PRACTICING HOSPITALITY IN A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE AND DANGER
Letty M. Russell
Thank you for invited me and the women from the
International Feminist Doctor of the Ministry Program to this
campus. I am honored to be asked to speak today and happy to be
speaking on hospitality in a place that has been so hospitable to
us. I will be speaking today about Practicing Hospitality in a
World of Difference and Danger.
We live today in a world of difference and danger.
Terrorist attacks, war, violence at home and abroad, and conflict
within and outside our nations, communities, churches and homes lead us
to fear difference and seek safety. In our world today we know
that there is no safe place. Fear of the stranger leads to ever
new restrictions and government control, yet this does not provide the
safety for which we long.
For many of us safety is found by placing our
confidence in a God of welcome and hospitality. We know that even
though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God promises
to be with us. Finding in our communities of faith the assurance
of God’s love and hospitality may enable us to share that same love and
hospitality with others, even when it puts us in danger. This,
sometimes, risky practice of hospitality is part and parcel of
Christian, Jewish and Muslim spirituality. In opening ourselves
to the stranger we open ourselves to God, as did Sarah and Abraham at
the Oaks of Mamre and the travelers on the road to Emmaus (Mr. And Ms.
Cleopas) [Gen. 18:1-15; Luke 24:13-35]. In the New Testament this
love of strangers was extended not only within the Christian community
but also to those in the world around them [Gal. 6:10; I Thess.
3:12]. As Christine Pohl says in her book Making Room: Recovering
Hospitality as a Christian Tradition,
Hospitality is not optional for Christians, nor is it limited to those
who are specially gifted for it. It is, instead, a necessary
practice in the community of faith.1
This evening I will be talking about practicing
hospitality in a world of difference and danger, drawing on my own
Christian theological tradition and inviting you all to consider how
hospitality is practiced in your own religious tradition.
My reflections are in three parts: First, a discussion of the
gift of understanding as seen through the stories of Babel and
Pentecost. Second, the search for alternative forms of unity that
encourage the practice of hospitality in the face of our fear of
difference. Third, some clues to the practice of hospitality. I
want to emphasize that hospitality is a gift we have all received from
God, and it may be a response that is greatly needed as we seek what is
life giving in a very challenging and fearful world.2
GIFT OF UNDERSTANDING
Peter Gomes, Chaplain at Harvard University once
said that the important part of the Spirit’s work in the story of
Pentecost in Acts was not so much the ecstasy of the moment but the
Spirit-induced understanding. In a speech to the Covenant Network of
Presbyterians he declared:
.
That was the thing that the Spirit did, and that was how the people
could say that they each heard in their own language the wonderful
works of God. The work of the Spirit is designed to foster
understanding and ultimate reconciliation.3
To reflect on why God’s Pentecostal gift of understanding is so
important we need to remember its connection to the story of the Tower
of Babel which tells of an attempt to storm heaven at the dawn of human
history, and of God’s response in the creation of difference.4
Pentecost’s Gift
The story of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-21 has often been understood as a
sign of the reversal of Babel as nations are brought together and
united in the outpouring of Christ’s Spirit and the birth of the
church. But we need to look again at its message of unity in the
light of an interpretation of the confusion of tongues at Babel as
God’s gift of difference [Gen. 11:1-9]. If difference is a gift
which helps to prevent domination, surely it is not something to be
overcome, any more than we would want to overcome God’s gift of unity
in Christ.
One way to look at this would be to use the clue
from Peter Gomes that Pentecost is about the gift of
understanding. God makes unity possible by the gift of the Spirit
which enables people of all nations to understand one another, no
matter what language is spoken. Acts 2: 6 says that “..... each
one heard them speaking in the native language of each.”5
It does not say that they no longer had their own languages and customs
but that they could understand one another. This is not the kind of
unity envisioned by the builders at Babel. Here the unity comes
through communication across difference, rather than through building a
tower of pride, domination and uniformity.
In the book of Acts God’s inclusive Spirit not only
makes it possible to understand one another in the Spirit, but also
makes it possible for many voices to be heard and included in the
center of the discussion. The structures of domination are
challenged as women prophesy together with men, and slaves and those at
the margins of society receive the Spirit [Acts 2:17-18]. The
church is born as a community of equals whose unity comes through the
love of Christ and is proclaimed and lived out in many and diverse ways
[Acts 2:43-47]. The gift of unity is not separate from diversity
but rather an expression of community as people are called to share
their many gifts.
As Audre Lorde, an African-American lesbian writer
has put it, we discover real differences among us of race, caste. age,
gender and orientation but these differences are not a problem.
She says,
...... it is not those differences between us that are separating
us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and
to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and
their effects upon human behavior and expectation.6
God’s gift of understanding across difference is
expressed in the outpouring of the Spirit which transforms the lives of
people and their communities. The Spirit does not so much create
the structures and procedures, but rather it breaks open structures
that confine and separate people so that they can face new challenges
and create new understanding and different kinds of unity.7
I had a small experience of this on October 7th 2001
in Washington, D.C., soon after the terrorist attach in New York and
Washington. A small group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim
women theologians had gathered to discuss what we could do as women to
promote understanding and peace. When the bombs began to fall on
Afghanistan that day one of the Muslim women began to cry. Soon
we were all in tears over the misunderstanding and fears being promoted
about Islam, and about the use of military violence against the people
of Afghanistan. As a response we agreed to try creating a Sacred
Circle Study Guide that we would distribute on the Web and to create
local groups so that women of different faiths could come together and
share sacred scriptures about peace and pray together for the
overcoming of violence in the world.8
A DIFFERENT KIND OF UNITY
The stories of Babel and Pentecost lead us to expect
that God has a different kind of unity in mind. Not a unity
established through uniformity and limitation of diversity and
difference. A unity that recognizes the growing diversity of
cultural, religious, and political institutions as a gift of God rather
than a threat to our own comfortable patterns of life and faith.
Such a unity has been very much a part of Indian cultural and religious
diversify.
Unity in Tension
One way to move beyond the practice of unity through domination of the
powerful and subordination of the weak, and toward a welcoming of our
neighbor and of difference is to search alternative perspectives that
combine unity and diversity. Unity in tension is one such model
that has emerged out of discussions in the ecumenical movement as
churches in the World Council of Churches and other bilateral
conversations began to focus on ways that “all may be one” in Jesus
Christ, yet manifest that oneness in and through different
understandings of faith and order in confessional families [John
17:21].
But unity in tension no longer works well in our
extremely diverse global society made up of many religions, cultures,
races, sexual orientations and nationalities. We can no longer
achieve unity by limiting diversity in the church, in our nations, or
in the United Nations.9 Diversity itself is a major factor in
world reality and has frequently become one of the key elements of
resistance to global capitalism, American imperialism, and economic,
political and cultural uniformity.
Unity in tension’s dualistic way of thinking always
assumes that difference from the norm is a problem and that unity is
achieved by limiting or coopting or destroying difference. Those
who don’t fit because of their gender, nationality, orientation, or
economic situation are considered beyond the limits of diversity.
Let me name just one small example of this form of thinking: from the
many years I participated in Faith and Order discussions of Baptism,
Eucharist and Ministry in the World Council of Churches.10 In the
discussion of ministry women were always the problem. The
ecumenical discussion still revolved on whether women can fit the
traditional male model of Christ’s ministry, and why women cause
problems in ecumenical cooperation by insisting that their calling to
ministry be recognized. Some of the participants seemed to
consider that women’s ordination pushed the tension too far and
complicated the search for ecumenical unity. Thus it turned out
in the BEM report that this issues is considered almost always only in
the footnotes on unresolved issues.
Instead of trying to hold things in tension as the
differences increase, and blaming those who do not fit, we need to turn
to the scripture to look for other metaphors of unity in Christ.
As Thomas Best, an ecumenical theologian, has said, we need to “.....
move beyond unity-in-tension towards a vision of more complete
community.”11 This would be a vision that lifts up Paul’s emphasis on
the unity of the resurrected body of Christ, and the variety of gifts
of the Spirit [I Cor. 12]. It would be a vision from Acts 2:6 or
Galatians 3:28 that includes women and men, slave and free, Jew and
Greek, Anglo and Arab, gay and straight, young and old, persons with
disabilities and abilities, rich and poor, and so much more as those
who speak in the power of the Holy Spirit [Gal.3:28].
Unity through hospitality
But what if we decided to look for a model of unity and diversity
beginning with God’s gift of understanding. According to our
earlier discussion of Babel and Pentecost God’s concern is to make it
possible for us to be different and to speak different languages, but
to be able to understand one another. This form of unity is not
established by domination, nor even by a unity in tension, but through
the practice of hospitality. Hospitality is an expression of
unity without uniformity. Through hospitality community is built
out of difference, not sameness. In this way of thinking there is
no “either/or,” “right/wrong,” “win/lose.” Rather it is a dynamic
and ever changing relationship in which there are many possible options
for mutual expression of unity within and among religions and
nations.
In the Christian tradition hospitality in community
is a sharing of the openness of Christ to all as he welcomed them into
God’s kindom. Because this unity in Christ has as its purpose the
sharing of God’s hospitality with the stranger, the one who is “other,”
it assumes that both unity and difference belong together and do not
contradict each other.12 When they are not together and
unity has been achieved through exclusion or domination of those who
are different rather than through hospitality.
The Greek New Testament abounds in exhortations to
hospitality. John Koenig says in his book, New Testament
Hospitality, that:
philoxenia the term for hospitality used in the New Testament, refers
literally not to a love of strangers per se but to a delight in the
whole guest-host relationship, in the mysterious reversals and gains
for all parties which may take place. For believers, this delight
is fueled by the expectation that God or Christ or the Holy Spirit will
play a role in every hospitable transaction [Heb. 13:2; Rom. 1;11-12].13
Koenig describes hospitality as “partnership with strangers” and
understands hospitality as “the catalyst for creating and sustaining
partnerships in the gospel.”14 The Greek word, philoxenia, means “love
of the stranger.” And Christians are exhorted by Paul to “welcome
on another” as Christ as welcome them [Rom. 15:7]. It is the
opposite of xenophobia which means “hatred of the stranger” or the one
who is different.
This call for hospitality provides a clue to the
possibility of welcoming difference, rather than creating an easy unity
built on compliance to one interpretation of religious doctrine.15 When
we welcome those who come from different contexts and life experiences
we do learn from them, and we learn that there are many ways to
understand and live out our unity in community. These different
ways can also open up our churches, mosques and synagogues as we seek
to become partners with those who are different by sharing together in
service with others. In this way we leave off building our
institutional “towers” and begin to focus on mutual understanding and
our calling to serve in the world.
If we spend our time erecting barriers against those
who are considered marginal because of class, race, sexual orientation
or gender, we have moved away from the practice of hospitality.
If, on the other hand, we struggle for ways to work through our
differences without demeaning those we consider unimportant, we can
move beyond unity by domination, or unity in tension and toward unity
through hospitality.
CLUES TO HOSPITALITY IN A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE
The practice of hospitality does not make it easy to
find unity together across the many barriers that divide us from one
another. It pushes us to welcome many perspectives, and often
comes out of much struggle and pain. This evening I can’t develop
the many possible challenges we would face, but I want to conclude with
four clues to what such a shift might look like as we practice
hospitality in a world of difference. Then I will leave it to you
to ask how hospitality happens in your own religious and
educational institutions and communities.
Our first clue is that hospitality is best practiced
when we are clear about our own mission as an institution, and the
importance of living out God’s hospitality to us in the ways we break
down barriers between ourselves and other people. For
instance, it seems to me that UTC is very good at extending hospitality
to many groups because it is clear about its educational mission and
sees the encouragement of differences as part of that mission and
outreach.
Second, hospitality also calls us to re-examine our
own religious traditions and interpretation of scripture to see if some
of them are part of the problem. I know that as Christians we
need to be constantly struggling with our tradition to break it open in
ways the Spirit of Christ’s love becomes transparent in our
lives. In 2002 I attended a conference on HIV/AIDS in Africa held
by the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia. Some of us at Yale Divinity School are working in
partnership with these 150 African women theologians as they to change
church tradition, biblical interpretation, and cultural practices so
that the sexual taboos and customs can become part of the solution to
the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa, instead of being part of the
problem. We have many similar traditions to challenge here at
home.
A third clue to the practice of hospitality is that
partnership and power go together and we need to be constantly aware of
the misuse of hospitality to demean those with less power and wealth
and to make ourselves feel superior. I am teaching in this
DMin program sponsored by San Francisco Theological Seminary which
works with women from Africa, Latin America and Asia in leadership
education. As the women study together for the Doctor of
Ministry degree one of the most difficult aspects is trying to work
with the women who are all leaders in their own countries and churches,
and not use my power as teacher, white, US citizen to manipulate them
or demean their important contributions to the course. I can’t
join them as a partner in cross cultural learning if I do not pay
attention to the way power affects our relationships. They have
power as educated elite women in their own countries, even as they
struggle to find access to further education in feminist/liberation
theology. Together they are empowered to practice hospitality
toward women of other nations as they discover the gift of learning and
communication from one another as we work together as post colonial
subjects.
The last clue is that the practice of hospitality in
a world of difference is that it includes working toward justice
with those who are oppressed. God’s justice or righteousness includes
all the ways God intends to put things right and to mend the
creation. In our practice of hospitality that justice includes
not only an equal distribution of goods and opportunities, but also the
creation of institutional conditions that allow persons to flourish and
have a say in the shaping of their lives and communities.16 Those
who have been denied their full human dignity look for actions of
community support that are life giving for them.
In working across differences we notice issues of
nationality, race, poverty, gender and orientation and ask what
structures of injustice have helped divide us, so we can work together
on ways of breaking down barriers of fear and distrust. This is why our
DMin course is using postcolonial analysis to understand the
relationship of Gender, Gospel and Culture, looking for the
contradictions between our theology and the ways we work this out in
our own ministries in the struggle against oppression.
An impossible possibility
The calling to practice hospitality is no easy task in a world of
difference and danger. Sometimes it seems like an impossible
possibility! Although we live in an interdependent world we find
ourselves torn by difference and seeking to manifest that
oneness. Yet we live each day with the impossible possibility
that one day God will in a way to make us one and to mend the creation
that has been so torn apart. Then each of us will cease to live
apart from one another and become a part of God’s beautifully diverse
creation.17 At moments when this unity through hospitality
happens among people it is so surprising that the people are amazed and
think, like some of the crowd at Pentecost, that: “....... They
are filled with new wine” [Acts 2:13].
As we look for the impossible possibility of unity,
peace, safety and hospitality in a world of chaos and danger, we will,
nevertheless, continue to draw our hope for God’s new creation from
such stories as those of Babel and Pentecost that assure us of God’s
gift of difference and of mutual understanding.