My homily for Sunday, July 20

 

Here's the text of my homily for Sunday, July 20.  Familiarity with the scriptures I preached on will be very helpful: the story of Abraham, Sarah and the three visitors in Genesis; and the story of Jesus visiting Martha and Mary in Luke.

Imagine yourself sitting in the backyard on a nice day like today. And you happen to see out in front of your house three strangers walking by. So you jump out out of your lawn chair, rush out to the street, and say to these three strangers, "You look really tired. Come on in, come into my backyard here, have a drink. I just put some burgers and brauts on the grill. It's time - we're gonna eat. So why don't you join us, okay? Sit down, be at home.

 

That would be the contemporary equivalent of what Abraham did in the first reading. True to his Middle Eastern culture, Abraham leaves the shade of his tent to welcome three strangers and offer them hospitality. What's remarkable is not only Abraham's hospitality, but the initiative he takes in offering it. The strangers don't come  knocking on his tent flap - Abraham goes out to meet them. 

 

What may seem impetuous and even careless on Abraham's part was something constitutive of Middle Eastern hospitality in those days. Folks in Abraham's time lived by a social code which held that the stranger could be transformed from being a potential threat - to becoming a friend, an ally - through the offer of hospitality. And before you dismiss that as being totally naive, it works both ways. Consider that strangers entering a new place would be relieved of any fear and worry that the natives might take advantage of them - if they were warmly welcomed to the natives' table. 

 

Hospitality is also at work in the gospel. Jesus has dropped by the home of Martha and Mary to visit. He's not a stranger to them. We know from the gospels that Jesus was very good friends with Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. He's a guest in their home. Martha is anxious and worried and burdened with the work of offering hospitality to Jesus, getting the meal ready. And she's upset that Mary isn't helping out, and she lets, Jesus know that. 

 

In a surprise response, Jesus recommends that Martha not criticize her sister (who's doing nothing except sitting with Jesus) but rather to take a lesson from Mary, who has chosen to offer the Lord a different kind of hospitality. 

 

It seems that Martha's hospitality has actually led her to focus, not on her guest, but on herself. She became anxious and worried, jealous, and a little angry. But Mary's hospitality was all about focusing attentively on her guest -  welcoming him not only into her home, but into her heart as well. 

 

So we've got Abraham, Martha, and Mary. (Sarah, if you remember, gets kind of hidden in the tent. She's a kind of Martha person. She's in the background doing all the work.)

 

But how about us? Where do we fall on the scale of hospitality? 

 

Certainly there are enough reports of violence and tragedy in the news these days to move many of us, maybe all of us, to a stance of caution, even a posture of self defense, when it comes to offering hospitality, to meeting and greeting strangers among us. That kind of caution can be wise and even commendable. There's nothing wrong in being alert to the possible presence of a bad actor or some activity that truly signals danger. The Middle Eastern culture of hospitality that taught Abraham to leave and welcome the strangers passing by his tent, also taught Abraham, "Trust God in everything, but keep your camel tied."  

 

So, a certain healthy caution is not the enemy of hospitality - unless and until caution renders our hearts suspicious. Suspicious of strangers, of certain kinds of strangers, of every stranger... Suspicious of others on account of their dress, the color of their skin, their language, their accent, their faith, their beliefs and customs, their country of origin.  (And you can be sure that Abraham, in welcoming the three strangers, faced all of those suspicions himself. He didn't know who these folks were.) 

 

But what we need to look out for is how prudential and healthy caution can easily and quickly become suspicion. And suspicion is but a step away from prejudice (which is, by definition: judging s person before we know the whole story). 

 

And prejudice has no place in the Christian heart. 

 

Hospitality obliges the Christian believer to an openness that: prudently welcomes the other, stranger or friend; that tends to the needs of other and generously so; that stands open to the other's heart and life and truth - be that an experience that's already familiar to us or something strange and yet to be learned. 

 

Hospitality does not require us to be naive or reckless. That would be foolish. Rather, hospitality invites us to consider wisely and to welcome warmly: the stranger, the newcomer, the one who is different. 

 

A learned rabbi* wrote these following words:

"We encounter God in the face of a stranger. 

God creates difference.

Therefore, it is in the one who is different 

    that we meet God. 

God makes every person in the same image, 

    his divine image, 

        - and yet every person is different. 

The supreme religious challenge is this:

    to see God's image 

         in someone who is not in our image."

 

Christian hospitality is that openness of heart, that sees the person of Jesus in every person, whether family, friend, or stranger. 

 

Daily news, and debate on a host of political issues, invite all of us to consider the difference between a culture of hospitality and a culture of suspicion. 

 

The scriptures today present Abraham as a model for hospitality. Abraham, the great patriarch of Israel...  Abraham, a key figure in the Abrahamic religions of Judahism, Christianity, and Islam...  Abraham, whose spiritual descendants, even now in the Middle East, seem unable to offer, to accept, to exchange a mutual hospitality that might transform the threat of strangers and make of them friends and allies and neighbors. 

 

We pray for peace in the Middle East...

 

And how often in our own day-to-day experience, in our own spheres of influence, how often do our impulses and gestures of hospitality end up not so much caring for the visitor, but serving our own needs and feelings, leaving us pointing an accusing finger at the other while looking to make sure that we ourselves are served. 

 

Whatever our response might be, yours and mine, to the scriptures today, God calls us to submit that response to the scrutiny of the Lord, in whose one image each one of us is differently, uniquely shaped and formed. But all of us are made in the image of one Creator, one God and Father of us all. And thus all of us are brothers and sisters - and therefore there is no stranger in our midst. 

 

As we go to the altar, for the Eucharist, let's be grateful that Jesus, Jesus throwing caution to the wind, and without an ounce of suspicion, that Jesus opened his arms for us on the cross with reckless hospitality. And now, this afternoon, with the same generosity, he invites us saints and sinners to the hospitality of his table, where he welcomes us with the warmth of Mary, and feeds us as did Abraham and Sarah and Martha - only now with the Bread and Cup of the Eucharist - with the life he gave for us, the life that sustains us. 

 

As guests of such divine hospitality, let us welcome others into our hearts and lives, and remember that by welcoming strangers, some have entertained angels.

*Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in The Dignity of Difference.

 

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