Ordinary 16

The Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42

A few years ago, the political commentator and author, Tom Friedman had an op-ed page in the New York Times called “The Taxi Driver.” He told of being driven by a cab from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris.  During the one-hour trip he and the driver had done six things: the driver had driven the cab, talked on the cell phone, and, to Friedman’s consternation, watched a video. Friedman rode in the cab, worked on his laptop, and listened to his iPod. He realized: “There is one thing we never did: talk to each other.”

A familiar scenario? How often do people not connect in the most human of ways: talking with each other? It happens here in Church, does it not? How many people who have regularly gathered here for years are not known by anyone else; would not be missed if they fell away, become ill or were absent for an extended time?

How many of us come in and sit in the same area, if not the same seat, and know few other parishioners then those who sit around us. How many of us don’t realize we would not be missed if not here ourselves? Stephen Sondheim said it well in his song, Another Hundred People:

It’s a city of strangers, some come to work, some to play.

A city of strangers, some come to stare, some to stay…and everyday some go away…”

When was the last time you welcomed a person or family to this gathering for the Eucharist who were obviously visitors, strangers, college students, or newcomers? How many people are seeking a way back into the Church’s life and it took a lot of courage to walk through our doors? I think of the divorced and separated, gay and transgendered people, black, brown, Hispanic or someone who just slipped away and wants to reconnect with Christ and his Church? How many of these groups already have given up on the Catholic Church and this parish? Would you give this parish a second try if no one noticed you, introduced themselves to you or spoke to you?

Do we miss parishioners who are absent at this Eucharist because of the pandemic? Whether because they fell out of the habit, accepted live-streaming as equivalent to true worship, are compromised by underlying health issues or have disappeared into an assisted living situation,

become home-bound or moved away to family due to age and health?

Years ago, I left a prestigious choral group because after auditioning and being accepted no one really approached me again. If you were not a member at the group’s founding you missed all the ‘in house’ jokes and comments. It was obvious there was an inner circle of members. Various organizations, including Christian communities, may not even realize that this division has happened within in it but it causes people to feel like they are looking in from the outside. My voice was wanted but not my person. It was easy to slip away and no called to inquire why and would I have told the truth?

We can make people feel like they are looking in from outside by using the technical language of a field of knowledge, by not passing on the history of a group to a new member, by speaking another language, by being knowingly and unknowingly cliquish, by simply not engaging.

Hospitality is to be a hallmark of every Christian. This is not the sole responsibility of the clergy.

Pope Francis is tireless in encouraging and challenging us to go out from our safe havens into the margins [which maybe no further than a few pews away], to look for the stranger…not wait until they approach us.

How different is the Middle Eastern attitude shown by Abraham, who ran toward the three men and greeted them. He begs the strangers to allow him to care for them. How different might the situation of our world be if countries welcomed the refugee, immigrant and stranger rather than judge, condemn, bury in bureaucratic paperwork and procedures or just wall them out. How many fewer people would have drowned in the Mediterranean, the English Channel, the Rio Grande or the Straits of Florida?

Hospitality is not, as we might think, about food; but about a person; the person in front of us who feels excluded, out of place, is shy, new, lost and wants to be a part of the group but doesn’t know how to get in or even know if they are wanted.

Does that not raise memories for many of us when a team was being chosen; wanting desperately to be included in a school clique, even among the geeks; just as long as you were part of an “in” group? What were you? On the inside or the outside in high school, college, or today at work? What was it like to be rejected or worse – not noticed? What power, what sense of superiority did you feel if you were the one doing the choosing and deciding?

Our world and society are filled with fear these days, some generated by hateful people who themselves are afraid. Fear more than anything else keeps us apart. And why are we afraid of each other?

The Rodgers and Hammerstein’s song from “South Pacific” offers one answer: You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught from year to year,It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear, You’ve got to be carefully taught.

How much of our fear of the other is the latent, unexamined, non-reflected lessons we were taught by parents, family, church or society? Many of these lessons are being voiced anew by intolerant, racist and nationalistic politicians and religious leaders of our day.

Saint Benedict put it simply: the stranger at your door is Christ.

Hospitality for strangers, visitors, and newcomers, is the paramount task of a parish community. The rituals of welcoming, inquiring and responding to a need serve as “threshold events” into the divine life. And visitors to a parish community will decide if they will visit again or join within a few short minutes of first contact. How do people feel at our parish? 

Benedict’s wisdom firmly stands in the conviction that the guest is to be welcomed as Christ which avoids making distinctions between rich and poor, educated and uneducated, adult and child, dirty and clean, etc. No, every visitor is to be welcomed and received as Christ. Instead of making distinctions by appearance or status, Benedict’s advice is to respond to the needs of the guest as Abraham did.

And hospitality is not a one-way street. The welcomed stranger or guest will offer us new life where it is not thought possible. “The men asked Abraham, “Where is your [elder and barren] wife Sarah? He replied, “There is the tent”. One of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.””

Hospitality offers new life to both parties of the encounter.

Therefore next time, talk to the cab driver.