"One of Us "

READING

Anne Lamott’s 1999 memoir, Traveling Mercies, tells about her troubled life, struggles with addiction and relationships, and her encounter with religious faith. Brought up as an atheist, she really didn't know what she was seeking at the Sunday morning Marin City flea market. But how she found it has become one of the classic stories of contemporary spirituality.

"[The Marin City flea market] was where I liked to be when I was hungover or coming down off a cocaine binge, here in the dust with all these dusty people, all this liveliness and clutter and color, things for sale to cheer me up, and greasy food that would slip down my throat. . . .

If I happened to be there between eleven and one . . . I could hear gospel music coming from a church right across the street. It was called St. Andrew Presbyterian, and it looked homely and impoverished, a ramshackle building with a cross on top, sitting on a small parcel of land with a few skinny pine trees. But the music wafting out was so pretty that I would stop and listen. I knew a lot of the hymns from the times I'd gone to church with my grandparents and from the albums we'd had of spirituals. Finally, I began stopping in at St. Andrew from time to time, standing in the doorway to listen to the songs. I couldn't believe how run-down it was, with terrible linoleum that was brown and overshined, and plastic stained-glass windows. But it had a choir of five black women and one rather Amish-looking white man making all that glorious noise, and a congregation of thirty people or so, radiating kindness and warmth. During the time when people hugged and greeted each other, various people would come back to where I stood to shake my hand or try to hug me; I was as frozen and stiff as Richard Nixon. After this, Scripture was read, and then the minister named James Noel who was as tall and handsome as Marvin Gaye would preach, and it would be all about social injustice - and Jesus, which would be enough to send me running back to the sanctuary of the flea market . . . .

I went back to St. Andrew about once a month. No one tried to con me into sitting down or staying. I always left before the sermon. I loved singing, even about Jesus, but I just didn't want to be preached at about him. To me, Jesus made about as much sense as Scientology or dowsing. But the church smelled wonderful, like the air had nourishment in it, or like it was composed of these people's exhalations, of warmth and faith and peace. There were always children running around or being embraced, and a gorgeous stick-thin deaf black girl signing to her mother, hearing the songs and the Scripture through her mother's flashing fingers. The radical old women of the congregation were famous in these parts for having convinced the very conservative national Presbytery to donate ten thousand dollars to the Angela Davis Defense Fund during her trial up at the Civic Center. And every week they brought huge tubs of great food for the homeless families living at the shelter near the canal to the north. I loved this. But it was the singing that pulled me in and split me wide open.

I could sing better here than I ever had before. As part of these people, even though I stayed in the doorway, I did not recognize my voice or know where it was coming from, but sometimes I felt like I could sing forever.

Eventually, a few months after I started coming, I took a seat in one of our folding chairs, off by myself. Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.

Something inside me that was stiff and rotting would feel soft and tender.
Somehow the singing wore down all the boundaries and distinctions that kept me so isolated. Sitting there, standing with them to sing, sometimes so shaky and sick that I felt like I might tip over, I felt bigger than myself, like I was being taken care of, tricked into coming back to life. But I had to leave before the sermon."

SERMON

There are strange and far away lands where travelers depend on the generosity of the people at the next oasis; where food and water come as gifts of hospitality after long days of riding through the desert; where nothing is certain except for hunger and thirst. Out of these precarious conditions comes a custom that goes all the way back to Abraham. Abraham, the leader of an ancient semi-nomadic tribe, offered a warm welcome, safety, and a feast to the weary visitors who arrived at his tent.[i] You can read his story in the Hebrew bible and in the Koran.

Abraham did not know if the strangers would be friends or enemies. He fed them anyway. To refuse them would be to let them die, or at least, to wander parched until the next oasis.

The hospitality of Abraham lived on in the scriptures, becoming a spiritual practice among followers. Jesus also invoked Abraham's example when he said, "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me."[ii] The principle of hospitality - and the warmth, trust, and generosity it requires - are the foundation of all three faith traditions, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian.[iii]

What the stranger seeks today, however, may look more like the desperate, ambivalent foray Anne Lamott made on certain Sundays when the flea market didn't have what she needed. She hovered in the back of the church for a long time. Once she was drawn into that tiny congregation of beautiful singers, she found her own voice too. And she found desert hospitality of another kind: an oasis of humanity where she could rest her troubled soul.

Anne Lamott's experience as a stranger reveals that it takes more than a warm welcome - and in her case a not-too-pushy but warm welcome - to make herself at home. It takes courage. And the willingness to trust her hosts.

Having just spent some time in Egypt, I know how it feels to be a trusting guest. Desert hospitality is alive and well there, despite poverty and strained relations with the United States. When someone offers you tea, you drink it. You insult your host if you refuse. And you try not to think about the water, microbes, and caffeine and what they could do to your delicate traveler's system. A stranger takes a chance, however gracious your hosts may be.

Such transactions, whatever form they may take, are how we bridge the gap between guest and host. They draw the guest into our circle whether for a few moments or the rest of our lives. Every offer of hospitality, from a warm greeting to a cup of coffee, is the reenactment of an ancient ritual from a time when the stakes were high and risks had to be taken. To turn someone away is to be less than fully human; not to share what you have would be to reject your common humanity.

This is the rich and varied spiritual background out of which our Unitarian Universalist faith has emerged. We have added other kinds of knowledge to the wisdom of Abraham, but we have held on to his ancient practice of welcoming the stranger. Perhaps it still means something to us because most of us have a lot of experience with being a stranger. We know what it feels like to have nowhere to belong; to be an outsider, because of what we believe or whom we love; and we remember that first welcome here - that made us wonder if we had found our place at last. It makes sense that the time has come for us to give back.

Over the last couple of years, as our congregation has eagerly anticipated the building project we have now undertaken, we have also asked ourselves how we can share what we have with others. The question takes various forms, from exploring new possibilities for outreach and service, to learning how to make our community stronger, friendlier, and more open. Are we doing all we can to make strangers feel welcome?

Many of us were once just like Anne Lamott, who stood in the doorway of her church for a very long time before she finally came in. Like her, we wouldn't want anyone to "con" us into "sitting down or staying."[iv] But we'd want to know we were welcome when we were ready.

If you are a visitor here today, know this one thing about us: you can sit down, stay, and join us, whenever you are ready. Perhaps because we too don't want to con anyone into sitting or staying, we hold back a little, afraid we'll seem too pushy. And many of us are shy, just as uneasy in a large group as any newcomer would be. But our yearning to be welcomed and to come in is as strong as anyone's; we are here to learn how to do that for others; and especially for you: our guests, whoever you are.

Today I offer you a new idea, generated by our Membership and Leadership Committee, Marsha Smith and Laurel Bleak, co-chairs. To help our congregation be as welcoming as we truly are, we ask every one of our members to serve as a greeter one Sunday morning a year. We will continue to have our regular greeters, who will staff the greeters' tables and the courtyard entry ways, doing all the good things greeters do. But building a welcoming community is not a task to be delegated to a small group. It is a commitment each of us made when we joined the congregation, and made this place our own. We ask you to act on this commitment by agreeing to come early one Sunday a year, and help greet the people who have come to visit us that day. It's something you can do on your own, or with your partner, or friend, or family. And if you're feeling like a stranger yourself, not sure if you've found a way to belong, consider this: offering our hospitality is the best way to make this church your home too.

Today, Ingathering Sunday, is a good time to speak about why we are here and how we want to be together. We heard something about that earlier in the "flaming chalice" lesson with Catherine Farmer. We are here to live our values and keep our promises. Starting with the simplest, most personal thing we can do: welcoming the stranger, we build a community in which people do what we say we will do. We are the ones who make this a welcoming congregation. Is being a greeter going to save the world? No, but being people who live our values and keep our promises is the first step.

If I were visiting this church for the first time, I'd be looking for indications that we were the people we said we were. Like Anne Lamott, I'd be looking for signs like the "huge tubs" of food, the radical old women and their campaigns for justice; I'd be listening to the music, and let my guard down a bit and my heart open just a little; I'd be singing, hearing my voice join with others; and I'd be waiting and wondering, for a message that this is where I belong. And that message, friends, is this: you are all one of us. Every one of you, newcomer or leader, visitor or member, whether you come here just once or stay until the day you die; right now, you are one of us.

Welcome to this gathering, which we create together, to call out the best part of ourselves to be who we are in the world. Here we find challenges to help us grow, soul mates to love, and ideals to shape our hopes for the future. This is the place with the baskets of food, the radical old women, and the music. And now you. Whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey, we bid you welcome.

[i] Genesis 18:3-5.
[ii] Matthew 25:35
[iii] A good overview of this practice can be found in "The Extra Mile: The ancient virtue of hospitality imposes duties on host and guest," by Miriam Schulman and Amal Barkouki-Winter; "Issues in Ethics,"
V. 11, N. 1, Winter 2000. http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v/11n1/hospitality.html
[iv] Anne Lamott, "Traveling Mercies: some thoughts on faith" (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), p. 47.