On Both Sides of the Table

On Both Sides of the Table--February 28, 2019

"Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to stranger, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it." [Hebrews 13:1-2]

Maybe I've had it wrong all this time.  Maybe we all have, we churchy Respectable Religious folks.

See, I'll confess something.  After all this time, this whole month of our focus on "seeing Christ here... with the Other," I've tried to pay attention, and I think the Spirit has hit me over the head enough to get it--the followers of Jesus are called, unquestionably, particularly to look out for the needs of "the stranger."  I get it.  I may be dense, but I get that we are supposed to look beyond "Me and My Group First" to the needs of those who are outside the boundaries of my neighborhood, outside the lines of my county or commonwealth or country or comfort zones, outside the walls of my church building.  But along with that, I have to admit I have assumed that we "insiders" were supposed to show particular love for "outsiders" for the sake of the outsiders.  But here the writer to the Hebrews smacks me upside the head again and says, "That's kind of arrogant, isn't it?  Maybe the strangers whose paths cross with yours haven't been sent to your door so that YOU can 'fix' THEM, but perhaps God has sent them so that THEY might be a blessing to YOU."

And that brings me up short. 

I have this way of assuming that I've got it all figured out, that I've got it right, and that I'm the one with the correct answers, good theology, abundance of resources, and stores of divine blessing, and then assuming that everybody else around, especially "outsiders," "foreigners," "strangers," and "outcasts," are poor, needy helpless schlubs that I must "fix." And my second default assumption is that "fixing" them means "making them like me."

But the writer of Hebrews takes all that and turns it on its head.  The writer of Hebrews still directs the New Testament community to "show hospitality to strangers," like all the Torah, the prophets, and the teachings of Jesus had, but this passage reminds us that it may not be for their sake, but for mine.  It may well be that God has chosen to bless me by the presence of new faces who are welcomed to my table.  

That, of course, is the backstory that the writer of Hebrews has in mind when he says that "some have entertained angels without knowing it."  It's a callback to the story of Abraham and the three visitors, who turn out to be the very presence of Yahweh somehow (sometimes it is taken to be God and two angels, sometimes a teaser for the Trinity, and sometimes people just throw up their hands at why there are three and just say, "It was God who was visiting Abraham--that's enough to say.").  Well, Abraham back in Genesis 18 sees these three travelers coming his way, and he goes out of his way to ask them to stop, to eat, and to find some shade under his tent.  And in that exchange, the visitors (again, who are really somehow God) announce to Abraham that he and Sarah will have a son before long--a message so preposterous sounding that the elderly couple breaks into laughter, which eventually becomes the name of their son, Isaac, when he does come along.  Now, nowhere in the Genesis passage does the text suggest that the promise of a child is a "reward" for the hospitality, and yet the fact that these three strangers come to Abraham and find his door open to them is the means by which the promise and blessing are given.  The traveling strangers have come, not so that Abraham can puff himself up with patronizing pity for them or so that he can pat himself on the back for being a "good, moral person", but they have come for Abraham's benefit--as agents of blessing for him and his wife, and indeed all of creation.

And this is the great reversal of God--sometimes we imagine that we are sent into situations because, as people who "have it all together," we are there to help out someone not as good as we are, to show to the world "my virtue" by being willing to go and rub elbows for a bit ladeling soup for "those people" who need so much help.  And this, it turns out, is a load of dingoes' kidneys. Sometimes God has it in mind to bless me in ways I never expected, from the people I never expected had anything to offer me.  If I can quit casting myself as the hero on the white horse "fixing those broken people" and instead see myself as someone who can receive blessing from "strangers," "outsiders," and "foreigners," then maybe I will see that God has been staring me in the face this whole time while I was to busy patting myself on the back to see.

In fact, maybe in God's infinite cleverness, this has been God's intention all along--that both of us, who are each strangers from one another, find ourselves blessed by the presence of God... in the other!  And maybe instead of me "doing my noble community service by doling out soup from the Helper side of the soup kitchen line" I will be able to sit at a table with the stranger who has been sent across my path, and I can see that from the other side of that table, I am the stranger who has been sent across theirs.  And perhaps God has it in mind that we both become blessings for each other in that encounter.

If our understanding of "welcoming the stranger" or "caring for the Other" is one-directional, we will always be tempted to puff ourselves up as though "we well-to-do church folk have come to rescue you poor helpless objects of our pity."  But if we see from the Scriptures themselves that God intends to bless the people on both sides of the table, indeed, in every seat around the table, then we can see that we are sent both to be blessings and to be blessed in the encounter with the "other" whose story intertwines with mine today.

Our reason as Christians to "show hospitality to the stranger" (or, to be literal about the Greek word that gets translated "hospitality," to "love the foreigner") is not that we've got it all figured out and they've got it all backwards, but rather that an infinitely clever God chooses to show up at both sides of the table, offering blessing in both directions all around.

We are called to welcome and love those we would regard as "the Other," (those same folks who would look at me and call me "the Other" as well, mind you), in order to discover Christ is present both in my attempt to show love for the person at my table, and that Christ is present as well in the other who dares to sit with me and break bread and bring blessing there, too.

Today, see Christ in the face of the stranger--not simply as someone who is there for us to "fix," but as someone Christ has sent perhaps that we might be healed, too.

Lord Jesus, give us the eyes to recognize you in all the unexpected faces you wear, at all of our tables.