Holy Leisure, Radical Welcome
June 29, 2008
I want to begin with two readings: first the words from Matthew’s gospel.
Then these words from Rose Berger, a poet and activist who writes for Sojourners:
Holy leisure and radical hospitality are necessary components for surviving the vicissitudes of empire. This combination is not merely a social grace—it can be a matter of life and death. When imperial structures shift they disrupt, displace, and dehumanize many people. Empires make refugees and nomads of all but the most powerful. In this context, I remember the Bedouin honorific: "He is one who makes coffee day and night." Or that first century itinerant rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, still wet with resurrection, who said, "Come. Have breakfast."[1]
As I read the words from Matthew, I thought back to a mid-winter day when I was in the fifth grade at Normal Park Elementary School in Chattanooga. It started snowing early that morning and as I sat in Miss Stewart’s classroom, the whole class was staring out the window watching snow fall and hoping we’d get sent home early. Our hopes were, in fact, realized, as the snow reached the Chattanooga blizzard threshold of, oh, about two inches, and sometime around noon we were sent home.
Home was about two miles from school, but my best friend’s house was on the way, so Paul and I set out for his house dragging my second-grade brother Tim along with us. The dragging turned from metaphorical to literal somewhere along the line when Tim lost a shoe in the snow, and by the time we made it to Paul’s house we were a cold trio and Tim was pretty miserable.
I will never forget Paul’s mom welcoming us into the house, fixing hot chocolate and drawing a warm bath to plop Tim in. He was still splashing around when my mother came to pick us up – called at work, no doubt, by Paul’s mom.
She was, for me, the epitome of gracious, southern charm. She knew hospitality.
Years later, when I brought Cheryl home from college for one of the first times on a spring break, we stopped by to see Paul. His mom greeted us at the door and immediately reached out to the blooming magnolia next to their porch, picked a bloom and set it in Cheryl’s hair.
She had a way of making everyone feel instantly welcome and at home, but lest you think she was some perfectly genteel but empty-headed light weight, you should also know that she welcomed, hosted and facilitated a great many political gatherings in that same home as she and her husband, rector of the largest Episcopal congregation in town, helped steer Chattanooga’s schools through desegregation and the city through the Civil Rights era with oft-tested yet still authentic civility.
I suppose you might call her a steel magnolia, but, in truth, she was simply a woman of abiding faith, who expressed that trust in the gospel through the practice of hospitality that welcomed folks from every walk of life through her doors and made each of us – from the cold and weary child to the African-American activist to the politically connected and powerful – each of us feel welcome. And that welcome created space for leisurely conversations that, over time, altered vast social structures and relationships in Chattanooga.
“Holy leisure and radical hospitality are necessary components for surviving the vicissitudes of empire.”
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me.”
In a time of empire, as Jesus so clearly understood, there is an urgent need for welcome. In Jesus’ time there was a great deal of social dislocation as economic power and prosperity increasingly concentrated on Rome and its imperial outposts. These days we see all kinds of folks uprooted as a result of various aspects of the projection of American power. There are, of course, positive and negative aspects to such patterns, but whatever one makes of the issues that can be read through this lens, several things are abundantly clear:
· when home becomes unsustainable then it’s time to move home;
· likewise, when home becomes unsafe, it’s time to move home
You can analyze the causes from progressive or conservative perspectives, but the facts remain on the ground right here. We live in the midst of refugee population and are, ourselves in many instances, refugees. Chased from unsustainable homeplaces by shifting economic sands or from unsafe ones by racism, sexism, heterosexism, or from unwelcoming congregations by rules set up to divide us from each other, many of us can find places of deep identification with folks who have left behind poverty and violence in distant lands. Whoever welcomes these refugees from poverty or violence welcomes Jesus. Whoever welcomes refugees from hatred welcomes Jesus. Whoever welcomes refugees from racism, sexism, homophobia welcomes Jesus. He seemed to understand it just that simply.
We’re engaging in a good deal of intentional reflection on our life together this summer and will continue through the fall, and part of that is naming what we’ve done well. Hospitality is one of those things, from small and private acts – I remember my friend’s mom welcoming the cold children – to more systemic and public ones – I also remember the same woman welcoming union leaders and civil rights organizers.
Thus we are engaged these days at CPC in various ministries of hospitality, and that has long been a mark of this congregation so let’s take a moment this morning to celebrate. We’re celebrating the action of GA last week. We’re celebrating the ongoing re-creation of this space. We’re celebrating summer Sabbath time. We’re just plain, old celebrating this morning!
It is good and right to have food when we celebrate, so, for everyone who found my one charge last week too difficult – remember, it was “stay after worship, have coffee and talk with one another” – we’re making it easier on you. The food is coming during worship, and we’re going to talk together right now.
So, where, over the years, have we been engaged in intentional acts of welcome and hospitality? What do we recall about those engagements? Was there anything transformative about them? What was joyful in them?
posted by David Ensign at
3:07 PM
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