Christ Episcopal Church
November 11, 2012
27 Proper B
Recently I spent two days on retreat at the Convent of the Transfiguration in Cincinnati. I had been to the Convent years ago for a meeting, but had not been there recently and had never been on retreat there. To be honest, I found the experience somewhat disconcerting. On the one hand, I was in an utterly foreign environment. The worship habits were quite different from ours here, even though most of the services were from the Book of Common Prayer. I never knew quite when to stand or sit, what page we were on, or how we were supposed to say the Psalm. I had a hard time reciting the Creed at the pace the Sisters recite the Creed and kept forgetting the words. I actually confessed my faith one morning in the communion of sins, which was rather embarrassing. And most challenging of all-breakfast and lunch each day were eaten in silence while one of the Sisters read to us. There is clearly a beautiful rhythm to life at the Convent that I could not begin to understand in two days. But on the other hand, the hospitality of the Sisters was nothing short of magnificent. When I arrived, my name was on the door to my room. There was a card welcoming me, by name, on the bed. When I arrived at dinner the first night, there was a napkin ring for me with my name on it. Clearly they were expecting me. One Sister invited me on a walk with the Convent dog in the morning and another made sure I knew how to follow the worship services before they started. The Sisters prayed for me, and for all their guests, by name, at the Eucharist each morning. Another made sure I knew the protocol for the Dining Room before I got there, which had to be done for each meal since the protocol varies from day to day and meal to meal. So hospitality took some real effort on their part. This complete and fairly clueless stranger was welcomed by the Sisters as a treasured guest.
The parallels between the Sisters of the Transfiguration and the Widow in the gospel lesson may seem obvious. These women have given up all their earthly possessions and, in some sense, a good bit of their individual identity. They dress alike, worship without respect for individual preference, eat the same meals, and tend to the chores they are assigned at the appointed time. They are dependent on the convent, and thus the church and thus God, for their existence. In giving up their individual identity, they find their identity and their trust rooted in God. In the gospel lesson, we hear Jesus warn the disciples against finding their identity and their trust in long robes, places of honor and fancy prayers. The widow has given all that she has, her very life, resting her identity and her trust solely in her relationship with God.
But there is another parallel this morning. This parallel is between the hospitality of the Sisters and the hospitality seen in the book of Ruth. Naomi is a Hebrew woman who moves, with her husband and two sons, from Bethlehem to Moab because there is a famine in Bethlehem. While in Moab, Naomi’s husband dies. Her two sons marry Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, but then the two sons die. Since the famine was over in Bethlehem, the three widows make plans to return there. But Naomi is insistent that her daughters-in-law return to their mothers in Moab rather than make the journey to Bethlehem. In the end, Orpah does stay in Moab, but Ruth insists on staying with Naomi. Out of the exchange between Naomi and Ruth, we get one of the loveliest passages in Scripture. Ruth says to her mother-in-law "Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."
From the beginning, the story of Ruth is a story of hospitality. When Naomi, her husband and two sons leave Bethlehem for Moab, which was actually enemy territory, these Hebrews are welcomed and live in Moab for over 10 years. The words of Ruth to Naomi are a deep expression of hospitality. We think of hospitality as the offering of food or a place to stay. But Ruth’s hospitality is the hospitality of presence. I will stay with you. In our reading this morning, we hear of Naomi’s great concern for Ruth’s security and Naomi’s plan to secure a husband for Ruth. Through what is clearly a deceptive plot, Boaz who has already offered his own hospitality to the two women, does indeed marry Ruth, another deep expression of hospitality. Their son is Obed, who would be the father of Jesse, the father of the great King David, who, other places in Scripture tell us is the ancestor of Jesus. Hospitality is what moves the story of Ruth from a young couple and their children fleeing famine to the birth of the ancestor of Jesus, who is God with us.
Hospitality is about making space in our lives for God and other people and then welcoming them into that space. Perhaps Jesus’ problem with the scribes is that is that their lives are full of long robes, self-importance, good seats, places of honor and long prayers. Perhaps they are unable to make space for other people and God in their lives and welcome them in. The widow, on the other hand, like the Sisters, is unencumbered by anything that prevents her from making space in her life for other people or God and welcoming them in. I do not think Jesus is either condemning wealth or glorifying poverty this morning. I don not think the story of the widow’s mite is primarily about money. After calling the disciples’ attention to the widow, Jesus does not say "Go and do likewise." I believe Jesus’ primary concern in this story is about making space in our lives to welcome other people and God. When our identity is rooted in that deep, radical, and sometimes inconvenient hospitality, something as wildly unexpected as Obed the ancestor of the Christ Child can be born in our midst. When our identity is rooted in divine hospitality, our relationship with earthly things will fall into place.
Amen.
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