The Mysticism of Hospitality

Manna House was quiet when I arrived Tuesday morning to start the coffee. There was not even one guest waiting for me at the gate. I entered the house, plugged in the coffee, and sat down in the kitchen for forty minutes of reading, reflecting, and praying. I have done the same thing for some twelve years now.

            I first read the “Saint of the Day” from Robert Ellsberg’s fine book, “All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time.” Then I turn to my “Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary” for the daily psalms with scripture and prayers. Somedays this rich feast of saints and psalms leads me to write. On other days, I simply sit in silence, listening to the birds, the passing traffic, the arrival of guests, and letting all of that abide in the Word of God I have just read and prayed over.

            I am convinced that hospitality cannot last without returning faithfully to prayer. There is a mysticism inherent to Christian hospitality. The mysticism is in the vision of guests as Christ. This mystic vision forms the practice of hospitality as sacramental. The guests are outward signs of the invisible reality of the presence of Christ. In the guests, Christ resides, just as much as Christ resides in the Eucharistic bread and wine shared on a Sunday morning. The guests are sacred, and this reality is grounded in Christ’s own institution of this sacrament of hospitality, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46).

            Without prayer I would find it hard to maintain the mystical vision of seeing Christ in our guests. The temptation I struggle with first of all is to lapse into seeing our guests as the larger society sees them: as despicable, disgusting, and dangerous. This temptation casts the guests as beggars to whom I can give any old “charity” because “beggars can’t be choosy.” In this temptation, guests are seen as instance of the larger species called “the poor” who are not to be trusted, who are to be rigorously tested to make sure they are not getting anything for “free,” who are to be forced to jump through myriad bureaucratic hoops to get a few scraps from the master’s table. This is the view of the poor urged these days by Tennessee Governor Haslam and his henchmen. They are happily proposing yet further requirements for the poor to meet in order to receive a few measly dollars of government support.

            But as I point that finger at politicians and others, four fingers also point back at me. I know how easy it is to slip into viewing a guest with suspicion, or wishing that a particular guest would just go away and never come back, or being short tempered with a guest who is consistently demanding. “Christ comes in the stranger’s guise” I learned long ago at the Open Door Community in Atlanta (now in Baltimore). But I can easily lapse into seeing guests as just plain strange.

            Without prayer and the mystic vision of Christ in the guests there is another temptation I easily slip into: trying to save the guests who come. Like the “charity” of the “beggars can’t be choosy” variety, this second temptation is another form of control. In this case, the control I seek is that of the souls of the guests. I seek to remodel guests into my image, rather than respecting that they are already made in the image of God. Hospitality is not about reforming people, it is about sharing together God’s redemptive grace known in love. Father Gregory Boyle puts it this way, “The intentionality of what we do is really not about trying to change folks or save them, but to savor and cherish them.”

            To welcome guests in a way that savors and cherishes them, welcoming them in God’s grace as I am welcomed by them in God’s grace, I need to pray to nourish the mystic vision of the guests as Christ. I need to make the time and the space in which God’s gracious hospitality receives me in my strangeness, my brokenness. In this prayer, I am joined to Christ, welcomed as Christ by God. In prayer I am able to welcome guests knowing, how in them, God has welcomed me.

God Don't Play Favorites

Nearly ten years ago, I went to the border between the U.S. and Mexico. I saw Nogales, a town divided by a wall erected by the U.S. government. For years the people in Nogales, Mexico and Nogales, Arizona moved freely back and forth, going to work, to church, to visit with family, for social events. Then the wall went up. It divided the land, the town, and the people.

            I went to the border with students from Memphis Theological Seminary to learn about immigration. Our class was called, “Faith at the Borders.” In addition to going to Nogales, we went to other towns near the border. And we went to Tucson, Arizona, where a number of groups sought to respond to the humanitarian crisis caused by closed borders and a wall. 

            We talked with people on both sides of that wall who were active in issues related to immigration. We saw the poverty on the Mexican side of the wall, and the factories run by U.S. companies that profited from cheap Mexican labor with attempts at unionization blocked by law and by violent force. We learned about how the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) destroyed local economies in Mexico and caused people to head north in search of work.

            We went further into Mexico, away from the wall. We walked in the desert. We followed the path of those who sought a place beyond the wall to cross the border into the United States. We saw the “coyotes” who take people across the border for a price. We saw their weapons and learned of their connection to the drug trade. We spoke with border guards and immigration officials both in Mexico and in the U.S.

            In Tucson, we saw the mass deportation of undocumented people. They had made it into the United States, and lived here for years. But now they were bound in chains, pushed through a perfunctory hearing, and then transported to the border. There they were tossed out on the Mexican side with no resources. I spoke with one man wearing a New York Yankees ball cap. He had been brought to the U.S. when he was a child, four years old. Now he was dumped into Mexico with no family, no connections, no place to go, and not even able to speak Spanish.

            On both sides of the wall we saw people of faith offering hospitality. On the Mexican side of the wall, this hospitality welcomed the people thrown out of the United States. On the U.S. side of the wall, this hospitality welcomed people who survived the desert and the “coyotes” and made it across the border.

            At the time of this class, I was just a few years into the work of hospitality at Manna House. But, then as now, I saw the connections between my experiences on the border and my experiences with our guests from the streets. 

            Both our guests, and the undocumented who come to this country from other lands, are refugees. Both are pushed from their homes by economic and political powers beyond their control. Both are on the move in search of jobs, and safe places to stay. Both are vulnerable to powerful people who will exploit them in their poverty and desperation. Both are hounded by policies enforced by the police or other government agents that focus on the “crime” of being poor. Both thus suffer from a presumed criminality that makes their lives legally tenuous and culturally suspect.

            I thought about these connections as I shared the Word of the Day with our guests at Manna House over the past few days. “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism” (James 4:1).

            The refugees from the streets drew direct conclusions from this passage.

“God don’t play favorites.”

“If you believe in Jesus, you can’t favor some people over other people.”

“Ain’t nobody better than anyone else.”

“There’s something of God in everyone; you gotta respect that.”

But they also drew contrasts between this Word of the Day and their experienced realities.

 “Trump, our commander in grief, doesn’t believe that.”

“That ain’t the way the world works.”

“People see me as homeless and say, ‘You’re not legit.’”

“Must not be very many believers in that glorious Lord Jesus Christ.”

              I see our guests at Manna House as faith-filled realists. As people of faith, they know the meaning of this biblical passage is clear. If we are followers of Christ, then we must not play favorites. We must treat everyone with dignity. We must welcome the stranger. But as realists they see this nation for what it is. The rich are favored over the poor. The white are favored over the black and the brown. People without homes or shelter are “not legit,” they are condemned as “illegals.”

            The contrast between faith and reality is where the work of discipleship takes place. Like Jesus, disciples must be agitators, unsatisfied with the way things are, inspired by a vision of the way things ought to be. At Manna House, we first try to live the vision by practicing hospitality. We welcome and affirm the dignity of those pushed around and judged as “not legit.”

            But we are also called to live this vision in a second way. Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus Christ has eliminated the dividing wall between us (Ephesians 2:14). If we are in Christ, then we cannot practice favoritism. We have to fearlessly advocate for those persons displaced by greed and fear and walls. So we agitate for public policy that tears down the walls that separate us in the name of playing favorites. We agitate for a society that builds up every one as persons made in the image of God. God don’t play favorites.