B Lent 5
OL BFC 2018
March 18,
2018
Mark
6:7-13
I remember the courage it took for a
younger colleague to write an editorial in the white, suburban community
newspaper that was her pastorate. She
was somewhat freshly minted from seminary and thought that her congregation
would appreciate her intellect and fresh takes on theology and community. The title of her column was, “Toleration is
not a Christian value.” I listened to
her explain how painful it was for many of those people in her congregation,
many people who had been at the forefront of promoting progressive Christian
values. They were unnerved and felt
betrayed by her editorial. “Toleration
was not a Christian value? Then why had
they been knocking themselves out all these years to show toleration for other
peoples, other faiths, and other credos that were not their own?” I saw the pain in her young face as she tried
to tell us how she had re-shared some of the points made in her column. “To merely tolerate one another is not the gospel’s
call,” she said, “the gospel’s call is to provide hospitality. Toleration tells me you might be annoyed but
you are bearing with, sticking it out, letting the person remain in the
room. Hospitality means that you are
willing to be changed by the
person in the room.”
She may not have convinced her parishioners
but she convinced me. As I studied and
learned more about how hospitality was a strong practice rooted within Judaism[1] and
Christianity, I began remembering friends, colleagues, and parishioners whose
homes had welcomed misfits and strangers throughout their lives. Rosemary Freeney Harding, wrote of how
hospitality was integral to the Black freedom movement and foundational to her
family’s spirituality. She wrote, “The efforts my
parents made to be neighborly and to reserve judgment against those who society
viewed as outcasts served as important examples for their children and
grandchildren as we grew into adulthood.”
As a result, Harding talked about how one of her first projects as a
young activist was to develop an interracial social service project and
community center in Atlanta called Mennonite House. Mennonite House provided a safe space for
those in the racial struggle—a space of refuge, joy and laughter, good food,
and kind words, a space that allowed for the possibility of transformation.[2]
In Harding’s childhood home,
her mother, the daughter of a slave, would set out the fine china and homemade
pound cake for not just relatives and neighbors but also for peddlers, petty
thieves, prostitutes, and professional gamblers, transients who would probably
be considered today’s homeless, her mother genuinely enjoying their company and
wisdom. There was a raggedy old book
seller whose smell of musty clothes and body odor and funny way of talking led
the children to almost laughing. Almost,
because their mother would give them sufficient side eye to quiet them if it
ever came to that. The book seller and
her mother would go on for hours talking about the world and its concerns over
pound cake and the best dishes.
Mennonite House was born out of that familial legacy.
As I have shared, early Christianity
began in the milieu of the Roman Empire, largely a slave society. The
cities the apostle Paul ministered to were often a hodge-podge of conquered
peoples facing social rootlessness and a lack of common identity. Diversity was a forced fact of life in these
cities. Paul knew that if peace and a
broader sense of “we” in community life was to be secured in the midst of a
culture that invited people to see themselves united under the Roman banner of
domination and violence it would have to be done with intention and
attention. Paul does not write the
beautiful prose about the diversity of the Body of Christ and its value because
it is easy but because he knew it would require encouragement, struggle, and
hard work. It would require intention
and attention.
Robert
Putnam, the ardent progressive and pro-diversity political scientist and author
of the book, Bowling Alone, a text
about the growing isolation of Americans, did research to discover what would
happen when people lived in areas with great diversity, with people who are not
like themselves. Would people revel in
the vibrant new colors of the rainbow they might see in their diversity? Would they share in the panoply of cultural
wisdom and celebration? Would they revel
in the rich textures of difference that had them learning new things, new ways,
and developing a broader sense of “we.”
What Putnam found was that the opposite was true. People tend to “hunker down” when they are in
an area with people unlike themselves.
And not only do they do that with people unlike themselves, but it also
causes them to interact less with people who are like them. They watch more TV, have fewer friends, and
tend to work less on community projects.
The level of trust and interaction was greatest when people were with
those who were most like themselves. He
concluded, “In the face of diversity, most of us retreat.”[3]
Another
study found that churches which try to bridge social division find it to be incredibly
difficult. Paul Lichterman, in his book,
Elusive Togetherness, found “that the single group in his study that did
succeed constantly evaluated and reevaluated what they were doing and why they
were doing it, in order to understand their own cultural underpinnings and
those of others. In other words, they paid close attention to how they were
talking, interacting, and engaging on a daily level. They learned to approach
others as partners rather than as people they were helping.”[4] I suspect this is because when we think we are giving “down” to others,
we consistently see ourselves as being drained of energy and resources, but
when we see ourselves as serving one another from across the table, we see the
incredible capacity for learning, growing, and receiving ourselves.
Radical
hospitality is not something that happens by accident. On the contrary, very well-intentioned people
can fail at bringing diverse communities together. It is in our nature to find common cause with
people who are more like us than not but that is not the task before us. I believe this country, and this church, as a
microcosm of the country, are deciding whether the grand task of the diverse
Body of Christ is worth our while.
The
whole of our denomination, the United Church of Christ, some years ago made it
a General Synod pronouncement that we are a multi-cultural, multi-racial
church. Not that we will be a multi-cultural,
multi-racial church, but that we will embrace what we already know to be true
of our wider world. We will embrace that
reality. We are a multi-cultural,
multi-racial church. We embrace it. We consciously make it part of our
music. We intentionally make it part of
our prayers. We, with attention, reach
out to partner and learn from others in our ministries.
Our
church, right here in downtown Billings, Montana, is a hope that the world
might be different, might find another way.
But I fear, I fear, we are split pining for, romancing another age in
song, prayer, and ministry. And this is
a critical time in our community and in our nation.
We
are in the midst of a great struggle where national and state leaders are
encouraging us to “hunker down” and return to a monolithic, homogeneous
identity where our favorite ice cream is always vanilla and our identity is
always wrapped up in seeing ourselves as victims against the unwashed, teeming
hordes of refugees, immigrants, and people who “are not like us.” Yes, we should plumb the depths of our
Christian tradition, but Christianity has always been about a spiritual
practice—done regularly, consistently, and persistently—of radical hospitality
which is always trying to develop a broader definition of what it means to say,
“we.”
The
gospel lesson for today shares that Christian communities were sewn together by
providing radical hospitality for disciples who brought world-transforming news
that would help households and faith communities create spaces for common
values, ministries, and enterprises of food sharing, mutual healing, and caring
for the most distraught poor.
Rome
is forever calling us to return to monolithic, rom-antic family values, without
ever really defining them, so that we just default to what is easy. But we are church. And as church, we say that we have had it
with solely a rom-antic love that has no real grit or grist—a rom-antic love
which has us pining for a former time, instead of living in the present with
justice as our needle and radical hospitality as our thread. In this day, in this critical moment, we
must open up spaces with hard work, courage, intention, and attention to greet
the siblings and cousins, sisters and brothers, neighbors and friends who are
not like us into full partnership around the table. So that we can feed each other, learn from
each other, and, finally, discern how to love each other in all of our
beautiful difference.
We
will be, what African-American poet Mickey ScottBey Jones refers to as “brave
space.” She writes,
Together we will create brave space
Because there is no such thing as a “safe space”
We exist in the real world
We all carry scars and we have all caused wounds.
In this space
We seek to turn down the volume of the outside world,
We amplify voices that fight to be heard elsewhere,
We call each other to more truth and love
We have the right to start somewhere and continue to grow.
We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know.
We will not be perfect.
This space will not be perfect.
It will not always be what we wish it to be
But
It will be our brave space together,
and
Together
we will create brave space. Together the
work is in front of us to continue weaving together a diverse and rich tapestry
that calls for our conscious effort, our intentional discernment, and our
attention liberation. May we not be
caught and enslaved in the rom-ance of what was but be liberated through our
radical hospitality to be church once more and develop a more beautiful and
broader “we.” Be the church. Amen.
[1] In my
Sacred Place Sermon Series, I quoted Jewish rabbis who consider hospitality a
form of worship.
[2] Rosemary
Freeney Harding and Rachel E. Harding, “Radical Hospitality,” Sojourners, July-August 2003, https://sojo.net/magazine/july-august-2003/radical-hospitality.
[3] Robert Putnam, “E Pluribus unum: Diversity and Community in
the Twenty-first Century. Scandinavian
Political Studies, Summer, 2007.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.515.6374&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
Putnam then goes on to outline the benefits of immigration and diversity
found in the research. He lists: 1)
Creativity in general seems to be enhanced by immigration and diversity. 2) Immigration is generally associated with
more rapid economic growth. 3) In
advanced countries with aging populations, immigration is important to help
offset the impending fiscal effects of the retirement of the baby-boomers. 4) Immigration from the global South to the
global North greatly enhances the development of the global South, partly
because of the remittances immigrants send to their families back home and
partly because the transfer of technology and new ideas through immigrant
networks.
[4] Rev. Dr.
Marilyn Sewell, “Radical Hospitality,” Unitarian
Universalist Association, https://www.uua.org/worship/words/sermon/radical-hospitality. Using Paul Lichterman, Elusive Togetherness:
Church Groups Trying to Bridge America’s Social Divisions. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
[5] Mickey ScottBey
Jones, “Invitation to Brace Space,” Blog, http://www.mickyscottbeyjones.com/invitation-to-brave-space/.
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