Salt, Sage, and an Extra Plate: Hospitality and Thanksgiving

Anchor: The Thanksgiving Table

Frames: Salt as a gift of hospitality; Sage as an element of preparation; an extra plate at the table, ready for unexpected guests

Thread: The Rule of St. Benedict – "Let everyone that comes be received as Christ"

This short series will focus on the Ministry of Hospitality, particularly practiced in our Thanksgiving traditions. The Ministry of Hospitality challenges us to see Thanksgiving as something much more than just a meal for our own family. It is an opportunity to expand our welcome to include the stranger, the outcast, and the marginalized.

I am not sure who wrote this blog entry (here is the web address, if anyone can help me ascertain its author: http://redbooks.wordpress.com/2007/12/19/hospitality-the-rule-of-benedict/) but I find this reflection on hospitality to be compelling. It frames very well my thinking and feeling about the centrality of hospitality for our ministry and mission.

                “Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step toward dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.”

Everyone—everyone—is received as Christ. Everyone receives a warm answer—on the phone, at the door, in the office. Sarcasm has no room here. Put-downs have no room here. One-upmanship has no room here. Classism has no room here. The Benedictine heart is to be a place without boundaries, a place where truth of the oneness of all things shatters all barriers, a point where all the differences of the world meet and melt, where Jew and Gentile, slave and free, woman and man all come together as equals.

But whatever happens to the heart is the beginning of revolution. When I let strange people and strange ideas into my heart, I am beginning to shape a new world. Hospitality of the heart could change UK domestic policies. Hospitality of the heart could change UK foreign policy. Hospitality of the heart could make my world a world of potential friends rather than a world of probable enemies.

Yet, Benedictine hospitality is more than simply thinking new thoughts or feeling new feelings about people we either thought harshly of before, or, more likely, failed to think about at all. Benedictine hospitality demands that we open our lives to others as well. Benedictine hospitality demands the extra effort, the extra time, the extra care that stretches beyond and above the order of the day. Real hospitality for our time requires that we consider how to take the concerns of the poor, the hungry, the lonely, the dying into our own lives.

It is not enough simply to change our minds about things or to come to feel compassion for something that had never touched us before or even to change our own way of life to let in the concerns of others. Real hospitality lies in bending some efforts to change things, to make a haven for the helpless, to be a voice for the voiceless. Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and minds and our hearts and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step toward dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.

November 11 - Salt

Matthew 5:13

‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Colossians 4:5-6

Conduct yourselves wisely towards outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.

                Many a sermon has been preached on how salt adds flavor to food and since we Christians are said to be salt for the earth we are there to enhance the flavor of life. I’ve always thought that was a pretty thin exposition of whatever Jesus meant. There are sources that explain that salt was a sign of hospitality in ancient days. Even in more recent times, in Russia, bread and salt were gifts given to travelers and pilgrims. If salt is indeed a sign of the gift of hospitality, then when Jesus tells us that we are salt for the earth it is we who become a living symbol of Christ’s gift of hospitality for the whole world. We become the gift given as a sign and promise that strangers and even enemies are safe, welcomed, and offered peace. That is a much more challenging role for us as Christians than simply being nice people living piously.

                As we head toward the Thanksgiving holiday, that kind of hospitality expands our traditions beyond just a big meal for our immediate family and friends. The Ministry of Hospitality asks us to make our thanksgiving an event which signals peace and welcome for all people. To be “salt for the earth” goes far beyond simply making sure that there is salt on the table when the turkey is served. Our Studio experience asks us how SCUCC can enliven our experience and understanding of the hospitality that Christ calls us to.

November 18 - Sage

1 John 3:1-3

See what love the Divine has given us that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know God. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when Christ is revealed, we will be like Christ, for we will see clearly. And all who have this hope in Christ purify themselves, just as Christ is pure.

                Sage is a common herb on the Thanksgiving table. Many stuffing recipes make us of the flavorful leaves. It is somewhat unique on out tables because of its history being used by many Native American peoples in various rituals. Smudging with sage is an act of purification, of cleansing. It can be seen as a medicine that releases a person or a place from its past, opening to a new, healthier future.

                I have visited the Wounded Knee massacre site in South Dakota. On the top of a hill is a simple chain-link fence that marks the mass grave of the victims of that massacre. On that hill you can see where the soldier stationed their Hotchkiss guns and the gully where the Sioux were trapped in the freezing cold. Also there are the burned out remains of the church destroyed in the 1970’s when the FBI and AIM confronted each other. The whole area still feels somber. And yet sage grows wild on that same hillside, as if it is offering its power to cleanse that area of its violent past.

                The connection between sage and hospitality may seem a little oblique. I see it as a gracious act of hospitality to be released from all in the past that can bind us and blind us. I don’t see it as a moral purification that 1 John refers to, but more of a sage purification. In Christ we are smudged, so to speak, healed and set free for a new life. Hospitality sees the potential for newness, not the fetters of the old.

                As we gather around our tables spread for the Thanksgiving feast, maybe the aroma or the flavor of sage can make that meal one which welcomes the new person and frees us from old patterns. The Ministry of Hospitality asks us to welcome the possibility of who we may yet be as individuals and as a society. How might sage symbolize for SCUCC the hospitable process of purification?

November 25 – An Extra Plate

I don’t have a particular scripture for this week. Instead I am reminded of the Passover tradition where an extra place setting is prepared for Elijah the prophet. Most specifically, an extra wine glass is poured and an extra chair is placed at the table for the prophet. The idea is that the return of Elijah will signal the messianic age where God completes the world in justice and peace. Room is left at the Passover table in case this is the year he arrives. One tradition has the children open the front door to look and see if he is coming. I found on commentator online who expands that tradition:

Once we used to leave an empty seat for Eliyahu Hanavi, for Elijah the Prophet, at the Seder table. Tradition tells us that Elijah will come on Pesach to herald the coming of the Messiah. So we set a place for him and pour out a cup of wine, in case this year he comes. Over the years there are many traditions that have evolved regarding an empty chair at the Passover Seder table.

Do you remember Seder night over 50 years ago? We had empty seats at our family Seders after the Nazi Holocaust.

Do you remember Seder night 20 years ago? We had empty seats in our homes for a Jew in Soviet Russia.

Do you remember Seder night 15 years ago? We had empty seats in our home for a Jew in Iraq or Iran.

The chair and the place setting hold open the possibility that all will be reunited, even as the present grief is acknowledged.

                While I know that Thanksgiving is past by this week, I want to suggest that we add this concept of hospitality for all our celebrations: we set an extra place for whoever might arrive! When we hold a place open, we are prepared for whatever unexpected stranger (or even family member!) may arrive. Blair Frank, (theologian, activist and gardener) says that part of hospitality is making preparation for unexpected guests. For him, gardening is an act of hospitality because it provides the produce to share with whoever may cross his threshold. The extra place setting symbolizes our readiness for any guest at our table. It is an act and a posture of hospitality. What can we do at SCUCC to keep an extra place ready?