Sermon Archives : 2005/2006

Out of the Water: The Practice of Hospitality

Benjamin Papa  ·  October 16, 2005

Last month National Public Radio reported the story of Alton and Yvette Warren and their five children. This close-knit, middle class, and pragmatic African American family from New Orleans had lost literally everything they had but each other. They had no home, no work, nowhere to go, and no way to get there even if they did. Like hundreds of thousands of others, the Warrens were evacuees from one of the worst natural disasters in United States history. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath, the military transported the Warrens to San Antonio, Texas. Although physically safe in Texas, the Warrens found themselves without direction, trying to figure out how one begins to build one’s life from the ground up after it has been washed away.

Fortunately for the Warrens, help arrived in the form of a peppy 43-year-old stranger named Vivian Holder and her network of so-called Can Do Girls. The group took the family under their wing – to say the very least. In response to the devastation they saw, Holder and what NPR called her “guerilla Red Cross” were not content simply to write a check to one of hundreds of relief organizations, or to pull some old clothes from their closets to send to those in need in the Gulf Region. Instead, Holder and her colleagues were driven to go the proverbial “extra mile,” to make a hands-on and all-encompassing difference in the lives of the Warrens. The group helped both Alton and Yvette find work as well as an ’89 Cadillac Seville for the family to drive. They helped them obtain short-term food stamps, and good clean temporary housing until something permanent could be arranged. They assisted the Warrens in enrolling their children in school and arranged a fundraiser at a local Tex-Mex restaurant to raise cash for the family. And they did it all with a joyful heart and spirit.

The clerk at the food stamps office asked the soft-spoken Alton if he knew whether he was planning on returning to New Orleans before the end of November when his food stamps were set to run out. Mr. Warren paused and said, “My wife wants – she ain’t going home.” Without missing a beat, the unnamed clerk said warmly, “Well, welcome to Texas.”

I have no idea how Vivian Holder or the other Can-Do girls or the clerk at the food stamps office identify themselves religiously, but I do know that all of these women are living out the spiritual practice of radical hospitality – the act of opening one’s heart and life to strangers in need in a way that exemplifies what some of us might call God’s grace in the world, and others of us might call the very best of human caring for one another.

We heard in this morning’s famous Bible passage from Exodus an ancient story where another set of women reached out to care for a helpless baby who by all accounts should have drowned, starved to death, or been eaten by the wildlife of the Nile. In considering this passage, I think it is important for us to remember the context in which Moses’ mother made what must have been a heartreching decision to set her tiny son adrift on the river.

Exodus 1:22 tells us that Pharaoh had ordered all first born Hebrew males to be drowned in the Nile. Faced with this devastating decree, the young and desperate mother put her faith in God and took her chances with the quiet waters of the Nile and whatever lay downstream rather than risk facing Pharaoh’s wrath. Biblical scholar Terrence Fretheim points out that one of the major ironies of Exodus 2 is that Pharaoh’s chosen instrument of destruction, the Nile, was the means by which Moses, and therefore ultimately the Hebrew people, were saved. And so, like the Warrens running from the destructive power of nature, Moses floated away from the promise of murder if he had stayed with his family. For the Warrens, the wild waters of the Gulf of Mexico spelled the end of life as they had known it. For Moses, the calmer waters of the Nile whispered of hope as they lapped against the basket in which he floated.

Given the importance of this passage in the life of the Hebrew and later the Jewish and Christian people, I find it fascinating that God is never mentioned in the narrative. This is not one of many stories in other parts of Exodus where God turns staffs into snakes or causes locusts or frogs to rain down upon the Egyptians or parts the very sea itself. Instead, here God works in and through ordinary human beings to save Moses, the Israelites’ hope of redemption.

We already saw the importance of Moses’ mother in this passage, but she is not the only one working to save the baby. His sister is also involved, and, of course, the Egyptian princess acts in defiance of her own father’s brutal order and instead exhibits compassion and courage toward a tiny life to whom she owned no particular responsibility other than that he was a fellow human being. Fretheim correctly underscores the idea that this passage illuminates the fact that good enters the world not only through the so-called chosen people – Israel – but also through unexpected sources, including the life of a prominent member of the very community that was oppressing the Hebrews. And so in these few verses, we see how the unlikely team of an Israelite slave woman and her daughter and an Egyptian princess worked together to save Moses. We see that all people can act as vessels of hope and love in the world, regardless of our social circumstances or the circumstances of those with whom we come into contact.

I want to use these two stories, the contemporary story of the Warrens and the biblical narrative of Moses’ rescue to underscore the spiritual value of hospitality. By hospitality, I mean a unique form of compassion that requires us to get dirty. It requires us to set an extra place at our dining room table when there might not be quite enough food, to set up the guest room with clean linens, to bring people literally into our homes, churches, and synagogues.

Our second Unitarian Universalist principle in particular also calls us to live lives of hospitality. The principle states that we covenant to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, which to me means that we as Unitarian Universalists believe that we are called to work toward the day when every person on this earth has, at the very least, enough to eat and shelter over their heads. It’s hard for me to imagine a world built on justice, equity, and compassion that doesn’t provide for at least these basic needs for all people.

In many ways I am preaching to the proverbial choir because this church knows what it means to be hospitable in the way I am describing. One example is the Wednesday night dinners we offer each week. A number of people in this congregation have worked very hard in the last couple of months to revive this tradition as a way to provide an opportunity for the community to gather and share a meal and check-in with one another in the middle of the week. I don’t know if you have noticed it, but a warm spirit fills the social area as both new and familiar faces start arriving for dinner – everyone from tiny babies to the most elderly among us can feel welcome during that hour of fellowship. Many of us have hungrily enjoyed the fruits of their labor in recent weeks in the form of lasagna, spicy Indian food, and good conversation.

As is often true for me as I watch this church go about the work of doing its ministry, I have been proud of and challenged by observing the thoughtful and open-hearted way in which people have planned the return of these dinners. John Mott, who in many ways has taken the lead in bringing back these dinners, talked openly about how these meals are not just a chance to eat together. They are a part of the ministry of this church that is closely connected to other important parts of our church’s work. For instance, there was excited discussion about how coming to dinner then makes it more convenient and welcoming for folks to come to Adult RE classes, and vice versa. People have talked about how these dinners provide a unique opportunity for newer members and visitors to get to know other people in this church in a relaxed and friendly setting. We want to make our programming welcoming. We want to be hospitable.

Another obvious example of how we do hospitality well at First UU is our participation in the city-wide Room In The Inn program, where religious communities all over Nashville open their buildings during the colder months of the year for homeless men to come and enjoy a savory and satisfying meal, take a hot shower, and have a warm, soft place to sleep. Room in the Inn is hospitality in action. A member of this congregation - Becky Chickey - has coordinated this program for a number of years and diligently recruits dozens of volunteers to help her make this service to the community a reality. I have heard Becky and others talk poignantly about how their own lives and even the lives of their families have been touched by their willingness to be vulnerable to the strangers who are in need of the services that Room in the Inn provides. And so by being hospitable, we ourselves are nurtured and cared for. In an interesting spiritual twist of fate, the host becomes the guest – the provider becomes the recipient. You might even say that we are all part of an interdependent web.

Our tradition is made rich by the many different ways we understand the divine. I am a theist and one of my core theological beliefs is that God is the ultimate source of love and life in the universe and that God continues to use God’s people today, ordinary folks like and me, in just the way that God used people in the two examples I discussed earlier. I believe that we are the hands and feet of God in the world. Through the small and large choices of our daily lives, you and I act together to heal a world that is fraught with poverty, homelessness, racism, religious intolerance, homophobia, and violence. The Jewish tradition calls Jews to engage in acts of tikkun olam, or healing the world. Christians talk about ushering in the Kingdom of God; Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the Beloved Community where all of God’s people would live together in harmony.

I want to suggest to you this morning that if we are in fact to heal the world, we must find a way to practice acts of hospitality in our lives. And it’s harder than it sounds. We have to make ourselves open to the experience of being in relationship with people we would otherwise only see in passing. We have to sit down and share a meal. We have to leave the warmth and comfort of our homes to spend a night with a group of homeless strangers. Hospitality is difficult because it is not necessarily a short-term commitment. Sometimes the sojourners and wanderers that arrive at our door might have no other place to go and no one else to help. When that happens, when the devastation they lead behind is such that they do not want to or cannot go home again, we, like the food stamps clerk, are called to smile, put our arm around them and say, welcome to Texas.

Another challenging aspect of living lives of hospitality is that we often have to actively seek out opportunities to practice it because it is so easy for most of us to hide in the comfort of our everyday lives from the men, women, and children who are in need of the welcome and care that hospitality promises.

But we are called to do more than wait in our living rooms for the perfect opportunity to help. We are called to stand by the River Nile looking for floating baskets. We are called to stand on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and indeed in the highways and byways of Nashville Tennessee watching for the likes of Alton and Yvette Warren. And when we find them, like the Can-Do girls, the Source of Life and Love in the universe asks us to roll up our sleeves and begin to meet needs with a vengeance. Pharaoh’s daughter could have simply bathed the baby, or even given him a meal and sent him on his way. But instead, the Hebrew Bible tells us that she took the young boy into her home and raised him as her own son. Now that, my brothers and sisters, is hospitality.

Pharaoh’s daughter pulled a helpless baby out of the water of the Nile. Vivian Holder pulled the Warren family out of the water that flooded the streets of New Orleans. Who in your life is in need of being pulled from the waters of poverty, addiction, materialism, or negativity? I pray that all of us find the strength and compassion to keep a close watch for those in need who cross our paths. And when we find them, may we, open our hearts to be filled with boundless love. May it be so. Amen.