The first element that Bass identifies as a quality of a thriving church is that of hospitality, what Rose in an earlier blog specifies as "radical hospitality."
For me, radical hospitality is about the welcoming of those whom we wouldn't expect, or even hope, to bring into our midst, to offer those the love of God through food, through fellowship, through the messy acknowledgment of our shared humanity, our shared createdness in God's image.
It's often the case that one realizes the profundity of radical hospitality when one imagines or remembers its opposite: moments when one was **not** welcome, when one was made to feel a stranger and never more than that. I would venture to guess that all of us have felt or experienced this at some point in our lives.
So when were you a stranger? What did you experience? And how did you feel remaining the stranger?
I'm asking for painful memories, I know. But God calls us to name our pain, to bring these pains to God, and see how God's healing of our pain transforms us to heal the pains of others. I hope that you call upon God's courage as you remember this pain, one that is so palpably felt individually and one that is almost certainly understood by all in different but no less painful contexts.
Three years ago, Julie and I visited some friends in the Bay Area. These friends are well-known political activists, and happen to be chummy with someone whose activism has made her something of a celebrity. This "celebrity" is also an academic, and on the weekend that we visited our friends, this person threw a party (there was a conference going on at the time). My friends suggested that we come along. I was giddy. This celebrity is someone whose books I've read, whose story I've admired, and who continues to be for me a beacon of justice-making.
I didn't know many people at this party, so I stayed close to Julie and one of the friends who invited us. About an hour into it, someone that I did know, a fellow academic in my field, walked into the house where the party was held. He did his obligatory hugs and faux kisses with the hosts, and "worked the room." Then he saw me. He did a double-take, and then, trying to recompose himself, asked in as nice a voice he could muster, "What are you doing here?" I fumbled an explanation of how I came to the party, and why I "belonged." He said, "Ah," and then moved on.
For him, it was probably an innocuous question. For me, it was a moment of humiliation. I was a young, very nervous, very insecure, newly-minted academic, and with five words someone was able to insinuate that I somehow didn't belong in this special place, this special event. I have known this person for years in professional contexts, but in this more intimate space, his question -- what are you doing here? -- was not so much a question as it was a demand. It was a question that demanded conditions for belonging, conditions for welcoming. It was one moment of many in which I saw with such clarity how easy it is for communities of whatever purpose to set up rules and hierarchies that give those on the "inside" value and those outside the status of, at best, tolerated visitor and, at worst, interloper.
I've experienced this before, and in more painful ways. But what made me so extraordinarily sad that night was that (1) I thought I was in the company of people who didn't ascribe to such conditional hospitality and (2) I thought that I'd earned my stripes to belong and (3) I think I actually believed, in some ways, in the very system of values that was at the moment benignly excluding me.
I can't say that I haven't committed this sin of conditional hospitality, but that memory of not "being a stranger," but rather **becoming** a stranger has stayed with me since then, and it animates the way I try to act in my professional life and beyond.
Mine is such an innocuous story. It's a silly one, really. But it's through those moments of remembrance oneself as a "stranger in the land" that one can begin to understand more fully the radical love that comes from God's hospitality and the one God calls us to live into.
As you think of your experience of being the stranger, ask yourself then: how would or did Jesus heal your feeling of being the stranger? What would he do to make you feel welcome?
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I appreciate these observations that Jim has shared about *not* belonging. They are honest, and I can feel his pain acutely.
My childhood was infused with that sense of *not* ever quite belonging. Our family moved frequently, and there was always the new school thing to deal with. I was enrolled in my fifth school by the middle of fourth grade. Many of my strengths as an adult are the result of responding to the challenges created by constant adjustments and change. But the sense of *not* belonging created a true introvert who compensated by becoming a crazy extrovert. (If that makes any sense).
And really, there were other things that made me feel as if I never belonged. I loved history and was the only fourth grader who had a subscription to "The Civil War Times." I liked older people more than people my age (knew more, had great stories, were very interesting). I read too much. As I got older, I preferred to wear my brother's mechanic jeans (holes from battery acid all over the place) to more flattering and fashionable clothing.
Summary: I always felt slightly out of it, although my high school yearbook indicates I was a cheerleader, prom princess, twirler, ASB officer, yearbook editor, scholar, athlete, etc...all outward indications of belonging. But I never felt as if I truly did, and those feelings of not belonging haunted me throughout my youth. The resurgence of the Greek system when I was in college created enormous feelings of conflict, and distance between those friends who pledged, and those of us who (a) weren't asked to, and/or (b) didn't, because of larger concerns about social justice, equity, etc.
Our family was also set apart by the fact that my parents divorced when I was quite young. At that point, divorce was not that mainstream, and all of the kids in my family felt a great deal of shame about our situation. My mother worked full-time, which in addition to creating all sorts of logistical problems in the days before childcare and after-school programs, also set us apart from other families. She couldn't belong to the social grouping of stay-at-home moms, and as a result, we couldn't belong fully, either.
One of the few places I could always feel as if I belonged was the Episcopal Church. It seemed to never change (although clearly, it changed radically and I was just too young and self-absorbed to notice). I always felt that I had a right to be in any Episcopal Church, anywhere, that it was my heritage, a critical part of my identity, the one point where my belonging could not be challenged. (Because of course, we check credentials at the door!).
The common elements of Episcopal life (BCP, Hymnal, Liturgy) served as my anchor in church life. I marvel that these elements link our life together across geographic borders and generations. It's a source of constant amazement and wonder for me, and I share it with youth in our church every time I have an opportunity: these things as symbols of their belonging to Christ and this church beyond our parish, beyond our ability to fully appreciate or imagine.
Point: even if I never felt as if I belonged in other places, the church was a place where I fit seamlessly. As I grew older, I began to fully appreciate Christ's message of radical hospitality: the welcoming table. I want others to experience that.
(And as always, I cannot understand how those who really read Christ's history - the radical nature of his life, the radical nature of the challenges he made to authority, the set order, placing the least first, reconceiving the role of women, etc...essentially upending all sorts of social structures and constructs - I really cannot understand how they can attribute conservative things to him. He was radical in the nature and extent of his love for us. There is nothing conservative in what he offers us).
My daughter is fortunate enough to have attended the same school for the last six years (she has lived in one house in her life; I lived in more than a dozen houses and apartments before the age of 29).
The student population at her school has remained remarkably stable, and several of her classmates have been with her since pre-school. Fifth graders now, they are all eager for the wider frontiers of middle school - new friends, new teachers, new possibilities. Really, they are chafing at the identities and roles they've played in their group. A new, much larger school environment will enable them to shed some of their childhood identity, try on new roles, and experience new ways of being.
But if they care to think about it this way, they should always have a sense of belonging to this group of children who have grown up together, in this place, and the kind of security and safety net that implies, even as they begin taking different paths.
This sort of stability must be unusual for many American children today. I have cultivated it for my daughter, guarded it jealously, so intent on assuring she avoids the pain of constant upheaval and a lack of rootedness.
And again, I think about the sense of *not* belonging that must plague the children of the homeless or marginally sheltered who attend school with my daughter. So many of the things we take for granted - being able to bake cupcakes for a school bake sale - are simply not possible for those who are homeless.
My daughter shares that often now, as her peers enter adolescence, there is a floating angst about not belonging. It plagues them, affects them, colors some of their days. They all feel it at some point or another, the sense of being different, and being less because of the differences. Despite the strong roots and stability we as parents have strived to provide, they don't feel entirely anchored.
I realize now that being anchored and belonging is not a function of staying in one place, in one home, in one circuit. Rather, it's an internal spiritual compass that serves as our magnet, and guides us. Some might call it True North. Christians would call it Christ, or God's presence, or perhaps grace.
Perhaps radical hospitality is not just providing the warm smile, the hot coffee, the lovely church, the trappings of belonging on Sundays. Perhaps radical hospitality is in sharing that we belong already: we belong to Christ and in Christ, and that each of us - homeless or homely or homie - can claim that grace.
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