Hospitality

It has been awhile since I've written anything, and this is mostly because I have been in the midst of processing my life here as a pastor. For the past couple of weeks my pastoral shoes have felt either extremely tight or so big that my feet fall out. Lately they haven't been fitting well. And I am not convinced that this is bad. The time of struggle is essential for me to discover who I am called to be.

I am preaching a sermon on hospitality on Sunday. The pastor is currently doing a sermon series on Christian practices, and mine is the first in about a 5 week plan of teaching people how faith affects real life.

I have been told a lot of things about hospitality in my life. I even theoretically took an entire class on moving towards a hospitable life in seminary. Sometimes I feel very hospitable, and other times only hostile.

What I realized today as I am planning this sermon is that the greatest gifts of hospitality I have received have been when people have made space for me to discover. When I have struggled and been given the space and time to struggle while others have come alongside me and listened. When I have asked the hard questions and people haven't given me easy answers. When in the classroom, I have been allowed to disagree, to wrestle, and to feel inadequate and professors have been patient and allowed my dissent. These are the times when I have felt people have been hospitable to me. But how do I describe this to people?

I am reading Henri Nouwen's book Reaching Out and I read this quote, found on pages 72 and 73.

"Creating space for the other is far from an easy task. Empty space tends to create fear. 'Being busy' has become a status symbol, and most people keep encouraging each other to keep their body and mind in constant motion. By filling up every empty corner and occupying every empty time [our] hospitality becomes more oppressing than revealing."

The times I have experienced genuine hospitality are when people have stopped their busy lives and created space for me. But how do I preach about that??