Hospitality to Strangers
“Let’s do lunch sometime;
Let’s get together and catch up;
Drop by any time; I’d love to see you.”
We’ve heard all of those comments at some point in time
and we also know they don’t really mean very much!
Unfortunately they don’t mean much at all!
It is not that we intend anything insincere or disingenuous
or even that we are really not willing to get together for lunch
but we never really take the next step.
We never really reach out and actually call that person and say,
“Hey, I’d really like to get together for lunch.”
“I’d really like to have you over for dinner.”
I am not sure whether it is because we are all so busy
or whether it is the way we have become in society today.
Bu it is seems much harder than it used to be;
it seems so hard to just get together and chat.
Hospitality seems to be a lost art in our modern society.
We never seem to quite have the time to just sit and visit.
And yet, today’s first reading and gospel are all about hospitality.
Abraham and Sarah welcome three complete strangers
and insist that they stay,
not just to wash their feet from their long journey and rest
but then to put on a lavish meal for them.
We also hear in the gospel how Martha and Mary tend to Jesus.
One tends to his food, his physical nourishment
and the other tends to his spirit by listening to him.
Many of us will agree with the idea of hospitality
but in practice, we might find it just hard;
we might find it very hard to go
to the trouble of inviting someone over.
Today’s readings are not just about inviting friends;
it is inviting the complete strangers.
That is where it really gets hard.
Can we imagine, in today’s society,
inviting a complete stranger into our home for dinner;
Can we imagine tending to their every need, and inviting them to:
“Come have anything you want in my house.”
Could we even conceive of doing anything like that in our mind?
That is what we have in today’s scripture.
In ancient times, to welcome the stranger
was to welcome God in their midst.
Christ picks up that very same theme:
to welcome the stranger is to welcome Christ himself.
That is what each one of us is called to do
—is to welcome the stranger among us.
It is very hard indeed but it is the message of the gospel.
I remember when I was a teenager,
a group of friends and I went camping.
We were in a little town in the center of Ireland called Athlone.
We were camping literally right alongside the river.
That night there was torrential rain
and the river overflowed its banks.
Our tents started to float away during the night.
We scrambled and grabbed whatever we could
and got out of the tent just in time.
We had our most of our belongings but lost our tent.
So here we here, a couple of 14-year olds and 15-year olds
in the middle of Ireland at 3:00 a.m. in the morning!
As it was pouring down rain from the heavens
the only thing we could think of was the local church.
We knocked on the door of a Franciscan Friary.
We rapped on that door expecting really nothing
because there were no lights and no sound,
but instead a Friar came down in his brown robe
with a big smile on his face and his hair was all tussled.
He welcomed us into the parish hall,
turned on the heat, went in and made us some hot chocolate,
warmed up some brown bread that was left over from the day,
and handed it to us and said,
“We’ll see you at morning Mass at 8:30.”
I’ll always remember it.
What incredible hospitality!
Now I know we are not Franciscans.
I understand that.
I can only imagine a few of us would ever have the opportunity
to have a stranger knock on our door.
But the idea is to stretch ourselves;
we have to go beyond our comfort zone
of just our family and our friends.
We have to find a way to be hospitable to others.
In the end, our salvation is dependent
on our willingness to be hospitable,
our willingness to see Christ in one another.
That is the message of our gospel.
We are called to see Christ in one another,
most especially in the needy;
the homeless and the broken, the stranger.
So how can we translate this challenge for us as a community;
how can each one of us make something out of that.
So here is a challenge
—we are not exactly strangers in our parish community.
Maybe this very night or weekend,
we could look around this church and invite some person,
who you do not know, to dinner with you and your family.
I don’t think there are any axe murders here!
But the idea is that we build up our own community
and to invite some one person in this very church,
in this very room right now;
To invite that person to dinner in our home;
to break open our home.
Maybe that is too hard,
maybe you would have to start out with coffee
or dinner our in the restaurant
but surely we can break open our hearts to our fellow parishioners.
At the very least, we need to get to know one another.
Tonight I ask us to open our homes and our hearts to one another.
Today the message is hospitality to the stranger.
