrived, I found there a great many people milling about and a great number of tables and booths set up. And lo! There amidst the clamor and clutter, I saw something quite familiar – a black shirt and a white collar! I went to investigate and met Fr. Tom. I would soon learn that he was the Catholic chaplain. After chatting with him for a minute, he passed me off to a fellow student – a junior by the name of Jose who told me all that I needed to know – all that stuff that they don’t tell you on the official orientation. He invited me to the Catholic college ministry night at the church, the Cathedral of Saint Thomas More.

For my next two years at Florida State I would be at that table. We set up tables and booths for one simple purpose: to welcome people. We’d say ‘hello.’ We’d smile and offer cookies and something cold to drink. We’d offer directions. It didn’t matter if you were Catholic, a Buddhist, a Muslim, an atheist, or one of them Episcopalians, Fr. Tom welcomed everyone. As students, we looked for the opportunities to take incoming freshmen aside, whispering in their ears: “You’re going to love it here. There is so much to do, to learn, to explore.” Fr. Tome would assure the parents: “She’s is going to be just fine. There are lots of us here who will make sure of that.” And when he saw a tear welling up, he would give them a hug, knowing that sometimes an embrace communicates more than words ever could.

Now, why did Fr. Tom and chaplains across the campus do this? They did it because Jesus teaches us that welcome is the heart of the Christian life. As he says in today’s gospel reading, whenever we welcome the stranger, we welcome him.

Welcoming one another is such a simple thing. Anyone can do it. Yet, we live in a world that too often seems drawn to hostility rather than hospitality. Our world is increasingly filled with competitive, aggressive, and suspicious people who seem more eager to turn their backs than to welcome. Instead of opening ourselves to the other in a spirit of generosity, we anxiously cling to possessions, status, and position, because these are the things we think will give security against a hostile and insecure world.

You do not have to live in such a world for very long to feel anxious, insecure, inadequate, unwelcome – in a word, to feel like a stranger. I worry that too many of our friends and neighbors too much of the time live in this place of estrangement.

One of the central missions of Church is to expose this fraud, to unveil the destructive and deceptive message and, instead, to live into a different system that values and honors people. The Church is invited to uphold an alternative model of human relationship, defined not by hostility but by hospitality. To use the words of Catholic writer Henri Nouwen, this means that we want to create a

“...free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Such hospitality is not designed to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. . . . 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 emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as 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 lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own way” (Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, 71-72).

“Hospitality” is thus much more than knowing how to throw a dinner party and to engage in polite cocktail conversation. The biblical foundations of the concept of “hospitality” are far richer and deeper: The Hebrews were from the beginning a nomadic people, wanderers in search of home, strangers who were frequently dependent upon the hospitality of others for shelter, protection, and the basic stuff of life. Indeed, embedded within the covenant between God and Israel was the Hebrew people’s identity as an alien, and their corresponding responsibility to sojourners and strangers. Even when the Hebrews eventually inherited the promised land after their time in Egypt, God constantly reminded them that this promised land ultimately belonged to Him. They were merely its caretakers, its stewards, living on the land by God’s grace. Yes, they were the chosen people, yet they were still aliens.

Because the Hebrew people deeply understood what it meant to be a stranger, to be vulnerable, to be outside the power structures, to be on the margins, they were able to emerge from this experience of vulnerability with an authentic appreciation for their God’s imperative of hospitality, no more clearly expressed than in Exodus, chapter 23: “You shall not oppress a stranger,” God tells them, for “you know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And then again even more emphatically in Deuteronomy 10, the Lord says: “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

In Jesus’ life and ministry, of course, this ethic of hospitality takes on an incarnational reality of even greater urgency. Jesus eats with tax collectors, touches and cares for the lepers, forgives the prostitutes, gives hope to the poor, defends the weak and the widowed, and weeps with those in mourning. Jesus’ ministry is at its core about welcome and hospitality to all. It should come as no surprise, then, that one of the central images of Jesus’ ministry, embodied in one of the two great sacraments of the church, is the shared meal around a table where all are welcome, where no one is turned away, and where those at the table are urged to make room for others, especially for the lowliest among us. In extending such welcome and in making room for the stranger, Jesus assures us, we will be blessed.

There are times, of course, when the world’s hostility and violence seems so overwhelming that we despair that our little acts of hospitality really amount to much. What can you and I do in the face of such a seemingly cold-hearted universe?

But then I’m reminded of a series of essays that the writer Loren Eiseley wrote several decades ago about “the star thrower” – a mysterious gentlemen who wandered the beaches in search of starfish that had washed ashore. Patiently and deliberately, as this man came upon a starfish on the beach, he would gently pick it up and toss it back into the sea. When asked by a passerby why he did this, the man explains that if the starfish doesn’t get back in the water soon, it will dry out and die. Looking at a beach strewn with thousands of starfish, the passerby skeptically observes that he can’t possibly hope to make any difference. To which the mysterious, star-throwing man responds: “To the ones I throw back, it makes all the difference in the world.”

Exactly. None of us has the ability to solve the world’s hunger problem, or to end homelessness, or to find shelter for all the world’s refugees. But each of us each day is able to extend welcoming arms to a neighbor or to offer help to a stranger or to visit the lonely. That is all Jesus asks. God will take care of redeeming the world; it is more than enough for us to care for the little corner of the world in which we have been placed by offering a warm welcome to everyone who comes our way. In Jesus’ words, even a single cup of water can make a huge and unexpected difference to those who thirst.