Open Doors

A Sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette, Indiana

On December 4, 2005

By the Reverend Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Readings

Parker J. Palmer, Quaker thinker and educator wrote: 

I have argued that the church, picturing itself as a close and warm family, tends to suppress conflict, depriving its members of a vital lesson in public life. That same familial image undermines the public life in another way – by excluding the stranger from its midst. If the church is to serve as a school of the spirit, and as a bridge between the private and the public realms, it must find ways of extending hospitality to the stranger. I do not mean coffee hours designed to recruit new members for the church, for these are aimed at making the stranger “one of us.” The essence of hospitality – and of the public life – is that we let our differences, our mutual strangeness, be as they are, while still acknowledging the unity that lies beneath them.

The Reverend Dianne Dowgiert, Unitarian Universalist minister wrote:

Hospitality is a practice that can transform individual lives. As a religious community of Unitarian Universalists, one of our principles is encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. Welcoming the stranger is one way we can grow together as a congregation. Welcoming the stranger can transform congregational life.  The word hospitality is related to the words hospital and hospice, and they all derive from the Latin root word hostis -- meaning guest or stranger. To engage in hospitality, then, is to encounter the stranger.  St. Benedict, who founded the order in the sixth century, saw the monastery as a "school for love," love that permeates the community of monks and extends to the many guests and strangers who find temporary refuge, or retreat, within the walls of the monastery. This is the spiritual practice of hospitality -- to open oneself to an encounter with the stranger -- welcoming both the stranger from without and the stranger within -- and in the doing -- to grow toward wholeness.

Kathleen Norris wrote:

A STORY said to originate in a Russian Orthodox monastery has an older monk telling a younger one: "I have finally learned to accept people as they are. Whatever they are in the world, a prostitute, a prime minister, it is all the same to me. But sometimes I see a stranger coming up the road, and I say, 'Oh, Jesus Christ, is it you again?'"

Sermon

As I was enjoying the warmth and excitement of the art fair Friday evening – I recognized this as a time when we really prepare our congregational house to welcome so many people – there’s the inviting smell of cooking, the lovely flowers, the offer of a glass of wine, the beauty of art, the twinkling of holiday lights, the welcome of candlelight and bright tablecloths in Trudi’s Café.  We put our house in order – okay there are a few things we sweep into closets and hide in small rooms – but we do lots of small and great things to make our place lovely and welcoming.  We practice hospitality and it shines out of our windows, radiates from our faces, and the remembered glow warms our hearts all year as we look forward to the next Art Fair.  There’s a wonderful spirit of hospitality that pervades our beloved, small, building. 

We’re a welcoming congregation in many ways – many people who come here for the first time on a Sunday morning are touched by the warmth of this community. Still, I wonder what would happen if every Sunday we poured our hearts into the welcoming atmosphere of this place so that every corner turned into a shrine.

Anita Diamant wrote:  “In every neighborhood there is one house where children know they are always welcome to play. These are households where it seems that the couch is forever being made up for an out-of-town visitor..  homes where it just isn't Friday night without guests at the table. Children who grow up in these homes learn the challenging pleasures of serving and sharing, and the joys of offering hospitality.”

I wonder what would happen if we engaged in this depth of hospitality all year round – whenever our doors are open.  If every person was greeted with an open smile and a feeling of excitement – what would our church be like?  I’ve stayed at hotels where – from the moment I walked in the door – I felt as though my comfort mattered – but that’s just the comfort of a hotel.  This is no hotel – this is a house of spirit and love, of service and learning, of covenant and community. 

Hospitality is a sacred thing – the religions of the world make hospitality a core value.   In Judaism this hospitality is called hachnassat orchim, literally "the bringing in of guests." It is a more important mitzvah – deed of goodness – than even the study of Torah.  Diamant says “For Jews, hospitality is not simply a matter of good manners; it is a moral institution -- a sacred obligation.”  What’s even more interesting – it’s more important that welcoming God – in Genesis as Abraham sits healing from his bris and visiting with Hashem – G-D – visitors arrive and Abraham rightly gets up to extend his hospitality to them.  This is radical – “oh —excuse me, you somewhat temperamental and cranky God – I know we were having tea – but here are some perfect strangers and – well – they’re more important than you are for the moment.”  Well – Abraham does tend to push the envelope with Hashem on a regular basis. 

I suspect one reason that it’s such a joy to spiff up our space and have in company for the Art Fair is that it always falls during Advent – a season among Christians devoted to waiting for a special guest and making ready the house – just as churches put up crèches and wait for the baby to fill the little manger.  The story of Christmas is a story of a humble child who brought a sense of wonder to those who knew him.  Thus each year people decorate trees, put lights in the window, and await the arrival of the special guest.

O Come O Come Emmanuel….God with us…

But let’s not be so literal – we’re not simply welcoming a special guest.  Jesus would say that as we do unto the least of these – we do to him – as a Jew Jesus would preach to his followers that radical sense of hospitality – therefore, as we light our lights and warm the world against the chill of winter at advent we’re welcoming the world, the new hope, the sacred soul in every person.  Above all – we are welcoming– the revelation, the newcomer, the stranger.

            Hospitality has to do with a recognition that we all know what it’s like to be the stranger.  In fact, every definition that I looked up said that it had to do with friendly, generous or welcoming actions toward Guests or Strangers.  Not just the folks you invited over but the stranger.  Again and again Jewish scripture commands hospitality because “You were strangers in the land of Egypt .”  It is more than being a good host – it has to do with extending a loving hand to those who are lost or wandering.

            There’s the challenge – it’s comfortable to roll out the ribbon and twinkling lights for the annual sale – to set the table and prepare for friends, customers -- but what about those people – you know – the really different ones, the ones outside our comfort zone. 

            The Edwin Markham poem on the cover of the order of service is an old Unitarian Universalist favorite.  The real question we are faced with in our congregational life is – what are the circles that we draw?  Who might we leave outside?

            Hospitality sounds easier when it’s – you know – familiar – it seems riskier to open the door and let the world come through.  We’d have to be confronted by the stranger – maybe stranger than we are – maybe who really needs us.  Maybe someone really different – believes something different – I mean we like that and all – but to really open our doors – our hearts – our minds is to be open to being changed. 

            These are times in which our anxieties about the stranger have been raised to new heights.  People seem warier.  Our front porches sit empty, we drive our cars, and type messages to one another.  It doesn’t seem as safe to open up – so often church becomes a refuge from the world – a safe haven where we imagine that the problems that troubles the world will not cross our doorstep.  But – that’s … just … not …. congregational life.  That’s a club and a place for the status quo.  But here’s the thing – if it is true that life is change and that our world is change and that history is change -- I want to be changed -- by the world, I want every one of us to be changed by the world – I want this religious tradition to be up to our neck in change in the world – to have our hands and hearts in the world.   So I’m eager to be open to the stranger.  Rosemarie Harding, co founder of the Veterans of Hope Project (http://www.iliff.edu/about_iliff/special_veterans.htm), told this story. “Hospitality has been a central model for activism in my life. In the years when I was growing up, people visited back and forth at each other's homes more regularly than folks do now. Our house was an especially popular destination. We had a large family and lots of friends. Also, my mother and father made the house welcoming. Sometimes it seemed "too" welcoming—all kinds of people came through, not just relatives and neighborhood friends, but peddlers, gamblers, petty thieves, prostitutes, and people we would probably refer to today as homeless. Mom set out beautiful china dishes and slices of her homemade pound cake for all of them. It was as if she knew they needed the extra attention and acknowledgement, and she genuinely enjoyed their conversation and wisdom. An itinerant bookseller would come to visit Mom now and then. The two of them would sit in the dining room and talk for hours about the events of the world and the world of books. The man was not always very clean and sometimes, especially in the winter when the heat was on full blast in our house, we could smell the mustiness of his old, ragged clothes and the heavy, acrid sweat of his body. He talked funny too, and we children were occasionally tempted to laugh—as much from discomfort as anything else. But if we let out the tiniest snicker, Mom would cut her eyes at us and we immediately changed our minds—and the expressions on our faces.”  Sounds like a challenging but rich place in which to grow up.

            I know that as soon as we open our doors each Sunday and every day – we are opening our doors on a world in need and individuals come in here in need – and I don’t just mean the few folks who come in for diapers or soap or clothing vouchers.  Philo of Alexandria is quoted as saying: “everyone you meet is fighting a great battle”.  I mean every person walks in this door bearing their lives – their joys, their sorrows, their challenges from living in this mad world.  Every person walks in with some spiritual hunger, some holy need, and an ache that can be or sometimes cannot be named.   

The phrase I’ve heard is Radical Hospitality.  The Champagne Unitarian Universalist church just sponsored a workshop on Radical Hospitality.  But we UUs are not alone in this effort to throw open the doors and our hearts.

            In the Alban Institute Publication – Congregations – Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook –associate director of Congregational Studies at Episcopal Divinity School, wrote: Congregations committed to breaking from the status quo are called to develop a sense of "radical hospitality." Rather than seeking out like members for mutual support, they seek people who consider themselves beyond the reach of organized religion. "Radical hospitality" has not only social, but political and economic implications; it is the act of extending community beyond the margins to those unserved by church, synagogue, or mosque. Rather than limiting their public theology to outreach or charity, congregations formed in radical hospitality exercise a commitment to justice.”

            On Saturday my daughter Chava passed out flyers promoting the Art Sale – and I wondered...  Rabbi Janet Marder said: “What does it mean, in practical terms, to follow the mitzvah of hospitality? To “bring in guests” doesn’t simply mean that you make people welcome when they come to you… but that you actively look for people who need to be welcomed. My grandfather used to joke that grandma would go out and stand on the corner where they lived and bring in any strangers she happened to find.”

Suppose that we kept creatively finding ways to really let people know who we are, what we’re doing, what we stand for – what we’ll act for.  It is a sign of growth that it seems like every month we are in the newspaper, promoting some social action, and putting our principles to action in the public arena.  It turns this house into a home that reaches out to embrace the world and that helps up to embody the best of our Unitarian Universalism.  But – what does it mean to be Unitarian Universalist – what does it mean to believe that each person has a spark of the sacred in them, that our house should be a house of all souls, that all our diverse roads follow one shared star path?  Would this Unitarian Universalism be the ultimate challenge toward hospitality?  Wouldn’t this radical hospitality be the very thing that would bring a sea change in our world?

            I’m inspired by a congregation that Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook wrote about: the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Morristown , New Jersey – the town of my birth.  A sign out front reads: "We Are One Family" and lists the diversity in the congregation—males, females, children, seniors, gays, straights, infants, liberals, conservatives, dreamers, whites, blacks, Christians, non-Christians, questioners, the partnered, the single, those in recovery, searchers, youth. The congregation refers to itself as united by questions and dreams "rather than answers." They display an "It’s a Come as You Are Party" banner, a rainbow flag, a black liberation flag, a portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now that’s an Episcopal Congregation and there they are out front with their values and their welcome to the world – their radical hospitality.  The small competitive voice in me says – sounds like something we’d want to do – kind of like the marriage equality banner that we hung – but more so.  It sounds like a challenge to be on that leading edge – but it sounds so – meaningful – and radical – as in at the root of things.  They do some things we take for granted – like Gay Pride Sunday, Martin Luther King Sunday – they even honor a Holocaust Sunday. 

            Too often church becomes about what’s familiar and comfortable – it can become more about what you want to see or feel on a Sunday morning – rather than what we might imagine the world needs or the stranger may hunger for – which may also be a hunger of our own – but less familiar.  Perhaps the greatest danger that the stranger holds for us is that they open us to possibilities and dreams that we did not know were latent within us.  They may present challenges that confront us with the very edge we say we want to grow into – but have been too comfortable to face.  They may bring to us the raw need of the world for healing, peace, and justice and then our hands will be full.  The Unitarian Universalist minister, Robert Fulghum, said that a truly open church, a radically welcoming church starts with "a shift from getting to giving. A shift from Look at Me to I Am Seeing You. A shift from Knowing What I Want to noticing What Someone Else Needs."   Really we’re here as hosts.

            What do people need?  First of all they need to know that we’re here – that this is a Unitarian Universalist Congregation with a message of religious freedom, social justice,  and spiritual growth.  Then, they need to know that it’s more than a message – that we help our community, work for the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender persons, affirm the equality and agency of women, respect the planet which sustains us, that we’re advocates of evolution as a scientific theory and a way of life.  And that we’re challenging ourselves to keep stretching to embody our covenant of love and service.

            Beyond that they need to be welcomed when they come here – not only for our Art Fair but every day – welcomed as long anticipated guests with messages for us as well.  Each person needs to be seen as an individual – as an adventure, a new landscape, a possible friend, a new leader, a gift. 

            They need simple things – like: to know where the bathroom is, to see that there are comfortable seats to sit in, that there’s room for them here, to know who the minister is and who each one of you are.  They need to know how to get involved, who to call in need, and where the party is. 

            How do we give this to each person who comes in?  The Rev. Dianne Dowgiert reminded me of something important – when you begin to think of the church as a place of radical hospitality wearing your name tag becomes a spiritual act – it’s a way of saying – I am here for you.  This we don’t leave it to a committee – every one of us is a greeter here, a leader, everyone is the hand of fellowship to each new person who walks in.  Offer them a seat, introduce yourself, sit in the front to make more room for others, bunch together so that there are more visible seats, move together when the children go downstairs, wait to sit until a little later so that you might sit in the back and usher new people to comfortable seats up closer, hand them the order of service instead of leaving it on the chair, volunteer to be a greeter or an usher, take someone to get coffee, bring in a tray of cookies, put up a collection not for the cookies but for the shelter, and think about the people who have not yet found this place – and what we can all do together to help them find the freedom, solace, community, meaning, and spirit we can generate together here.  Anita Diamant said: Children who grow up in these homes learn the challenging pleasures of serving and sharing, and the joys of offering hospitality.”  She’s right – we can teach our children and learn as we go how to draw our circle wider – to offer the transforming love so needed in our world.  It’s my hope that we are a home – beyond club, beyond family, beyond familiar faces – it is my hope that we are a home that with every act – we teach ourselves, our children, and our neighbors that we are a house of welcome, vision, and renewal.

            In this advent season we are waiting for the guest to arrive – we are profoundly grateful for every new person who chooses to come here and join with us – to learn with us, to challenge us, to engage us, to journey with us.  Pesach and Chana Burston wrote this little story: One winter day, a man discovered a thick layer of frost on his window. He started painstakingly scraping it off.

"What are you doing?" inquired a curious neighbor.

"Removing the frost from my window," answered the man, "so I can see outside."

His friend saw that the labor was tedious and advised him, "Light a fire in your home – the frost will disappear by itself!"

I light these Advent Candles to invite us to light the light within – and not to wait passively but to reach out actively – to stand on our street corner, throw open our doors – metaphorically, and to begin by inviting one another to grow more and more creatively into the welcoming congregation that is within us right now.