Radical Hospitality

September 30, 2007

First Church and Parish Dedham

Yesterday when I was sitting at my kitchen table putting the finishing touches on this sermon, I was also baking pie.

Pie is my idea of hospitality.

If you give up your beautiful afternoon in order to attend the New Minister’s Start up Workshop, you will find that that is also my way of saying thank you.

Expressing gratitude is one function of ordinary everyday hospitality.

Just to help you get your taste buds ready – I made an apple pie, I made a blueberry pie, I made an apple berry pie, I made a pecan pie and I even made some chocolate chocolate chip cookies. All made in a spirit of gratitude for (if you are staying) the time you will spend this on this beautiful autumn afternoon helping me get started.

As some of you know I was born in Birmingham Alabama, and if you met my charming father last spring, you know my parents came from Arkansas. The south is famous for its hospitality. So I come by it naturally- if there is one thing a southern girl is brought up knowing it is how to bake a pie before your company comes a callin’.

The problem in my family is that hospitality sometimes came at a price. I remember once when I was in Sunday school my teacher asked us to draw a picture of a way in which we would welcome company into our homes, and the only thing I could think of was the arguing that went on behind the scene.

Despite all the fantastic preparation, and the complicated concoctions, and the way our house was always open to anyone who needed a place to go, the only tradition I could think of when I was 6 years old, was the way all the effort left tempers flaring. In my mind the most consistent thing that would happen when company was coming over is that my usually charming kindhearted and sweet tempered mother would go crazy over some excruciating detail and usually some object would be thrown and a fowl word or two would be spoken. From my six year old perspective having a temper tantrum and cursing before guests would arrive was all part of the event of welcoming.

In the south being charming and smiling, and making a big “fuss” when someone is to arrive, is all part of the welcoming process. What I know now is that the effort can be exhausting and can wear even the kindest heart, down to the nub.

I was well trained in the arts of southern hospitality. By the age of 7 I knew how to dress up for a guest and I treated adults with the utmost respect and courtesy.

When I was 9 we moved to New York.

I realized as soon as we moved that things had changed. Partially because on the very first day of my new school my parents were called in because when I would say yes mam and no mam to my teachers they thought I was being fresh.

I hope you will forgive the overgeneralizations I am about to make, but as soon as we moved to New York it seemed to me that New Yorkers at least, if not all of the North East, seemed to be better at expressing a truthful view of the world and were less wrapped up in the “show”.

These new to me northerners didn’t waste a lot of time with pleasantries and kindnesses and they certainly didn’t have a problem admitting what they couldn’t get done. And for me this was liberation. Although my mother was still a southern lady who would sometimes loose her cool, her daughters learned that it was better to pace ourselves, and accept our limitations and arrive relaxed and at ease.

What I have found over time is that being hospitable is not so much what I do but instead, who I am and how I feel.

One other thing that confuses our concept of hospitality is the way that business use hospitality practices to make money and encourage return business.

There is a gigantic industry created to care for us and to help us care for others. There are businesses that created solely to encourage us to make our homes more hospitable and make it easier for us to entertain. Food preparation and party planning services are designed simply to assist in hospitality.

While all hospitality an intentional way of welcoming others and it absolutely doesn’t make a difference if I made my pie from scratch or bough an already prepared one to save time, there is something almost distasteful about expressing a spirit of welcome in the expectation of return.

True hospitality is an expression of gratitude not an effort with expected reward.

Christian and Hebrew scriptures both reflect common Middle Eastern cultural practice of welcoming the stranger or foreigner and giving to the one who is unable to return what you give. All of the world’s religions hold up the highest ideals of hospitality. Christianity, Judiasm, Islam Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Janists, Taoists, and those who practice Bahai all affirm the Golden Rule- that we should treat others the way we wish to be treated.

The concept and practice of Hospitality has also been endorsed and encouraged through the ages through secular laws and moral codes, held up as a virtue by ethicists and philosophers, and aspired to in literature.

Despite all of this many people today are starved for a friendly welcome and it is not hard to buy into the veneer of false hospitality.

Even I can be lured by a smile. For years in fact I boycotted Starbucks. When I moved to Boston however someone gave me a fifty dollar gift certificate. Depending on how you look at it I either then became a believer or I lost my soul.

What happened was that by the time I had bought the fifty dollars worth of coffee the servers in the Starbucks near my house knew my name. Not only that but they knew what I drank every day and it was that every day it seemed I had hardly stepped into the shop before my double tall non fat latte was already prepared.

Every day when I entered (what I had previously considered to be the evil empire) I was not only getting my daily fix of caffeine but I was receiving a healthy dose of hospitality.

I lived in that apartment near that Starbucks for nearly two years. What I hope is to my credit is that I also went out of my way to know my servers by name and asked about their lives in the same way that they asked me about mine. As time went on I cared about them as humans and I truly cared about their health and wellbeing.

These connections encouraged me to justify returning long after my gift certificate ran out and even when there were new faces serving me and new names to learn.

I do believe that hospitality in business can lead to authentic relations built on genuine caring but how do we know which offers of kindness are only intended to encourage reward and which ones are genuine?

How can you tell if my handshake and smile on the front steps on Sunday morning is real and genuine?

I would argue that it must begin with my personal regard for you as an individual. If I am shaking your hand and smiling and then talking about you behind your back than I am not being truly hospitable nor am I being authentic.

I love the words of Walt Whitman. It is necessary that we find ways to love everything if we are to show regard for any one. And I would argue that opening our hearts to all life is a Radical idea of hospitality. In the Christian Scriptures, Luke describes Jesus’ explanation of Golden Rule in even more radical terms:

Luke 6: 27- 35:  ‘But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 ‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For everyone loves those who love them. ³³If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For every person does the same. ³⁴If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Every person expects, to receive as much again. ³⁵But I tell you love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.^* Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High;”

In my book this is a radical ideal of hospitality, loving when there is absolutely no expectation of return.

As Unitarian Universalists we are not only encouraged to be our best selves, but we assist and encourage others to be their best.

I believe this can only happen when we look past our individual expectations and hurts and differences and continue to find ways to bless each other with kindness.

Carl Rogers termed this action as offering a spirit of Unconditional Positive Regard. According to Rogers psychological issues are created by a lack of healthy love and he believed that the most positive therapeutic outcomes are offered in settings where the caregiver offers kindness and acceptance of an individual.

Churches are not psychotherapy labs and even if you are a trained therapist outside of these walls, inside of this place there is no therapy. Still this concept of unconditional positive regard is essential to our ideal of hospitality.

I believe that at its best a church can be a place for transformation. For this to happen there needs to be an atmosphere of loving kindness in all we do. The ability to look beyond our individual differences and show respect and kindness, the ability to talk to those we might disagree with respect and openness is vital to our growth as individuals and as a collective.

This is not something someone else must do- but something we each individually must take on if we are going to grow.

I recognize that this is a tall order and we will each fail and succeed at our own rates and in our own time. This is where the words of Thomas Merton come in.

We are all human- there will be mistakes, but if w e can measure our progress not as individuals- but as a collective whole, each effort only measured in conjunction with the efforts of another which makes up one living whole than I believe we can only succeed.

The measure of Hospitality at First Church must come form our collect efforts in the knowledge that we each have individual gifts and we need each other to make something fantastic.

At lunch today my imperfect pie will be improved by someone else’s perfect cup of coffee, in the same way that my bad sermons will be improved by the choir’s performance or your bad day will be balanced by my good one. One person’s errors will be compensated for by another’s success.

Radical hospitality requires that we strive individually to open our hearts ever more fully for others to see by while always acknowledging our humanness. May we go forward this day in the spirit of Radical hospitality that looks past our individual difference to the spirit of love that supports and sustains us all and will in time set us free.