RKT2 - Seeing the Stranger

When I was in school, I always had mixed emotions about teachers who thought they knew who you were because they happened to know your family. My dad and especially my grandmother had unintentional hidden networks throughout the school. Twenty-three years prior, my dad had graduated from the same high school I attended, while my grandmother had worked for the school system for many years as both a custodian and as a 'lunch-lady' back when 'mashed potates' on the menu meant that they had actually peeled and diced and cooked and mashed real potatoes. Every year it seemed at least one teacher would say, 'Are you Larry's son?" or "Are you Stella's grandson?"

"Yes," I would grudgingly reply, unsure what conclusions the questioner was making about my background, my intelligence or my personality. It felt like instead of seeing me, a bright new shining face in front of them, they actually saw me only through a hazy vision of my family.

The positive side is that I'm the oldest; my little brother had to bear being compared to Grandma, Dad and me.

I've done a lot of thinking lately about hospitality and how we practice it, as a community of faith and as persons of faith. To practice hospitality means that we actually see and interact with whoever comes to us. To practice hospitality means that instead of trying to figure out what boxes or categories we can fit someone into, we meet them where they are and respond to their needs as they are. To practice hospitality means the hungry get fed, the weary get to rest, the sick get healed and those who are bound get loosed. What is radical about this hospitality, God's hospitality, is that whether we are the guest or the host, we come to the table as equals, as fellow creatures and both are blessed.

But it's more than that. Hospitality, like all true Christian practices, is such because it molds us in the ways of God. For God comes to us as one who is completely other. God comes to us as a stranger, who cannot be put in a box or category of our choosing. God comes to us as a completely free person and asks us to respond. When we practice hospitality to the human strangers before us we learn to see, hear, touch and respond to the divine stranger.