Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson

Angels Unaware

Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson

October 1, 2017

A friend of mine refers to her house,

the one she shares with her wife

and their two children: a teenager and a toddler:

as the home for wayward souls.

The home for wayward souls.

You see, they made a very intentional decision

to welcome people into their house:

Bad breakup, and need a place to stay?

There’s a room for you.

Traveling cross-country and need to crash for a night?

Of course.

In town to care for a sick relative?

Don’t get a hotel, stay here.

She says it was one of the best decisions they ever made.

The conversations with these guests, these wayward souls — friends and friends of friends —

have enriched her life.

And her children have learned something:

that a home is larger than a so-called nuclear family,

that your door is open,

that the capitalist, this is mine, get your own attitude of the world

is not what they practice there.

Love knocks and enters at the sound of welcome from within.

And of course, so it once was.

[This morning in Rockford,]

Diane talked about her grandparents, and the way they fed whomever come.

The painted sign outside the farm,

ya’ll come. There’s food.

And how different that is from the advice of today’s hospitality:

make sure you like and trust them before you invite them.

Practice mutual love.

Welcome strangers, for some have so doing met angels unaware.

This is an ancient notion.

That the guest is sacred, and to welcome another,

to offer of your own for the traveler, the refugee, the stranger,

the friend or the friend of a friend

is sacred work.

Of course it is no coincidence that the religions of the desert:

Judaism, Christianity, Islam,

emphasize the responsibility to practice hospitality.

When someone shows up and says, “water”

you say come and drink.

Because that is what it is to be human.

Yes, because sometimes you might need, too:

but even if you never needed to be welcomed yourself,

you still do it.

It isn’t transactional.

It is the basic of obligation of faith, of being human, of decency:

make a place at the table.

To welcome.

To be hospitable.

It is not just these religions of the desert, though:

there is no major faith tradition in the world that does not say to its adherents:

be hospitable to others.

They all do it.

Every single one.

In multiple places.

The folks fighting the muslim ban have had no trouble finding scriptural passages to say that such a ban is deeply un-christian, un-jewish, as well as un-american.

As the island of Porto Rico says, “water”, we have no trouble saying,

we must respond.

At least, most people have no trouble saying it.

Apparently our government thinks it is okay to use part of Porto Rico as a bombing range,

but not to use every military helicopter we have to get people supplies.

Our conscience cries out.

And people of genuine faith are speaking up.

Just as people of faith here in Rockford Illinois are calling on the members of the city council

to pass a “welcoming ordinance” — a mostly symbolic but deeply important gesture,

one that says clearly, you are welcome here, no matter what the demagogue in power and his minions say.

Did you see the story in the Chicago Tribune, and the accompanying video,

about how so many immigrants and refugees love living in Rockford?

One woman talked about how she’d been treated with such kindness by people,

she was a refugee, and the folks here, she said,

were so good to her.

I swelled with pride.

This is who we are called to be.

There is no more core interfaith value than deep hospitality.

So we keep saying it, over and over gain.

Faith says, practice hospitality, over and over and over again.

But that’s a paradox, isn’t it?

We all need hospitality in our own lives at times.

We feel good when we offer it to another.

We are disturbed when someone can help and they don’t.

And yet, we need to be constantly reminded to show hospitality.

We need to be told, over and over again.

So, that’s a clue that this isn’t easy.

If it was easy, it wouldn’t have to be said, over and over again.

My friend, with the home for wayward souls,

practices a level of hospitality that is very powerful.

It’s a way she has oriented her life.

And perhaps you hear that, and you think today,

I can do that.

I want to do that with my home.

And you begin.

You put out the word, and you go for it.

But maybe that’s not for you.

You don’t have a spare room.

Or, you don’t have the emotional or financial bandwidth right now.

My friend is a strong extrovert,

and has the space. Maybe you don’t. That’s okay.

What I want to say to you is that hospitality isn’t just about the stranger knocking at the door.

It isn’t just about food and water and shelter — though those things really do matter.

But other things matter too.

Spirit.

Friendship.

Love.

Work and parenting and society and relationships and community —

all these things matter too.

And hospitality in all these things matters, too.

So the question I want to ask us —

not you, us, for this is something I’m working on with you —

the question I want to ask us is this:

How can we reach a little further than we have?

How can we be just this much more hospitable?

How can we turn one reflexive “not now” into a “yes, I can do that.”

Not everything.

I’m not asking for that.

Not for you or for me.

but . . . wouldn’t the world be a little sweeter if everyone was just a little more hospitable?

if there was a little more give, a little more yes, a little more,

come on in,

you belong here,

wouldn’t the hatred, the pain, the hurt, the fear,

just fade a little

if there was a little more

what can I get you,

come on in,

you belong here.

Wouldn’t the world be a little sweeter if, in the face of every other person,

we saw an angel, unaware, unaware perhaps themselves

that they too were sacred?

Isn’t this our core theological position?

the worth, the dignity of every person —

isn’t this the practice of empathy embodied?

to see another at the level of their soul,

and say, you and I are siblings, and you are welcome here.

Isn’t this what we strive for?

My New Testament Professor used to say

that the thing about Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews

is that it isn’t to the hebrews, it isn’t a letter, and it’s not by Paul.

But whomever wrote it,

I love the context of this verse about entertaining angels unaware:

the section starts with “let mutual love continue.”

Everything that follows in the paragraph is about how you practice love.

Hospitality is the practice of love over time, in every day living.

Remember the prisoner, the tortured.

Make your love about one another, and not about the love of money,

which is a tool, not an end in itself.

And that’s what we want to be about, right?

Putting love into practice?

So what would it mean to be a little bit more hospitable?

How do we do it?

Examples.

Cornell West says that justice is what love looks like in public,

so let’s start with that social level.

Hospitality is a personal virtue,

but we can embody it on a larger level:

when we call for our city to be more welcoming,

when we practice anti-racism and inclusion,

and fight against things like housing discrimination,

and draconian restrictions on immigration,

we can practice hospitality when we vote for people who show empathy,

who demonstrate mutual love for their fellow human beings.

So call that city council member.

Talk to your HR manager about how the company can do better.

Make a donation to Justice for our Neighbors — aha! done.

You can make it a sustaining donation.

But for most of us, that big political stuff comes easier.

It is tricker when we get more personal.

So let’s get more personal.

Examples.

Where you work, or where you volunteer.

Could you make sure to say hello to everyone?

To know their name?

To say, “glad you’re here?”

To care about them, and treat them like an honored guest?

I know some of you do.

The clerk with a smile for every customer.

The classroom teacher who loves each kid,

even when

especially when

they don’t love themselves

the lawyer who makes sure everyone in the firm is on a board, volunteering their time

the senior engineer who mentors the new kid,

the tutor who gets down on the floor with the student each week,

wherever it is you spend your days,

I bet there are ways you can think of,

right now,

to make it more friendly to others,

more welcoming.

What can you do to make that happen?

If not by policy, by your own practice?

Examples.

Church is supposed to be a place of hospitality.

And how are we doing?

On a scale of 1-10, what do you think?

7? 8? 4?

I think we’re pretty good at saying hello, with genuine interest,

when someone first gets here.

I wonder about how we do when someone is ready to get more involved.

I think it depends on what they want to get involved in.

If you are in a leadership position here,

how can you be more hospitable, more invitational, to the efforts you are involved in?

Part of this — not just at church but across the board —

part of this is about changing from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset.

We can brew more tea, we can pop more corn.

There is enough!

Bear isn’t mad that folks can into his den —

he’s mad that he missed the party.

So make more party.

Draw the circle wider. Include.

Examples.

We’re getting more personal.

Hospitality isn’t just about strangers.

It’s also about the people we love most.

It’s about our friends, of course, our neighbors —

of course you can use some ice,

borrow the blender,

use the trimmer,

of course.

How lovely that is, right?

But it is even closer.

When I asked, tell me a story of life-changing hospitality,

a lot of people mentioned their own children.

Whether biological or adopted, young or older,

to make space in your life for a child is an act of extraordinary hospitality.

It will change you forever.

And it will not go as planned.

There will be struggle.

there will be joy.

There might be tragedy.

There will be wonder.

And opening yourself to the other is . . . incredible.

I know that when I stop rushing through the to-do list,

and I say, tell me more, tell me a story,

and I take their lead,

it is the most magic moment.

And of course, there is a place for hospitality in our intimate relationships:

with our spouses, our lovers, our significant others:

To welcome them into your life, and to be welcomed into theirs —

with genuine trust, with honesty and give and take;

to serve them as an act of love;

to care for them, to attend to them for their own sake:

is this not what it means to love another?

To care for them with respect for their integrity?

And many of us know what this feels like,

and how important it is.

See that person before you

as an angel, unaware.

Whether they be a stranger to you,

or the person you’ve been married to for 60 years:

see them as a sacred guest in your life,

treat them as honored company:

wouldn’t that be glorious?

Wouldn’t that help us take our attention away from so many distractions,

and return us to the here and now,

the present before us,

the gratitude that enlivens our being?

One more example.

Finally, see not just the stranger or the lover as sacred,

as an honored guest,

see yourself that way too.

This being human is a guest house.

The most intimate, the most personal hospitality we must learn to show

is to ourselves.

See yourself as worthy of being treated with sacred generosity.

To do things that give you joy,

and honor your being.

To show hospitality to yourself and to your own spirit.

If hospitality is about spaciousness, about welcome,

are you making space for yourself in your own life?

Or is it too full?

this being human is a guest house.

The corollary here, for those who find such ideas useful,

is to be a guest house not just for your own spirit,

but for the wider spirit of life.

What does it mean to welcome the sacred?

To say, come in, holy one, and touch my heart?

To pause and listen to that still small voice within,

to treat the admonitions of the spirit, to treat Love, the guest,

with reverence and with welcome?

That’s a topic for a whole other sermon,

and we have a whole month on hospitality:

next week I’ll talk about how to be a good guest,

and we’ll take it from there.

What I hope you walk away with today, though, is this question:

how will you use your gifts, your life, your spirit, your presence,

to make a home for wayward souls in the world?

Maybe that wayward soul is your own,

and you need to take time to care for yourself.

Maybe that wayward soul is your lover, your child, your sibling, your parent,

your neighbor or your friend,

and you can care for them, open your heart to them.

Maybe that wayward soul is a stranger, or a coworker,

a citizen of the world but a refugee to this land,

a person crying out for justice,

and the question is, do you hear, do you hear?

Maybe you will open your home, but that’s only one way to be a good host,

to make love manifest in the world,

there are many ways:

and we are each able to be a host, and we are each in need of being welcomed:

for the truth is that all our souls are wayward,

that we journey though this life in need:

in need of meaning, in need of love, in need of one another.

May our hands be open, may our minds be open, and may our hearts be open.

Let us hear, let us answer, and let us love.

And let us sing.

Be Our Guest

Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson

October 8, 2017

Before the traveler, our traveler with the magic rocks,

our traveler with the plan to draw people together,

before our traveler became old and wise and clever,

he was young and foolish and naive.

This is the way it happens sometimes,

though not always.

The traveler — Eli,

Eli short for Elihu —

or maybe Eli, a contraction of the name of his mother’s favorite poet, Emma Lazarus,

author of “Mother of Exiles,

Give me your tired, your poor . . .

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Eli wanders through the world.

He has a sense of . . . well, entitlement.

That the world is designed for him,

and that he deserves it.

That things should be a certain way.

Eli wanders through the world.

with a kind of charmed existence.

He goes places and tries things,

but he does it from a distance:

you know: always kind of judging others.

Cultural encounter as a kind of adventure,

a tourist in the lives of others and not a guest.

I don’t mean to be harsh about Eli,

he was young and foolish

and he just hadn’t learned much yet.

And, in his defense,

he was at least interested in the world,

he did want to learn and discover.

But in this world, he was the host:

the one who set the table for others,

never the guest, not really.

Well, one summer he decided to do a long hike in an unfamiliar place.

He was in good shape, and sure he could do it solo.

The first few days were great, beautiful country,

and all well.

But then a big thunderstorm rolled in,

and he got soaked.

His food got wet, even,

and things started getting desperate.

He was scared.

When the storm broke,

he picked up what he could and kept going.

But it was hard.

Squish squash went his shoes.

After a long, hard, hungry day,

he saw something in the distance as the sun set:

a campfire.

He approached.

He was intentionally noisy so he wouldn’t frighten them.

And there was a small group of folks,

roasting s’mores and telling stories.

They saw him and one stood and sang:

stranger, share our fire!

Eli didn’t realize that he was living in a musical, but he thought,

that must be the hunger.

They all sang together, stranger, share our fire!

He approached,

they gave him a cookie,

powered sugar and dates and nuts,

and they gave him hot tea,

and bread,