(Preached on Sunday, August 29, 2010)
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. -Hebrews 13:2
Abraham and Sarah had pitched their tent beside an oasis at a place called Mamre, located just north of Hebron in the hill country. It is noonday, with the desert sun blazing down upon a drowsy Abraham, seated at the door of his tent. Suddenly, three strange men stand before him. Abraham has no idea where they came from or who they are, but that does not overcome his sense of hospitality. He immediately offers to have water brought to wash the strangers’ feet. He bids them rest under the shade trees, while he orders his wife and servants to quickly prepare a fine dinner of meal-cakes, curds, milk, and veal – a luxurious offering of food. The camp fills with the bustle and busyness of preparing a meal, until quiet descends again as Abraham stands by under a tree while the strangers eat, ready to attend to any needs that might arise. What a model host! Among the desert, nomadic people like Abraham, hospitality shown to strangers and travelers was an integral part of the social customs, even as handshakes are today. One simply did not refuse the stranger, for one never knew when he or she might be the stranger needing assistance and in that harsh environment, your hospitality might mean the difference between life and death for the traveler.
How different is the attitude toward strangers growing in our nation today? Fear has taken control of our nation. Many of us face difficult challenges these days as society experiences economic, political and social change. Under the stress of these changes, there rises an impulse to identify people who are different from us as somehow responsible for what we all are going through. Fear is running rampant and this fear is clouding our better judgment. Our fear is causing us to stereotype Muslims, implicating all Muslims in the militant activities of some. Our fear is causing us to blame Latin American immigrants for our economic woes, ignoring the fact that the issues we face in these difficult times are far more complex than simply the fault of people who look different from us. Today in America the traditional recipients of bigotry – African-Americans, Roman Catholics, Asians, and Jews – have been joined by Latinos, gays, Muslims, and immigrants of all stripes, but especially those who hail from Mexico and Central America.
I am not just speaking about the resistance to the construction of the Cordoba House/Parc 51 Islamic Community Center two blocks from Ground Zero. There are several efforts around the nation to block the construction of other Muslim faith centers, including in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where a candidate for lieutenant governor has suggested that Muslims don’t deserve to be covered by the constitutional provisions of religious freedom, because in his mind, Islam isn’t a religion. In Gainesville, FL the World Dove Center is urging the observance of the anniversary of September 11 this year by “burning Korans.” And just this past week a UCC pastor in Florida had his Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual & Transgender supportive “God’s Love Has No Strings Attached” bumper sticker defaced. The person wrote “Romans 1:27-28” across it in black ink (referring to a passage in the Bible that appears to condemn homosexual behavior).
So many in our nation, including so many Christians, have lost the understanding that Abraham and Jesus and the early followers of Jesus had about strangers: that the stranger did not pose a threat as much as offer a blessing. This story from Abraham illustrates this belief that in the arrival of these three guests God was present. It does not say how God was present, just that God was present, and that is all that matters. In a way different and yet similar, God is present in the stranger who comes our way. We don’t always think of another’s presence in that way and may not believe that God has much to do with the crossing of paths. But what a difference it would make in our lives if we adopted the attitude that no one who came our way did so by accident. Abraham embodied that attitude, welcomed the stranger, and discovered that he was “entertaining angels without knowing it.” As a result, he received a blessing, being told that his wife Sarah would have a child within the year.
In the 6th century, as the Roman Empire broke down amid social chaos and violence, Benedict was one of the key leaders in the movement to establish monastic communities. The heart and foundation of these communities was the sharing of hospitality with strangers. Benedict made it the basis for their community life, instructing that: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’” The monks gave hospitality not out of a sense of superiority but with a willingness to receive whatever a guest might teach them. Their words of greeting to strangers, “Your blessing please” indicate this belief. In essence they are saying, “I am glad you are here; I recognize Christ in you; I am ready to receive what you have to offer; I welcome you to this place to share our life.”
This is the attitude of Abraham, who said to the strangers, “If I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.” There is an eagerness here to welcome and learn from the stranger. Neither Abraham nor Benedict asks anything of the stranger. There is no expectation to conform to a certain belief system or pattern of behavior. Instead persons are received as they are and invited into a place where acceptance and compassion generate the desire for God, for fullness of life. Isn’t that the way Jesus welcomed people during his life? Without distinction, setting before them a vision of what they might become?
Benedict made it clear to his brother monks that people do not enter our lives to be coerced or manipulated, but to enrich us by their differences, and to be graciously received in the name of Christ. This understanding of hospitality is desperately needed to counter the growing xenophobia, the fear of strangers in our society. The Greek word for hospitality, philoxenia, actually means “love of the stranger.” This is the hospitality of Benedict, and Jesus, and Abraham.
To embrace this hospitality, this philoxenia, this “love of the stranger” is the only way we will begin to overcome this fear that pervades our society. This is what Jesus taught, it is what Moses taught, and it is what the Koran teaches. All three faiths teach a primary ethic of love for God and love for neighbor. All three faiths teach hospitality as a foundational principle. And all three faiths teach a basic respect for life, all life, especially human life.
To preach or teach anything else, whether from Christian pulpits, or Jewish synagogues, or Muslim mosques, goes against the core beliefs and true nature of these three great faith traditions. Hostility toward and disrespect of other religious traditions goes against a true witness of these faiths. The public burning of other religious texts, the automatic rejection of the construction of religious buildings, and the harassing of worshipers as they enter and leave their religious facilities are unacceptable and indefensible. And for us, especially, to do so in the name of Jesus is a failure to receive what he taught, including among many other sayings:
1. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
To honor the faith commitments of others is not to diminish in any way the value or importance of our own faith. Rather it is to admit that the mystery of God’s acceptance runs deeper than our own limited theological perspective. God is great. God is awesome and majestic and immense. We are only scratching the surface of God’s reality with whatever limited understanding we can comprehend.
Not only is the bigotry that has reared its ugly head in our land not part of our faith tradition it is also not true to who we are as a nation. Just months after the terrorist attack on the U.S. in 2001, in a speech given on April 30, 2002, former President George W. Bush stated: “America rejects bigotry. We reject every act of hatred against people of Arab background or Muslim faith. America values and welcomes peaceful people of all faiths – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and many others. Every faith is practiced and protected here, because we are one country. Every immigrant can be fully and equally American because we’re one country. Race and color should not divide us, because America is one country.”
Those of us who are members of the religious majority have a responsibility to speak up for those whose religious identities are mischaracterized and smeared. If we had a few more conversations with those who are different from us, life would be better for all of us. The first necessary step to develop this practice of hospitality in ourselves is to begin to literally see things differently. We must begin to see each person we meet as the one for whom Christ died. We need to look at people through the eyes of Christ. As we can begin to do that we will begin to believe and expect that God is present in each person we meet and that each person we greet may truly be an angel.
Try this experiment this week. Try going through just one day with the conviction that God is present in everyone you meet. Make a conscious decision to approach each person as an angel, a messenger, of God. Try this experiment and take note of how you begin to look at others, God, and even yourself differently as you see God in each person you meet.