Sermon transcript:
Some years ago, when Andrea, my wife, worked in libraries she attended a conference where the late renowned author Richard Wagamese spoke. He told the story of the kindness and hospitality of a librarian in St. Catharines, where, as a homeless teenager, he would go to stay warm and dry and pass the time with books. He spoke of how the librarian would answer his questions patiently, recommend authors, and bring him food. Wagamese shared that she changed his life.
Richard Wagamese moved on, but when the librarian heard about his first award, she sent him a nice note. Some years later, he received a call from one of the librarian’s children informing of their mom’s death and asking if he would come to the funeral. He’d never met the children but when Richard arrived, they shared with him how he’d been a central figure in their upbringing. Their mother talked about Richard at home, what he was reading or learning. They remembered that when they spoke about struggles in school, their mom would remind them of Richard’s strength and resilience despite having so little, encouraging them to find strength in their own path as well. The kids felt they owed much of their own success to Richard’s inspiration, made possible by their mom’s hospitality toward a homeless Indigenous teenager in that library.1
Theologian Henry Knight describes the hope of hospitality this way: “In our broken world, hospitality heals when it is practiced by vulnerable hosts and extended to wounded guests.”2 That’s the essence of hospitality in the Bible. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures, the hospitality that pleases God is the welcoming of the stranger.3 In ancient times, travel was a dangerous undertaking; the desert is boiling hot by day and frigid at night. Thieves prowled ancient routes looking for easy pickings. So, codes of hospitality codes were strict. If a sworn enemy showed up at your door asking for food and shelter, you were obliged to give it, and if you travelled through their territory, they were obliged to do the same—the vulnerable host and the wounded guest.
That line about entertaining angels without knowing it in the book of Hebrews comes from the story of Abraham’s hospitality in Genesis 18 where he greets three strangers and pleads with them to eat with him and stay the night. He brings them water, washes their feet. And Sarah, his wife, bakes them bread and kills a calf for their supper. It turns out that one of the strangers is a messenger of God who delivers the promise that Sarah will bear much hoped-for children. Abraham couldn’t have known when he vulnerably opened the flap of the tent to these strangers.
Recently, I’ve been reflecting on hospitality and the ways in which I might keep that flap closed. I think my idealistic nature sometimes does that. Idealism too often leads me to frustration. The late American poet Nikki Giovanni captures my reality when she says, “The state of the world is so depressing because it just doesn’t have to be that way…the possibilities of life are so great and beautiful that to see less wears the spirit down.”4 An idealist like me sees possibilities and too often unmet possibilities. It’s a frustration that extends to people and soon their humanity is diminished as they become obstacles to the way things should be. It’s loyalty to an ideal at the expense of relationships and it completely undermines the heart of Jesus’ message, who came not offering information or ideas about God but a way into a relationship with God through loving and serving others.
Let me give some examples. You see this in fundamentalist Christian churches where loyalty to the idea of a literal reading of scripture excludes 2SLGBTQIA people. You see this in some forms of Judaism where loyalty to a certain interpretation of being “chosen” or the “promised land” excludes the possibility of an Israeli nation that is fully inclusive of Palestinians and Arabs. We’ve seen this in some forms of Islam where loyalty to right belief excludes and persecutes the infidel. You see this in our churches where we’re anxious about our survival or we’re yearning for them to fulfil their potential. We get so focused on our ideas of what’s needed that we start to see those who think differently as obstacles, barriers to our ideas or ideals. I’ll admit it, I struggle with this, and I don’t feel good about it. You can’t open your heart to someone if you see them as an obstacle. Idealism that sees others as obstacles makes hospitality impossible.
We see this in our most intimate relationships as well when we become wedded to certain ideals of how our loved ones should be, and we project those ideals onto them. We project ideals of success onto our children. We project ideals of romance onto our partners. We project ideals of love onto our parents. The message that is often received, though hardly ever stated, is that our loved ones can’t be fully themselves around us, that their true selves are not welcome in our presence. We’re more interested in seeing them become who we think they should be then in welcoming who they are. Yet, there is no hospitality like understanding.5
How can we build more vulnerable, radical, healing, biblical hospitality into our lives? I think we need to start small. First, we become hospitable to ourselves. The poet Rumi has a famous work about this:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.6
Are there parts of you that you hate or reject? What if you stopped judging yourself so harshly and instead treated yourself with compassion and kindness? What if you began to accept yourself as you are, a broken but beloved child of God? What if you viewed those uncomfortable bits of yourself as messages from the Divine? What follows from that is to ask yourself, are there people in my life who I have a tough time accepting? Are there people who have a hard time revealing themselves honestly to me: children, a spouse, friends, employees? Who are those people? Do I need to become less distracted and more present when they are in my company? Do I need to be less ready with an opinion and more curious about their lives? Do I need to have more faith and let them make mistakes?
These small acts may seem trite, insignificant, and even self-absorbed considering the world’s need for more radical hospitality. But it is these small steps and changes in our lives that help hospitality root and grow in our souls so that when the big opportunities come along, we are ready. It’s not called a practice for nothing. It’s the little things that help us to be ready for the big things, those holy encounters where we entertain angels unawares. Amen.
Rev. Joe Gaspar
1 Susan Cameron, How a kind librarian changed author Richard Wagamese’s life, The Globe and Mail, March 29, 2017, https://create.twu.ca/library/2017/03/29/how-a-kind-librarian-changed-author-richard-wagameses-life/
2 Henry Knight, Source Unknown.
3 Genesis 18: 1-15, Deuteronomy 1: 16-17; 10: 18, 24:17, 26: 5-11, Leviticus 19: 33-34,
4 Nikki Giovanni, Remembering Nikki Giovanni — ‘We Go Forward With a Sanity and a Love’, On Being with Krista Tippett, December 12, 2024, https://onbeing.org/programs/remembering-nikki-giovanni-we-go-forward-with-a-sanity-and-a-love/
5 Vanna Bonta, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/407117-there-is-no-hospitality-like-understanding
6 Jellaludin Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, found at http://www.sagemindfulness.com/blog/rumi-s-poem-the-guest-house