Rev. Susan Maginn
Welcoming the Stranger
March 1, 2009
Wy'east UU Congregation
Portland, OR

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you every where

like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(Words From Under the Words: Selected Poems)

Abraham closed his eyes against the glare of the sun and was pleasantly surprised to feel a light breeze caress his face. A bird's cry - was it a raven? - stirred Abraham from his reverie.

He lifted his eyes and saw three men standing near him. He hadn't seen them approach, and he couldn't tell from what direction or by what means they had journeyed. The sun was at their backs, but they cast no shadows in the blank sand. He didn't recognize these strangers, yet Abraham knew them to be fellow travelers, sojourners like himself in this arid land.

As soon as he saw them, he ran from the door of his tent to meet them. Bowing to the ground, he said, "My lords, if it please you, do not go past your servant. Let a little water be brought. Bathe your feet and rest yourselves under the tree. And let me fetch you a morsel of bread, that it may comfort your hearts. After that you shall pass on, seeing that you have come your servant's way."

And they replied, "Do as you have said."

He led them to the base of the tree and bade them sit among its wide roots. While a servant-girl brought them water to bathe their feet, Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah, and said, "Quick, three measures of choice flour - knead it, and make cakes!"

Then Abraham ran to the herd, fetched a calf tender and good and gave it to a servant-boy who hastened to prepare it. And he took butter, and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them. Abraham did not eat with his guest, but remained standing while they ate, hovering over them and attending to their needs.

An adaptation of Genesis 18 from Naomi Rosenblatt's Wrestling with Angels: What Genesis Teaches Us about Our Spiritual Identity, Sexuality, and Personal Relationships.

The Bible is full of stories about people's renewed hopes for a better future, but it is also a story about how the character of God sends people off into new directions - sometimes willingly, sometimes not - when things are too comfortable, too full of corruption. As prophets spoke about God's will for society, a recurrent theme was concern for the welfare of three groups who were incapable of being self-sufficient: the sojourners (foreigners), the widows, and the orphans. Over and over, Israel was told to remember the sojourners and treat them with justice and compassion, remembering that their own ancestors had been wanderers.

We often assume that the holy only comes when we are sequestered in meditation or prayer - with an abundance of solitude and silence. And indeed it can. But the holy can also come to us as we are engaged in service, stretching beyond our comfort zone to tend to the most everyday needs of others, in the most ordinary of settings. Hospitality is the way that we find the holy in relationship. Eating, resting, at home, at church, on the street. Meeting people where they are.

I remember the day when I moved across the country to come here. It was April 2007. I was flying across the country with my husband and two young children. Charlie was 10 months old. Grace was 4. It had been a long day of tearful good-byes, ear popping air pressure, restless layovers and mile-high tantrums.

When we arrived in Portland, it was around 9 p.m. My old friend, Jeffrey greeted us. We grew up on the same block in St. Louis. I know his family well. His parents, brother and sister have all moved out to Portland in recent years. In fact, Jeffrey borrowed his sister's van to be able to have a comfortable vehicle for my travel weary family. I was scheduled to stay at another friend's house, so we drove there and when we arrived no one was home. There was some miscommunication and here it was 10 p.m. and we were standing on the street with nowhere to go. Jeffrey lived in a studio apartment, so his space was not an option any of us were hoping for. Jeffrey had an idea. "I'll just call my folks."

Now, even though I knew Jeffrey's parents as neighbors since I was a little kid, I had not seen them since I graduated from high school and was not eager to wake them up asking for a place to stay. But we did not see many other options. So, we headed over to their condominium.

They greeted us in their robes with wide smiles and whispering their greetings over my children, who were asleep on our shoulders. They didn't have room for all of us, but they were determined to make it work. I remember waking up on our first morning in Portland to the sounds of breakfast being made and Jeffrey's mother reading to my daughter.

We are a culture of weary travelers. After all, how many of us live close to our birthplace? We are a people on the move, in transition, on a quest. Perhaps some would say we are all homeless. But just as we are weary travelers, we are also people who are often running ragged without time for hospitality. It takes time to open a home, to prepare food, to clean and beautify your space, so that you can receive a guest, to welcome someone - listening to stories and sharing your own. Abraham had assistants and so making it look easy was, well, easy!

In the biblical era, people only had certain hours of the day and certain seasons of the year when work was physically possible. Today, we have the technology to light our nights and warm our winters. We can keep working at any hour of the day, any season of the year. If we are going to have time away from work, it will be because we have consciously protected our leisure time. As Naomi Rosenblatt points out, "We Americans are no less social or hospitable than any other people. We're simply less protective of our leisure time."

Hospitality is more than a 'to do' list of chores. Yes there is the cooking and cleaning, the listening and the sharing. But what makes this all possible is an attitude of the heart. When we cultivate such an attitude of generosity by really listening to the needs of others, then the art of hospitality naturally flows.

Abraham is an extraordinary character in the Bible as he is the covenant holder with God, but in this example of hospitality he is not extraordinary at all. In those days, hospitality was not a matter of spiritual practice but rather a matter of survival. In ancient desert culture, all travelers depended on the kindness of strangers to get from one point of travel to the next since the desert is a fearsome place to find yourself without nourishment or shelter. There were no freeway pit stops to grab water, gas, snacks and a bathroom along the desert landscape. There were homes, tents. It was expected that as a desert dweller, you would welcome traveling strangers in their time of need. Just as it was expected that a stranger would welcome you in your time of need. The stranger you care for today could be your host in the weeks to come.

In modern Judea, if you travel the desert, you'll still see earthenware jars by the opening of caves. The jars are filled with water, left for the next sojourner who passes by.

Most of us cannot relate to this custom of opening our home to someone in need, much less a complete stranger and foreigner. Rightly so, we teach our children to be aware of strangers, to be immediately distrusting of those unknown to them. How do we reconcile this need to be safe and be welcoming? There is a tension here between our impulse to protect what is ours and our impulse to give to others. Most people just want to avoid this tension and so they resolve it by shutting down and giving very little. Some people avoid the tension by giving perhaps more than they should. For me, I try to stretch and challenge my sense of generosity, but at the same time I honor my own limits at any given time. It is a tricky balance that, in my experience, is never completely resolved. There is no formula for generosity. Some days I am not giving as much as I can. Other days I might be giving more than I have. We all find this balance for our selves - discerning on any given day - what the need is and what there is to offer.

I spoke with someone recently as he described how his life had changed since he became a religious person. As a business executive, he said that he would pretty much ignore the needs of people who were vulnerable and saved as much money as he possibly could. He said, "My life is so different. For example, the other day I was visiting a friend, a woman who I met when she was living on the street. She is in the hospital right now. When I was on my way to visit her, she called and asked if I could pick up some hair supplies. And there I was going to salons on Martin Luther King Drive buying relaxer and hair color and all kinds of stuff she needed. As I was doing it, I realized: Wow, my life is really different than anything I ever imagined!

It is the season of Lent. This is the time when many people stretch themselves beyond their comfort zone, taking on a new practice so that they can be more aware of their personal flaws and be more intentional about leaning into the holy. Lent is definitely not about 'showing off' your holiness by talking about what you are doing, but I thought I would share with you what I am taking on and giving up in the next couple weeks, so that you might consider what might stretch you and bring you closer to the holy. This year I am not eating meat during Lent. With my 2 and 6 year old, we are encouraging them to give up yelling and hitting in the coming weeks, trying to be especially 'gentle with our hands and words'. I am praying daily and my daughter and I intend to volunteer as a kids' host at Goose Hollow Family Shelter.

Right here, there are many opportunities for stretching yourself and welcoming strangers. Heck, you could just sign up to be a greeter and welcome strangers all morning! We do have a lot of new faces here and it is wonderful. This is precisely why we moved here. We had a suspicion that if we moved to a morning worship time and to a great central location, such as Hollywood, we would get to see lots of new faces at Wy'east and indeed we are.

Our guests at Wy'east may not have traveled a terribly arduous route to get here. And I bet they would probably resist any attempt on our part to wash their feet. However, the spiritual distance they have traveled is real. People rarely walk through our doors simply because it is convenient. Our guests often come because they are experiencing some vulnerability. Perhaps it is a turning point in their religious identity. They may have gone a long time without spiritual nourishment - without community or hospitality. They may come to us spiritually weary because life is simply too much with them. Perhaps they have come to rest, to catch their breath on this long journey.

We are all sojourners in the desert of our spiritual quest. No matter how much money we have to independently house and feed our bodies, when it comes to the spiritual life, no amount of money will secure the predictability of our travels.

We need other people to share our spiritual development, to see our shortcomings, and to celebrate our turning points as they come. We all need people to inspire us toward growth. Other people's stories and insights keep us out of the realm of spiritual platitudes, labels and ideas and in the reality of lived spiritual experience.

We need other people to accompany us on such a beautiful path. We are all weary travelers relying on the kindness of strangers so that we can have the strength and the good humor to travel onward into the wilderness.

Let us pray: By Rev. Marge Keip

The journeys of our lives are never fully charted. There come to each of us deserts to cross -- barren stretches -- where the green edge on the horizon may be our destination, or an oasis on our way, or a mirage that beckons only to leave us lost.

When fear grips the heart, or despair bows the head, may we bend as heart and head lead us down to touch the ground beneath our feet. May we scoop some sand into our hands and receive what the sand would teach us:

It holds the warmth of the sun when the sun has left our sight, as it holds the cool of the night when the stars have faded. Hidden among its grains are tiny seeds, at rest and waiting, dormant yet undefeated.

Desert flowers. They endure. Moistened by our tears and by the rains which come to end even the longest drought, they send down roots and they bloom. May we believe in those seeds, and in the seeds within us. May we remember in our dry seasons that we, too, are desert flowers. Amen.