Westmoreland Sermon Archive

May 9, 2010
Acts 16:9-15
Rev. Rich Smith

In the early years of our marriage, we frequently went camping. It was practically free, and sleeping on the ground wasn’t too uncomfortable. As we’ve aged, we been able to afford better accommodations, and the ground gets harder and harder, in spite of more natural padding. After a few years, we generally stayed at cheap motels while traveling. And then, after a few more years, we began staying at a nicer places. But now, we have found that our preference while traveling is to seek out quaint little Bed and Breakfasts. They are not as impersonal as a hotel or motel, usually no more expensive, and the hospitality is almost always much better. Some better than others – breakfast can be anything from “help yourself to a sweet roll” to 4 course candlelight, made to order; some hosts smother you with attention, others ignore you. But in general, we have come to appreciate the kind of hospitality offered at B&B’s. It can be like staying with friends or family or maybe better — they make us feel welcome!

Our scripture lesson for today tells of the time the Apostle Paul and his companions were invited into a sort of Bed and Breakfast in the Greek town of Phillipi. They were out on a missionary journey, spreading the Gospel, when they had a change of plans. They responded to a vision, to go to Macedonia. After several days in Philippi, it was the Sabbath and so they went “down to the river to pray,” and there they encountered a group of mostly Jewish women, also praying. Among them was a Gentile named Lydia, who was on a spiritual quest and who, apparently, was a very successful business woman. She traded in a specific kind of dyed purple goods, a luxury item, and was quite affluent. Never one to pass up the possibilities presented by a good congregation, Paul preached to these women who had gathered by the river and as a result Lydia became a Christian. She was baptized, and not only her, but all the members of her household. She invited Paul and company to accept her hospitality, saying, “If you really accept me as a true believer, come and stay with us in our house.” And, as one contemporary translation puts it, “she would not take no for an answer.” Later, she became one of the founders and pillars of the Philippian church, which presumably didn’t have to meet by the river anymore.

Lydia may be just a footnote in the history of Christianity, but she is a good illustration of the fact that being a Christian means doing something Christ-like. She didn’t just profess her belief, she showed it. Her open heart led to an open home. Hospitality — from the Latin hospitalis, “of a guest” — is central to what being Christian is all about. In the Middle East, extravagant hospitality is also a cultural virtue, a hallmark extending back to times when food and lodging establishments were few and far between; hospitality could make the difference between life and death for travelers, a tradition that continues to this day – just ask our Middle East pilgrims about their recent experiences. As Jesus is reported to have said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me….and as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.”

Today, I wonder how many of us would invite a total stranger into our homes? Even if it was the preacher who we’d just met? It does seem rather dangerous. A repair-person shows up at your door, and they’d better have pretty convincing ID! We’ve had a lot of strangers in our home recently, but at least they were all accompanied by licensed real estate agents! I once witnessed a children’s sermon, where the minister began by asking them what they would do if a stranger knocked on their door. One child completely threw the whole thing off track — and broke everybody up — by answering, “I’d call 9-1-1!” So much for a lesson in hospitality!

Well, we do get a lot of folks coming to our doors that we don’t really want to talk to, much less invite in. But how far do we go with protecting ourselves? Once I used my computer to create a fancy sign, that was supposed to be intimidating, which said. “Never mind the dog, beware of the owner. No solicitors!” My children insisted it was corny, and would not make their friends feel welcome. So I took it down. And the very next person to ring the doorbell was a Girl Scout, taking cookie orders — the ONE solicitor we DO want to see, and eagerly await every spring! So we began working on other ways to protect ourselves. But maybe we should be working on ways to be more hospitable.

When I was growing up, our home was really a hospitality center, an open and friendly place for the whole neighborhood. The back door was always unlocked because that’s where friends and neighbors knew to come. If the front doorbell rang, it was likely a door-to-door salesman. Or maybe the minister… At one point there were about 75 children living on the block and ours was one of the chief gathering places, because that’s where people felt welcome. My Dad always remembered the day he came home from work to find about forty kids playing in the back yard — and soon realized that NONE of them were his! But he didn’t make them leave, just made some of us come out and join in. It was the kind of place where we could hold band practice in the back yard, which always attracted a crowd, and the neighbors didn’t complain as long as we finished before dark. It was the kind of place where we would hold the little league team party, and could bring our friends home from school. One time in college, I participated in an exchange program and joined a class from Colgate University for a month of studying geology in Death Valley and the Grand Canyon. At the end of the class, I showed up with three car loads of students, all grimy from having climbed out of the Canyon, and all having flights out of Phoenix the next morning. My mom never batted an eye but found space for all of them, even fed them breakfast before they took off.

That was the kind of hospitality I grew up with, and maybe why I prefer staying in B’n'B’s now. My experience was much like that of Chris Glaser, who in his book, Come Home, writes, “First and foremost, I felt a sense of being home, a place where ‘they have to take you in’, but also, a place where they WANT to take you in. In the ideal experience of it, home is a place for healing wounds and celebrating fulfillment. It’s an environment which welcomes you to kick off your shoes, sink into an armchair, and put your feet up. The masks are down, and you can be as comfortable and vulnerable as a sleepy puppy.” And he concludes with this poignant yearning: “How I wished the church could be such a place for me!”

And why shouldn’t the church be just such a place of welcome and hospitality? As a denomination that has always been one of our hallmarks. We have long taken in refugees from churches that weren’t too welcoming, who didn’t countenance too much questioning, or activism, or variety. At the communion table, for example, we do not place any constraints about who may partake. You don’t have to belong to a particular church, or profess a certain kind of orthodoxy. We generally extend the invitation by saying something like, “Anyone who desires to follow in the way of Jesus is welcome here.”

It’s been over five years now since the UCC first came up with the “Bouncer” TV ad – an ad which the major TV networks refused to run, but we did benefit from the controversy over it. It starred two muscle-bound “bouncers” standing guard outside a picturesque church where they discriminately chose which persons would be permitted to attend Sunday services. Then a tag line touted the UCC’s different approach, “No matter who you are, no matter where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” That was followed by the ejector seat ad…. And now there is a new web-based ad, “The Language of God,” depicting the extravagant welcome that our church intends to offer.

This welcome takes many forms — When I was in California, I was asked to perform a lot of weddings, many of them for couples who for one reason or another could not be married in their own church. This was especially the case for divorced Roman Catholics, and for others as well, who because of their circumstances, felt rejected by the church, and in many cases, ours was the only one that was willing to talk to them and offer them a place to celebrate their matrimonial covenant. And now, with our statement of openness and affirmation, couples are welcome to get married here who may not even fit the definition of “one man and one woman!” Of course, I’ll have to take you out into the Circle to perform such a marriage if it is to be legal, but that could be arranged.

Or how about this for being welcoming: in my last church a young gay man became a member. He had experienced a good bit of rejection in his life – not because he was gay, but because he was a smoker! One day, we were ready to begin the service of worship, the acolytes ready to walk down the aisle, but, alas, there were no matches to be found anywhere. We were about to panic when in walked Dick – late because he’d been out in the parking lot puffing. “Boy, am I glad to see you!” I exclaimed. He said he had never been so welcomed as a smoker in his life!

For the most part, we at Westmoreland are a fairly welcoming community, and have become more so in the last several years. Someone once told me before they joined that they had visited a lot of churches, and we were the friendliest; of course it wasn’t too hard to be seen that way when at the church they visited before ours, the only person who spoke to them was a woman in the pew just in front of them, when she turned around and asked their children to be quiet!

We’ve done a lot with our “Growing Together” initiative. Visitors are always welcomed when they come in the door, and there are several folks whose role it is to be on the lookout and help them feel at home. Yet, hospitality is everyone’s business, and there’s always more we can do! We continually have to ask ourselves, how “visitor-friendly” are we? How easy is it to follow our services, with two hymnals, a Bible, a multi-page bulletin, with a hard-to-find nursery, out-of-the-way restrooms, limited parking, a congregational culture that long time members easily take for granted? How many of us make a point of speaking to visitors, or even people we don’t know? (I don’t believe we’ve met…) How many of us wear our name tags regularly? Your next minister will especially appreciate this, I can tell you! And, how ready are we to welcome persons into our midst who may not be just like us, may not look like us, may not vote like us, may not pray like us? Is that our Macedonian call?

In all of this, we are called to be like Lydia, who in her very first act as a Christian, opened her heart and home to someone she hardly knew, in an act of extravagant welcome and radical hospitality. For her faith wasn’t so much what she believed as what she was willing to do. She may have been a mere footnote in Christian history, but her importance for us is incalculable, because when we act like she did, it makes all the difference – not just for our church, but for our world!

Now, you don’t have to wealthy like Lydia to be welcoming. Recently one of our UCC missionaries in Zambia wrote how she experienced hospitality herself, from a mother who was really quite poor. And it often happens like this: those who go to minister are ministered unto. Although part of that hospitality involved eating roasted caterpillars! Ann Nichols teaches there, and met Caroline, “a big-hearted woman who takes in orphans.” When Caroline found out that Ann had not yet been in a Zambian home, she invited her to hers. They met at Ann’s school, and “walked out of the compound, down the road, onto a dirt path… down more dirt roads, to market where Caroline bought some local eggplants, onions, and… caterpillars. Mountains of caterpillars. She smiled and asked if I liked them. I confessed that I had never eaten one…. but I would try them. We walked some more….” After a taxi ride and more walking, they came to their rented 2-room home where “they feed, clothe, educate and support 12 orphans…”

“The orphans range in age from 2 to 16. All but the youngest are in school, which means that this family pays most of its salary for school fees. (Public education is not free in Zambia. School fees run between $50-$125 per child per year, depending on school and grade level.) Much of what they eat grows on the family’s small farm plot, a short distance away. Our meal was nshima…. a firm ball of cornmeal mush, together with sweet potato greens cooked with onions, and the roasted caterpillars, which the rest of the family ate happily. I hope they are a good source of protein….” Ann took two, and managed to get down a half of one.

How does this mother who seemingly has so little come to share so much? Not just with a missionary teacher, but with 12 orphans?

“Caroline says that she was helped by others when she was growing up, so that is why she takes in the orphans. The older ones try to find part-time work in addition to school to supplement the family income, and they somehow get by. Caroline shows me pictures of some of the people who help her with money when they can because they know that she struggles to find the resources to care for all of them. She lives by faith, and God has never let her down. It is a family full of love.

“What an eye-opening and amazing first experience with home hospitality in Zambia!”

It’s such a simple thing, really, showing hospitality, being a welcoming person or family or church. It’s so basic, and so overlooked. Now, surely we have the means! Do we also have the courage and the vision to be like Lydia, that woman of the cloth and welcome mat, or like Caroline, taking care of 12 orphans in a 2-room dwelling, and sharing what little she had with a stranger? Will we likewise be hospitable, open our hearts and our home, and share the gifts of life and love that God has so freely given us?