Hospitality

Psalm 63, Isaiah 55, Matthew 25:31-46

March 7, 2010

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Let’s turn the scriptures around a little bit this morning. Think about these questions. When were you hungry, and someone gave you food? When were you thirsty, and someone gave you something to drink? When were you a stranger and someone welcomed you? When did you need clothing or shelter and someone helped you? When were you sick, and someone visited and comforted or healed you? When were you imprisoned in some way and someone came to care for you? And when have you hungered or thirsted for God and discovered the presence of God all around you, filling you?

Turn to the person nearest to you and share just one time when one of these things happened to you.

If you have answers to any of those questions, you have received hospitality from God, and you probably received it through the actions of another human being or another part of God’s creation. If you have answers to any of these questions, then you know the absolute joy of the Psalmist who sings “My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast.” If you have answers to any of these questions, you understand and have responded to the invitation of God through the prophet Isaiah: “Everyone who thirsts, come.” You understand the contradictory advice to come and buy rich food without money, for true hospitality is freely given and you are not required to repay.

And yet, if you have been filled or comforted or clothed or assisted or healed or visited in need, then you also know that you feel an urge to do something in response. Hospitality tends to be circular rather than linear. In fact, in ancient Greek the word for stranger, xenos, also is the word used for guest, or for host. The word itself implies the circle. At any given point in our lives we may be those receiving hospitality or those giving it, and sometimes all at the same time. Ask any of those who spent time volunteering with our homeless guests at Abraham’s Tent, or anyone who has gone on a mission trip of any kind or visited those who are shut in or sick, and they will tell you (you will tell each other) that they received as much or more than they gave.

It’s a joy, and both Isaiah and Jesus want us to take that joy farther, make the circle larger. “See!” says God through Isaiah, “you shall call nations that you do not know and nations who do not know you will run to you!” Hospitality is meant to encompass not just the actions of individuals, those one on one stories we told each other, but those of whole peoples, and acts which touch not only individuals but whole peoples, nations, groups. In Jesus’ story, both the sheep and the goats are surprised that they have helped Jesus, and he tells them that they helped him whenever they showed hospitality in particular to a group of people called “the least of these,” they helped him. Who are “the least of these?” Throughout the New Testament that term applies to the poor, the outcast, the children, the powerless and voiceless.

So could this mean, perhaps, that debates about health insurance, or about the State budget in Connecticut, or about human service agencies in greater New Haven, or about those whom both our individual resources and our taxes are used to benefit in this country and beyond our borders might be included in this hospitality circle? Does this mean that informing ourselves and then writing a letter to a government leader might be an act of hospitality, an act of caring for the “least of these” as much as making supper for a sick friend or the folk at Columbus House? I think we can read it that way. The joy of hospitality is not meant to be kept close at hand or with those we know, but spread as far as we can imagine, and especially to those who are xenos, strangers, or guests or hosts to us, and especially to the “least of these.”

One of my favorite Communion hymns (which we are not singing today because it is an Easter hymn), begins “Come, risen Lord, and deign to be our guest; nay, let us be thy guests, the feast is thine.” At this table, though it was prepared by the Deacons and they and I will serve, Jesus is guest and host; I am guest and host; we are all guests and hosts. This table, though it is not round, is itself the symbol of the circle of hospitality. It is large, but not nearly large enough. Both the greatest and the least eat and drink here; it is a table of transformations for both guest and host. When you leave this table of hospitality today, it goes with you, in you. You are invited, called and encouraged to be guest at God’s rich feast many times in your lives. In the name of Jesus, you are also invited many times to be the host. Let the circle be unbroken. Amen.