Our lessons are about
hospitality
– Abraham and Sarah entertaining God in the guise of 3
men
in their tent under the oaks of Mamre
– Mary and Martha entertaining Jesus at their home in
Bethany.
Hospitality wasn’t
something we talked about
in the Baptist Church of my childhood.
Hospitality was associated
with Southern Living Magazine,
not the Bible.
It was something they
taught in home economics.
So as a chauvinistic
young Texan, I didn’t respect it.
I still remember the
first Episcopal sermon I ever heard
on hospitality.
It was about the mustard
seed that grew into a tree,
extending its branches to welcome the birds.
I thought the priest was
reducing the gospel to something trivial.
But it wasn’t trivial to
him. He was Japanese,
and the Japanese make an art of hospitality.
It is a spirituality
expressed in the tea ceremony ritual.
In Japan, hospitality
isn’t just a nice thing social custom.
It’s a spiritual thing,
.
Later I learned that
hospitality was the core
of Benedictine spiritual practice.
Benedictine monasteries
were open to anyone.
The monks’ job was to
welcome and serve
those who came their way.
They housed and cared for
travelers, the sick, and the dying.
Hostels, hospitals, and
hospices are all centers of hospitality
born of the Benedictine tradition.
For them too, it was a
spiritual thing.
Finally, I learned that
hospitality was the highest moral duty
in Ancient Civilizations like the Greeks
in Homer’s time and before.
It was the highest moral
duty of desert dwellers in the Middle East
during the days of Abraham and Jesus.
Hospitality was the path
to wholeness and holiness.
So it is important to get
it right, both in church and at home.
So let’s see if our two
stories can help us
get this
hospitality thing right.
Abraham was sitting at the
entrance to his tent
when he saw three strangers,
and immediately asked for the privilege of being their
host.
He was not just willing –
he was eager
– to serve the stranger at his gate.
So Abraham and Sarah
bustled about baking cakes,
butchering beef, pouring milk, setting the table.
It was a busy, scurrying
kind of welcome.
There is something good
in that.
It is active caring,
practical caring, comfort-giving work.
But it can go wrong.
Maybe Martha had read
Genesis
because she welcomed Jesus the same way.
She was scurrying about
too, fretting over getting it all right.
She was so intent on her
practice of hospitality
that she wasn’t paying any attention to her guest.
She was, the Bible says, “distracted
by many things.”
Blessed Martha is the
patron saint of multi-tasking.
But do you see the
problem?
How would you feel if
your arrival set your host in a dither?
A dither says “you are a
nuisance, a burden.”
The Bible says, “She sat
at Jesus’ feet and listened to him.”//
Martha, was in a state,
all frustrated and ruffled.
She saw Mary just taking
it all in and it made her angry
– so angry that she blew up at someone.
But notice: she didn’t blow
up at her lazy sister.
She blew up at Jesus.
“Lord do you not care . . . .?” she demanded.
She was working so hard
at being a host, she went from ignoring her guest
to yelling at him.
We might see it as a
problem yelling at the Savior.
But that isn’t the
problem Luke wants us to see.
It’s that she’s yelling
at her guest.
Hospitality can turn
itself inside out.
Jesus said, “Settle down
now Martha.
You are worried and distracted by many things.
But only one thing is needed.
Mary has chosen the better part.”
You see Mary paid
attention to Jesus.
She sat down and listened
to him.
Abraham, after his
initial scurrying around, got to that point too.
Once he served the meal,
the Bible says,
he stood beside them under the oak tree while they ate.
So what can we learn from
these stories?
The heart of hospitality
– the part that makes it feel real,
the part that makes it a spiritual discipline,
the path to wholeness and holiness –
the heart of hospitality
is open, kind attention.
It is just being still,
looking and listening.
It is acknowledging the
other person is present and they matter.
Hospitality is dropping
our agenda
to simply see and hear another person.
It is seeing and hearing
someone
for their own sake, appreciating them as they are,
valuing them for being who they are.
Hospitality isn’t just
for guests.
It’s a way of being in
the world.
When we were raising our
children,
I was like Martha, always fretting,
working too hard at it, parenting too intensely.
It made my kids wonder
what was wrong with them
that I was so anxious.
I regret that.
When I was a parish
priest,
I was like Martha, always fretting,
working too hard at it,
trying to make the church better, improve it
– which was a sure fire way to tell the people
they weren’t quite good enough.
I regret that too.
I should have known
better.
I used to go to an annual
workshop in
New York for mental health workers.
The workshop title was
“the healing power of unconditional presence.”
The teacher, Dr. John
Wellwood, believed that wounded people
heal when other people just sit with them
– just listen to them unconditionally, without an agenda
to change them, fix them, or improve them.
That’s hospitality. Just
not messing with people.
Not advising them,
teaching lay, laying our agendas on them.
It isn’t easy. It ‘s hard
to set aside our judgments,
our projects, our grid of good and bad.
It is hard to shift into
neutral, so we can just be still and listen.
But that’s hospitality.
When it sinks in we find
a spiritual treasure.
If we practice
hospitality with other people,
long enough, we begin to practice it with ourselves.
As all the different
feelings ebb and flow in our hearts,
as all the random thoughts scamper through our minds,
we learn to welcome them in a calm, neutral way.
That is very hard. It
isn’t what we usually do.
Usually, we latch onto
some thoughts and feelings.
We hold onto them until
they get a hold on us.
Other thoughts and
feelings we try to banish, repress, exile
because we don’t want to think that, don’t want to feel
that.
But hospitality just sits
with them like Mary sitting with Jesus,
like Abraham standing under the oak tree beside his
guests.
Hospitality isn’t afraid
of our thoughts and feelings.
It doesn’t pat some on
the head and slap others in the face.
When we become serene in
the presence of our own inner dramas,
we can become serene with other people.
Hospitality moves from
the outside in, then out again.
We start with welcoming
others,
then it sinks into our hearts as deep serenity,
then it comes back out as an even more authentic
hospitality.
So, brothers and sisters,
whether the stranger that come to us
are strange people or strange passions,
“Never neglect to show hospitality to strangers,
for by doing so, many have welcomed angels
unawares.”
