Andy Wade –
Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters. Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it! Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies. Hebrews 13:1-3
Mr. Lee welcomes us to his home.
Hospitality is a tricky thing. In today’s modern western world, we often think of entertainment or putting on a big party as hospitality. Although that can be true, hospitality is really about cultivating deep relationships by making space in our hearts and schedules for another.
This distinction is important to keep in mind as we head into this holiday season. Yes, we want fun and celebration. God delights in our joy. But God invites us deeper: deeper into one another’s lives, deeper into the lives of those in our neighborhood, deeper into love, and life, and community.
In the Old Testament, part of the tithe was set aside for family celebration of God’s goodness (Thanksgiving?) See Dt. 12:7. Later, in Dt. 26:11-12, we have this elaboration:
Afterward you may go and celebrate because of all the good things the LORD your God has given to you and your household. Remember to include the Levites and the foreigners living among you in the celebration. “Every third year you must offer a special tithe of your crops. In this year of the special tithe you must give your tithes to the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows, so that they will have enough to eat in your towns.
Hospitality is given to family and friend, stranger and even foe. At one point Jesus instructs:
When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. (Luke 14:12-14)
Could it be that the people of Jesus’ day had forgotten some of the key elements to hospitality? Had it become purely a social nicety with records kept of whose turn it was to have the others over? Had their focus on the “acceptable people” pushed aside God’s desire for the inclusion of all?
Jesus made room in his life by giving and accepting hospitality from “tax collectors and sinners”(Mk. 2:15), “unclean women”, lepers, Gentiles, Samaritans, and others shoved to the margins of both religious and secular life. Jesus was demonstrating what it means to love family, neighbor, and even enemy. His actions often were in-your-face to the religious expectations of the day.
These ideas swirl in my mind as I ponder the nature of hospitality today.
- Have we lost sight of God’s desire for hospitality?
- Who are the people I invite to my table?
- Who are the people I accept invitations from?
- What does it look like to create space for relationships to form, grow, and flourish?
I wrote the following poem while living in Hong Kong. Every week a group of us would buy rice box dinners and tea, then fan out on the streets of Mong Kok to visit with the “street sleepers”. We would share meals, sit on the concrete (considered not acceptable), share stories, and pray. It was here that I learned, once again, what hospitality can look like.
They were not our projects. They were not really even our ministry. They became our friends. Mr. Lee was one such friend. He died suddenly while I was away in the US. I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye, and it seemed the city was all too eager to sweep his memory away. Hospitality – his, mine, and God’s – ensures I will never forget.
In Memory of Mr. Lee
Cardboard furniture
Warm hand outstretched in greeting.
Who would have thought this pearl of friendship
Would be hidden in a simple box of rice,
Purchased with only a few kind words?
Rats scurry for food
Carelessly tossed on the cool, damp concrete.
For ten years this was home.
For two years a place of fellowship
Where those filled with Jesus’ Spirit
Encountered another created in His image.
For eight long years
Tossed aside by the masses
Despised, rejected, familiar with grief.
But for those with eyes to see,
A painful reminder of how easily we
Abandon the One who fashions us in His likeness.
Mr. Lee, I will miss you.
Slipping from life just as you lived,
Alone, unnoticed by passersby.
For a short while we shared this journey of life.
Your home is now swept clean,
The brutal efficiency of the city
Leaves no trace
That this corner was once a place of worship.
Yet here,
Amid crowds, dirt, rats, and cardboard
We both encountered the love and grace of God.
May we meet once more
At the feast of God,
The banquet of life,
Where death, sorrow, and crying are no more.
by Jenneth Graser. All Rights Reserved
Bethlehem
We seek a filler
like a chocolate cake with a hidden
mousse centre.
It delivers a bang on the tastebuds
riding an endorphin roller coaster
and we’re back at the starting point again.
No amount of round and round the circular route
will lead to a different destination.
When we risk using a map,
we are on our way to somewhere new.
A rut can be filled in with soil
and a nursery provides petunias
and violets aplenty.
Now the rut is one bright garden.
No more pressing the purchase button
on spontaneous urges
to make everything look a bit better,
a bit more up to date, more right.
No more pockets with holes in the bottom
and coming home with bags
of new-new things that make us
feel so good, until they are placed on the shelf
and start gathering dust with the feelings of
empty needing to be filled.
That emptiness is met by the hands of
a baby omnipotent
who started life on earth
in the space of a little human frame.
Now no matter how old we feel, or stale,
His little hands can flail about
under the discontent of longing
to create a new day
under a new star
in a place in our hearts called Bethlehem.
We may begin again
and give out of the abundant peace
that grows with petunias and violets
in reconstituted garden beds.
It feels like the dew
is settling on the grass,
as striving becomes
mulch for the flowers
to grow-and-grow.
1 Timothy 6:6 “Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth.
This post is part of our November Theme Preparing for Advent.
It is almost Thanksgiving here in the U.S. This is a celebration that I have embraced with enthusiasm as an opportunity to think about all that I have to be grateful for. In fact a few years ago I decided to start Advent early with a week of gratitude. It is a practice that I find very inspiring.
There is so much. I think about what I am grateful for in my personal life, what I am grateful for in my marriage, with my friends and the community I live in, and what I am grateful for in the broader community God has placed us in. I am particularly grateful for God, God’s presence in me, in the people around me and in creation. The prayer above was written at the begin of my week on gratitude and this prayer today.
For more thanksgiving prayers and resources and for some great thanksgiving songs check out our Thanksgiving resource list.
by Christine Sine.
Hospitality in ancient Palestine was more than a courtesy extended to friends and travellers. It was the means that villages used to determine if strangers were friends or enemies, a threat or an asset to the community. Extending hospitality by providing food, water and shelter was a way to temporarily adopt strangers into the community and hopefully convert a potential threat into a friendly alliance. Sometimes oil was poured over the head of the stranger as a sign of welcome.
It is probable that it was these customs that David referred to in Psalm 23:
You prepare a feast for me
in the presence of my enemies.
You honor me by anointing my head with oil.
My cup overflows with blessings. (Psalm 23:5)
In this verse, David is probably not talking about God preparing a banquet for us to eat while our enemies sit around with empty stomaches drooling over the lavish food we are enjoying. This is a verse that speaks of the ancient practice of hospitality, an invitation to sit down and enjoy a meal with strangers and those we perceive as a threat, an encouragement to seek for understanding and reconciliation rather than division and hatred.
What is Your Response?
We live in a world of great division where there is much necessity for all of us to sit down over a meal with those we disagree with and see as a threat. As you think about this what comes to mind? What situations are you currently facing that might be defused by sitting around the table during the thanksgiving or Advent season and sharing a meal? Where have you seen God prepare a feast that has brought enemies together and overcome fears and disagreements? How could you prepare a meal “in the presence of your enemies” and offer open hospitality to those you disagree with?
In Jesus’ day, this kind of hospitality was considered more than a commandment. It was a sacred obligation, filled with the joy of serving both others and God. Those that did not extend hospitality to orphans, widows and the homeless could be rejected. Like early monastics and Celtic Christians, Jews believed that sometimes in welcoming strangers they welcomed angels into their midst.
Jesus repeatedly demonstrated his joy in offering hospitality as he fed the crowds and shared a passover meal with his disciples. Even after his death, he came back to share meals as a way to communicate his message of salvation and hope.
As I thought about this today, the picture that came to me was of Jesus sitting and eating that last meal with Judas. Then I saw him get down and wash Judas’s feet. He must have realized that Judas was about to betray him, but he still reached out in embrace not division. I wonder if he hoped that through this gracious act of hospitality towards him Judas would change his mind.
What is Your Response?
At communion each week our priest says “All are welcome at the table” yet the welcome of God begins long before the institution of communion at the last supper. Radical hospitality is at the heart of the festive season. In fact the whole story of Christmas is about the radical hospitality of a God who comes to welcome us all home to the kingdom banquet.
Many feel surrounded by enemies in the current political climate. How do we respond in these hard times? This is not a time for complacency but for commitment, not for hate but for love, not to close doors but to open them, not for violence but for peace, not to wound but to heal, not to bring division but to inspire reconciliation.
There is no better place to learn to listen, not to the answers in our own heads but to the unsettling questions others are asking, than when sitting around the table sharing a meal. And there is no better time of year to take Jesus radical call to hospitality seriously and reach out with love not hate, seeking to build bridges not walls, to embrace compassion not conflict. Christmas is about listening to the voice of God entering our world and it is in the place of listening that change can begin for all of us.
As we move towards Thanksgiving (at least here in the U.S.), Advent and Christmas, think about the people you disagree with, want to exclude or think are about to betray you. How could you reach out with radical hospitality to them at this season? Sit with your eyes closed and listen to this version of Psalm 23. What names come to mind? Perhaps it is someone like Mary, an unwed mother who could have been thrown out by her family. Or someone like the shepherds, despised by the society around them yet welcomed to the manger. Or the wise men, foreigners like immigrants, refugees and those of other religions. What are the first steps you need to make to reach out in a spirit of hospitality and reconciliation? How could you embrace the radical journey of hospitality?
Closing Prayer
Lord, help us to listen deeply not to the answers in our own heads but to the questions others ask. Lord, help us to provide environments where others can relax, express themselves and learn to listen too. We know that listening is where change begins and we all need to change. May we learn to listen deeply and see our world transformed.
by Kate Kennington Steer, images by Kate Kennington Steer
This Sunday marks the end of the liturgical year, and it is a festival about which I have always been highly ambivalent. I have shied away from the definitiveness of the label of Christ as King, shunning the triumphalism associated with a display of pomp and power, and the whole metaphor sits uneasily with me. It feels all too human and fallible a symbol to ascribe to the Christ.
Have I have been so busy having complicated ideological objections to the image of a male Christ as a royal ruler that I have forgotten to ask myself: what is all this resistance? Is it actually the idea that I am a subject to a higher power which causes my arrogant soul the most concern?
Whilst I was reading Christine Valters Paintner’s book, Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics this year, I was rather brought up short by her inclusion of the archetype of the Sovereign as an essential companion on the spiritual path. She uses the life and poetry of King David to explore both the positive and shadow aspects of this archetype, since ‘sovereignty is about being centered in your own power and taking full responsibility for meeting your needs’:
The archetype of the Sovereign manifests strength, centeredness, security, stability, vitality, and joy. It is the part of us that overcomes the disorder and chaos of life, allowing creativity to arise from places that feel difficult or challenging. Sovereigns rule from their true Self, the deepest and wisest parts of their being … A true Sovereign blesses others by his or her presence … Sovereigns create safe and healthy spaces for others to grow and develop their gifts and are never threatened by others living into their own power as well. (20-22)
John Valters Paintner’s reflection on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem made me further question my resistance to calling Christ my King and celebrating the Christ as such. I love the long echoes of one of my favourite passages in the Advent lectionary from Isaiah 9.6 that the child born as Jesus will be called ‘Prince of Peace’ so why do I have such difficulty conceiving of the Jesus of the gospels as royal? Yet, as John points out in the act of entering Jerusalem ‘Jesus owns his sovereignty’,
for even Christ, when the time is right, takes command and issues orders. He knows when to take charge and how to proceed decisively. It is what needs to be done because the time is at hand. (25)
Christine Valters Paintner stresses that sovereignty is in many ways a midlife word, since ‘we don’t really begin to live into our own power until we have grown wise enough to recognize our limitations as well’ (20) and I think it is Paintner’s connection between creating and ruling that is helping me confront my own prejudices. I know my best work comes from sharing the places where I am most barren, most vulnerable, most broken. I often feel in desperate need of someone to tell me they can shape these wounds into blossoms, yet I consistently resist suggestion, guidance and frameworks imposed by others (however well intentioned).
Will I instead listen to the invitation from the Creator Christ, the Christ who is King, who is here to free me from my resistance? The Creator Christ is the One who gives me my own creative power in turn. The Creator King is here to manage and protect that sacred power so that there may be an outpouring from me which will bless others. Christ the King is the One who has consecrated my call to create in the King’s name. There is no place for being a passive subject under a benign dictator’s rule, I am an artist by Royal appointment, I have a place in growing the wealth of the Kingdom for the good of all.
This Sunday is also known popularly as ‘stir up Sunday’, and the rhythms of the season suggest it is time to make preparations for the winter feasts. Material preparations become spiritual in the very act of making a meal to share, making a card to send, or making a present to give.
The power to create these acts of love comes precisely out of the possibility of using the energies of trouble, struggle, difficulty and uneasiness to generate a life-giving alternative to the narratives of our society which tell us poverty, injustice, inequality are inevitable and fated, that God’s revelation is impossible, that a faith in God’s power to change the status quo is unsustainable. Instead we are encouraged to give over the combined actions of hand and heart, praying together
Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
So what am I prepared to do to bring forth such plenty? Will I wait on my knees before the Christ who holds the ultimate power of life; wait for the Christ who will be the beginning and is already the end; wait for the Christ whose rule over all creation encompasses even me?
Will I listen to the indwelling Spirit of the Christ who is the Creator who longs for me to grow in love? Will I welcome the prompts to find the places where I am empowered to create a blessing for another in my turn? Will I open my eyes to the opportunities of ‘wearing my own crown’, remaining secure in times of crisis, uncertainty and difficulty, looking for ways to transfigure those powers, safe in the unknowing of all save one thing: Christ is King?
Thy Kingdom Come.
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One day this summer I was waiting to speak to one of our volunteer receptionists, but it was clear there would be a slight delay. Unthinkingly, I said “I’ll just take my cleaning in” – a two minute job I could do anytime. “You are like me” she said “You can’t sit still”. I simply smiled.
Later that week I took a walk in a local small nature reserve. Tucked among the houses, it’s a small urban wilderness awash with birdsong: somewhere you can be almost guaranteed a rare moment of isolation.
As I meandered through the twisting pathways, several times there flitted across my path a brightly coloured butterfly. Yellow-green and vibrant, I wanted to capture its image, partly to identify it, and partly, even allowing for the limitations of a photograph, to depict its beauty. In the event, it would not allow me to do either. It refused to stop, moving ceaselessly and not stopping even for a moment for the summer sunshine to catch its wings.
Seeking to see more closely the birds darting across a clearing, I sat for a moment on an old tree, once alive but now stripped of bark yet still beautiful in its exposed vulnerability. The birds remained elusive, yet, as I persevered, a peacock butterfly came and gently rested on the bare wood. In contrast to its restless distant relative, it seemed unhurried, and I was able to appreciate its extraordinary markings and even to capture the moment, however inadequately.
I have only recently begun to realise that yes, I’m not good at sitting still, unless the inactivity has another purpose, such as writing a sermon or listening to someone. I would imagine that (like most things) it is a mixture of the way I am wired, and circumstance. Certainly growing up in a hospital (where my father worked and so, because of its remote setting, we were obliged to live there) I was unusually aware from an early age of the fragility of life and its brevity. So packing plenty in to each day somehow became inured.
Our ceaseless activity can of course have many geneses with varying degrees of health, from a profoundly anxious restlessness to the uninhibited and joyous grasping of the moment that we see in children.
This time of year brings for many of us a restless over-activity. Some is necessary, but perhaps it is a good moment to pause and consider – might something other than necessity be driving it? Are we searching for some perfect Christmas which exists only in fiction and not in the reality of our lives? Are we afraid to lose love from people around us if we do not get it right? What makes it so difficult to simply pause, regroup, and take a moment to be still and silent?
Jesus understood our difficulty. Those of us who may find it difficult to linger in the moment need, I suspect, to regularly hear again his word to agitated disciples: “Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message)
The unforced rhythms of grace are very, very different from our own, and profoundly counter-cultural. Few, perhaps, really achieve living like that. The peacock butterfly though: ah yes, my tree-sharing friend had grasped what I so often fail to, and I was richer for it. This season I want not to lose the lesson of that balmy summer day.
My prayer – for myself and those of you who read this – is that somehow this advent and Christmas we hold on to some moments of stillness and, when we have lost them, to at least look within to wonder why.
This post is part of our Novemeber focus on Preparing for Advent and Christmas.
St. Hilda of Whitby
613-November 17, 680
“maintain the gospel peace”
St. Hilda of Whitby’s Resurrection day, was November 17, 680. She died at the age of 66, after serving God with creativity, energy, strength, and courage in spite of a six year debilitating illness. Her final words as Abbess to her nuns and monks were “to maintain the gospel peace among themselves and with others.” Those words still ring true to us almost 1,400 years later.
Hilda was the 7th c. Abbess/founder of double monasteries. This was a Celtic way of monastic living that included monks and nuns in the same monastery in separate small houses, but worshiping together in the abbey church. Hilda is known to us mainly through The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. There was something so intriguing about Hilda’s devoted life of faith, work, and grace that Bede wrote with unabashed admiration about this Abbess. He also records that Hilda was so loved and respected that everyone who knew her called her “Mother.” Bede himself described her as “Christ’s servant” and that many came to salvation through hearing of her industry and goodness. He also wrote of her emphasis on learning and literacy, scholarly study of the Bible, good works, holding all things in common, and living with one another in peace and love. Five Bishops of early England were trained under her tutelage.
Hilda was born into the royal Deiran household, the great-niece of King Edwin of Northumbria and the daughter of Hereric and his wife Breguswith. Bede includes a story in which Breguswith while pregnant with Hilda, dreamed that she discovered a precious jewel under her garment. When she gazed at the jewel it flashed a blaze of light that illuminated all Britain with its splendor. Breguswith sensed that this was a prophetic dream about her daughter Hilda who would bring light to the isle of Britain.
Hilda was baptized at age 14 alongside King Edwin and his extended family by St. Paulinus in the especially built wooden York Minster on Easter Sunday, April 12 in 627. Almost twenty years later, she was in East Anglia for a year preparing to travel by ship to France to join her sister, the former Queen Hereswith of East Anglia who was living in a convent east of Paris. However, when St. Aidan, the first Bishop of Lindisfarne heard of this, he pleaded with her to stay in England to establish a small monastery north of the River Wear. This was quite likely where St. Hilda’s Church, South Shields is located now.
After Aidan saw her great ability to administer and spiritually lead a small monastery, a year later, about 649, he persuaded her to become the second Abbess of the monastery at Hartlepool. Eight years later, King Oswiu gave Hilda about 1,200 acres of land called Streanaesalch, later known as Whitby. He wished for her to build a double monastery there and to raise his infant daughter, princess Æfflæd. The famous Synod of Whitby that dramatically reshaped the Celtic way of life was held here in 664.
Hilda was a supporter of the arts, music, and learning. Bede records that Caedmon, a cow herder on her monastic lands who had some ways with words and music was brought to her to hear. Hilda recognized his gift from God and encouraged him to stay at the monastery to learn the Bible stories and to create them into poetry and song. She perceived that teaching the Bible in the vernacular instead of Latin would help bring the people of the area to Christ. Through this encounter with Hilda, Cædmon became the first English poet.
On the night of Hilda’s death and resurrection, something rather mystical occurred. It was one of those Celtic thin places where the veil between heaven and earth seems almost gossamer. Begu, a nun at Hilda’s most recently established convent of Hackness, saw a vision of the roof opened and Hilda’s soul carried to heaven by angels. Begu told the Prioress of her vision and they all began to pray. It is even said that the bells at Hackness rang on their own at her death. While these nuns were in prayer, the monks from Whitby rushed over to Hackness to inform them of Hilda’s death. The monks discovered that the nuns were already aware of her death because of Begu’s vision. Hilda was most likely buried at Whitby and her relics later taken to Glastonbury to protect them from the 9th c. Viking raids on Whitby.
Hilda’s legacy lives on through hundreds of schools, colleges, priories, and churches throughout the world bearing her name. At Lindisfarne, the “Community of Aidan and Hilda,” a dispersed international ecumenical community of men and women, has their office and a retreat center. In June of 2015, the 43 mile “St. Hilda’s Way” in Northeast England that extends from Hinderwell in Yorkshire to Whitby Abbey was opened. This pilgrimage path visits eight churches and chapels all dedicated to St. Hilda.
Thank you God for St. Hilda and her courageous good work of establishing beacons of learning, literacy, and light, bringing new life in Christ to the Anglo-Saxons. May we hear and allow those last words of St. Hilda to penetrate our lives and our souls so that we too may “maintain the gospel peace among ourselves and with others.”
Further information on St. Hilda of Whitby and other Celtic and Anglo-Saxon saints can be found at www.saintsbridge.org.
Photo above: By Carolyn Custis James – https://carolyncustisjames.com/2012/11/19/happy-st-hildas-day/, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64601882
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