
Once again we welcome you to the friendly confines of the Church of Transcendental Hesitation, the fastest growing church in the world. While the cold winds of winter may be blowing where you are, we are surrounded here by the warmth that comes from the fellowship that we share not only with each other, but with The One who calls us his own.
If you are new to our congregation, your presence arrives at an appropriate time because the message from our brilliant theologian and communicator, The Right Reverend Doctor Tweedle, D. D., is entitled "The Practice of Hospitality". Settle back in our comfortable pews. Enjoy the way the sunlight streams through the majestic stained glass. And for our special music, listen to an original composition by one of our members. The song was for his young daughter, Jenney, whom he knew would eventually grow up and leave him a Stranger on the Shore.
The text for today's message is Hebrews 13:1-2:
Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.
And now we invite you to listen to the most significant minister in Christendom today, The Right Reverend Dr. Tweedle, D. D.
The practice of hospitality has always been an important perspective in Biblical religion. Originally, the concept was born of necessity. With few public accommodations for travelers, hospitality in homes was essential if one were to make long trips. However , there is more to this reality than just that. The hospitable stance became a model as to how one should relate to the unknown or the strange or the not-yet-experienced. And it is clear that hospitality to the ancients was a two way street. Not only did it offer a way for a host to help a guest, but more often than not, the guest proved to be the bearer of some unknown blessing that he or she would bestow where there was receptiveness.
Abraham received three strangers and invited them to his tent for a meal and rest. Just as out text today suggests, these visitors were angels who were the first to tell Abraham and Sarah that they would have children. (Genesis 18:1-15) A widow in Syria because of her hospitality to Elijah was given a continuing food supply and the gift of life for her son. (I Kings 17:9-24) It was after travelers on their way to Emmaus showed hospitality to their unknown companion that he showed his real identity to them when he broke bread while sharing a meal. (Luke 24:13-35)
The process then is well established in scripture. Hospitality is not only a way of giving to the stranger in need, it is also the means by which blessings are derived when those whom we have received turn around and give us their gifts as well.
Father Henri Nouwen in our own time has written of the value of recovering this biblical concept of hospitality and the applications it could have across our social structures. It was especially his mention of the home and the parent/child relationship that intrigued me. The more I thought on his exposition, the more it resonated with my own experience, first as a child and then as a parent.
What Nouwen is suggesting is that one of the best ways for a parent to understand a child is to think of that one as a guest in the home; in fact, the most important guest one is ever asked to entertain. And what is a guest? Father Nouwen identified three characteristics. He or she is a person who comes from somewhere else, who stays for a while and then moves on in a journey that is his or hers to determine. Let's allow his rubric to organize our conversation.
First of all, our children, like guests come from somewhere else. They have not been with us before and at first will be like strangers to us. Our understanding and love for them will have to grow.
A fellow pastor told his congregation recently of a visit with a new mother while she was still in the hospital. After words of congratulating joy were shared, the pastor said that the mother surprised him by confessing her ambivalence toward her new baby and the circumstances that now faced her. "I had always assumed that I would have instant and overwhelming love when I saw him. Instead, I had this mixture of love and fear. My son was like a stranger and the new responsibilities which are mine seem so overwhelming." The mother was feeling all kinds of guilt for these unexpected feelings.
What this young mother was feeling was the same as those that come from meeting any stranger. Deep affection never springs immediately full grown the instant the host and guest first meet each other. Hospitality is creating that free and friendly space where strangers gradually shed their strangeness and get to know each other. Realizing that our children come from somewhere else, that they are not ourselves, that they have an element of strangeness about them is a healthy place to begin.
We also need to be reminded that our children never completely belong to us alone. We have been allowed to share a bit in the act of creation. Kahlil Gibran says, "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you." What an important truth. Just as guests are not slaves or possessions, so no parent should think of the child as belonging solely to him or her. This sets our responsibilities in a more reasonable perspective. It reminds us that our interactions with our progeny, important as they are, are by no means the whole story.
Samuel Southard's book, Every Child Has Two Fathers, expounds this message. He reminds us that along with peers, society, and the child's own will, God is also at work in the lives of our young. Parents only play one hand in the game of rearing our children, and this realization should free a parent from the anxiety that the whole load rests exclusively on their shoulders.
One of the first gifts that came our way when our first son was born was a tiny handkerchief from my home congregation. The inscription on the card expressed the hope that the item would be passed to our son's own child years into the future. What emotion welled inside me to realize that here were a group of people who were already committed to joining with me in a momentous task that would span generations. I was not alone. And neither was my son.
The second characteristic of a guest is that he or she only stays for a little while. What an important point to make concerning the parenting role. It is not a lifetime vocation. There are times when it seems like the effort is eternal. It is not. While it is hoped that there will be an ongoing relationship as the years go by, the crucial years of parenting are relatively few. That is good news for some of you who are caught in the seemingly endless flow of diapers or the turbulent teens. And it is a good realization that helps us know what to do when.
I know personally that when we have out of town guests in our home that their presence will affect the way I allocate my time. Knowing that they will only be with us for a short period of time, I set aside some that I had planned to do in order to accommodate their needs and enjoy their company. I want to be hospitable.
The principle can apply to parenting as well. I know one father who deliberately structured his professional career to correspond to the needs of his family. He chose a job that left him lots of free time while his children were young and then as they moved out and became less dependent, he increased his vocational involvements. I really admire the kind of maturity that knows when to do what and I wish more fathers and mothers realized how really brief the parenting opportunity is. For the average adult, there will be plenty of time to pursue other concerns when the nest grows less active and even empty.
Looking back, I doubt if any parent will begrudge having invested a major part of themselves in this endeavor. What is more likely is that we overlook the transitory nature of our children's stay with us and come to regret that when they needed us most we were off somewhere else. The haunting lyrics of Harry Chapin's Cat's In The Cradle can be an anthem of warning or a painful ode to lost opportunity.
Never forget. Children, like guests, only stay with us for a while.
The last characteristic of a guest is that they eventually leave and set out on a journey all their own, and this, too, is parallel to the parent/child relationship. By the very way we all come into the world, dependency is a necessity in the earliest stages of life, but to perpetuate such a state and never encourage or allow a child to grow up and move out on his or her own is a perversion of parenting. The whole purpose of the years of "cleaving" is to prepare for the challenge of "leaving." Carlyle Marney used to point out that the first thing done after birth is to cut the baby loose from its mother's body, and this is a prophetic symbol of what the whole parenting precess is about. Remembering that our children are really guests with journeys of their own to make will help prepare us for the awesome task of letting go and bidding farewell with our blessing.
Ironically, the better one is at the first stage of parenting; that is, being attentive and responsive to a child's every need, the harder this letting go "second-phase" task may be. David Redding has compiled a prayer that illustrates the problem:
"O Lord, do not let William grow up too quickly. May he make no decisions without consulting me first. May he still find his greatest pleasure in my company. I know he is developing new interests, and making new friends, but I do want to share in every part of his life. Remind him constantly of all that he owes to his parents. Prevent him from growing too independent. And if he must have a girl, let it be that sweet little Cynthia Black."
Who among us who are parents have not felt every single one of those desires. But of course, this is what we must let go if our children are to become the free-standing individuals they were meant to be.
Eric Fromm describes romantic love as "two becoming one", but parental love as "one becoming two." I believe his perspective is correct. Thinking of our children as guests with journeys of their own to take can help us handle those moments when our children take the inheritance that we have given them and set out for some "far country" where they must learn for themselves those things that they would not let us teach or that no one can really learn from another. This is by no means easy, but it lies within the circle of what being a good parent is.
The models for parenting are many. Sometimes we think of our work as xeroxing, that is, trying to make little copies of ourselves. At other times we feel like lion tamers--whipping creatures into conformity to our will. But for me and hopefully for you there is a more helpful model. It is the biblical one of host and guest. For me it takes some of the anxiety out of this very crucial responsibility. While parenting is one of the most important endeavors any human being ever undertakes, we should not make an idolatry out of it. After all, our worth and destiny as persons does not depend on our succeeding perfectly as parents. We are only one factor in that momentous process.
Hopefully then, coming to understand hospitality will free us to fulfill the highest single responsibility we have as parents; namely, to enjoy our children, to take delight in them, to regard them not primarily as possessions or responsibilities, but gifts given to us by Another for us to share and celebrate. When this attitude prevails, the the Biblical principle of the guest bestowing blessing back on the host can also take place. In literal truth, the process of parenting is "entertaining angels without knowing it."
May the Original Parent Himself, God the Father, show us how to be hospitable in the home, that there, of all places, gifts may be shared and both host and guest, parent and child may be enriched!
The music of the recessional today is lead by James Morris's son and the band Whitenburg Doors.