From Your Minister
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For years, Biblical scholars have suggested that the real sin condemned in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was not homosexuality, but inhospitality.
When Lot welcomed in wandering angels, who were sent to see if the town of Sodom was really as wicked as its reputation, the neighbors demanded that he throw them out of his house. According to many scholars, it is because of their inhospitality to the angels that the town was destroyed.
Of course, inhospitality is not the sin that has been named from that story, nor the one that has been called “an abomination.”
But it makes me imagine. What if—instead of “sodomy” becoming a name for sexual activity between people of the same gender—TV preachers railed about the abomination of inhospitality? Imagine what our culture might be, if being inhospitable was seen as the deepest indication of depravity!
Kids would feel terrified and ashamed, not because they might be gay, but because they were not kind enough to strangers. Laws would be passed and in election years politicians would posture not about who could or could not benefit from equal protections under marriage laws, but rather about just how generously guests ought to be treated. Imagine how that would transform our conversations about immigration policy!
I love to think about it. I know people from other cultures for whom inhospitality is an abomination, unforgivable. They are trained from the earliest age to watch for the needs of others, to tend to them, to offer what they have to welcome the stranger.
I remember a trip to China I took a few years back. I was part of an interfaith delegation, walking into remote villages to interview women about abortion and birth control. (This was after President Bush had cut off all U.S. appropriations for the United Nations Population Fund, declaring that the UN was coercing Chinese women into having abortions. We were investigating this claim.)
We would walk into a tiny one-room house, with one giant brick bed. In several houses, women told us that four generations lived happily together in their house. They would beam as they told us this; it was the deepest source of pride. Not belongings, but harmony among the generations. Hospitality to one another in a very small space.
In each house, we were offered whatever sustenance might be at hand. A cup of tea, an orange cut into tiny pieces.… In one house, we were offered a dirty jelly jar of water—water which someone had walked miles to procure—to pass around and share. The generosity of that offer—“Here is the only thing I have, please take it!”—was profound, even though I was terrified about what would happen if I actually drank it. (Years of mothering came in handy here, with plenty of practice fake-eating stuff cooked by kids.)
I kept imagining, what if five or six totally random people from China wandered around my town, knocking on doors to ask residents about birth control and abortion. Would they be greeted by someone saying “Come in, all that I have is yours!” More likely they’d be greeted by hostility and a slammed door, if not outright violence. Hospitality is neither an expectation, nor even particularly a virtue, in my town.
Here at the CLF, we have been thinking a lot about hospitality as we struggle to design and launch an online sanctuary that is truly welcoming to strangers while still serving the needs of those who are already here. What angels might wander by, we have wondered, and what is the very best of ourselves that we might offer to them?
One section of the online sanctuary I particularly love is called “Care and Help.” I think of it as a giant, multi-faceted welcome mat. Here, dozens of Unitarian Universalists are sharing themselves with wild generosity, by telling tender stories from their own hearts and lives. Essentially, these people are saying:
Here is my story, please use it however it may help you. My child is autistic. My mother has Alzheimer’s. My partner died. I am lonely. Reading the newspaper overwhelms and depresses me. My marriage fell apart. I can’t find a job.
In every case, the person then says, in essence:
If you are on the same road, I offer you a blessing! Here, take a piece of my own broken heart and carry it with you, and let me carry yours with me. We are not alone. Life is not hopeless. We will carry on.
This sharing of self is radical hospitality. It may look more like a dirty jelly jar of water than it does an opulent feast at a wealthy table. But the gift of transforming a life tragedy, through years and tears, into a spiritual practice is no small thing. We hope that it will be experienced by seekers as healing balm indeed—precious elixir.
May you entertain guests that arrive from all directions, knowing that they may be angels. May you share from your own heart the blessings that are yours to offer the wanderer. And may you always feel welcomed here, seen as the spark of the divine that you truly are, able to trust that whatever we have is yours.
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