One of the better known quotes from the Rule of St Benedict is about
welcoming guests: Let all guests who
arrive be received like Christ, for he is going to say: "I was a stranger
and you welcomed me".[1] And
so down the centuries Benedictines have practised hospitality, a privilege and
obligation which is part of their Rule. This
theme has resonance in our day and our world, in which so much is now about
shutting doors, building walls, being suspicious of strangers – living, in
other words, in fear of the stranger.
If we prioritise
hospitality we have powerful support from the Bible and from the earliest days
of Jewish understanding. Repeatedly in
the Torah, and especially in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy… you shall not oppress a resident stranger; you
know the heart of a stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Or in Deuteronomy: You
shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.[2] The Jews are given two reasons for this
teaching on hospitality. The first is
that that is what God is like, and the second is that they themselves were
strangers, once, and wanderers, refugees and needy. And so, in numerous ways, were most of
us. My great-great-grandfather came
ashore on the beach at Nelson in 1843.
That must have felt quite strange.
Our cultural history is full of accounts of people migrating, arriving
as strangers, often with considerable hardships, learning new ways, acquiring a
new language. I am a stranger… hide not from me, calls the Psalmist. The
Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow.[3]
In the Christian
scriptures, much the same… Do not neglect
to show hospitality to strangers -- by doing that some have entertained angels
unawares.[4] The
wisdom here is the startling reminder that what may seem foreign to us, strange
or frightening, may be the event, the experience, in which God comes
close. How often did Jesus find crucial
meaning in such situations…? The
Samaritan woman at the well… Samaritans were indeed strangers and foreigners –
you didn’t talk to Samaritans, let alone their women! …the Samaritan who stopped to help the
injured Jew on the road to Jericho… the woman condemned for adultery… the woman
who invaded the dinner party of Simon the Pharisee… One way or another the stranger may teach us
something from God.
But increasingly
we choose safety, preferring to be among our own people, and we erect fences,
visible ones and invisible but none-the-less real, and we even legislate
against the stranger and the needy. It
is not the way of Christ. I want to
pursue this next week, but also to turn it inwards, because the stranger may
not be actually standing at the door, so much as arriving in strange guise, in
the form of unexpected events or sudden sorrows, illness or injury, ruptures in
relationships… I think the wisdom Jesus
taught applies equally in the ways we deal with these things.
[1] RB
53:1; Matthew 25:35
[2]
Exodus 23:9; Deuteronomy 10:19
[3]
Psalms 119:19; 146:9
[4]
Hebrews 13:2
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