"You are always welcome here!"

Spiritual Formation at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Tucson - Epiphany Season 2016

During Epiphany season our between-services course was entitled, “Welcoming the Hidden Christ – Meeting the Challenge of Migration and Hospitality,” from the Gospel saying “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35) We discussed such questions as: How can we as a community offer respite for refugees and strangers? What actions are we, both individually and as a community, taking to welcome the stranger — the hidden Christ? Engendering lively discussions among ourselves, we welcomed presenters from local organizations that offer hospitality to migrants and refugees.

First we had a visit from John Heid of Casa Mariposa who reconnected with old friends Carol and Kate Bradsen, and Fred Bevins. Casa Mariposa through its Restoration Project has provided hospitality to recently released detainees (from ICE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and visited people in detention in Eloy. (“Nourished and empowered by the Spirit, the Casa Mariposa community seeks to live in right relationship with one another, the community, and the earth through hospitality, simple and sustainable living, playful spirituality, and peaceful, prophetic action. The Restoration Project is work carried out by the community of Casa Mariposa in support and solidarity with women and men being held in immigration detention centers in Florence and Eloy, Arizona.”) In addition they witness to the challenge of migration and hospitality through participation in community events such as the Día de los Muertos Pilgrimage to Mission San Xavier del Bac, the All Souls Procession through downtown Tucson, and the Binational Las Posadas at the Nogales Sonora/Arizona border.

Toetie Oberman and Sang Yeon spoke to us about the work of two ministries of Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, Refugee Focus and Center. (“LSS-SW resettles approximately 1,000 refugees each year as they strive toward previously unknown goals, strengthen newfound bounds, and courageously rebuild their lives. Services include: pre-arrival housing, case management, English classes, navigating transportation and basic public services, employment support, after-school activities and tutoring for children, programs to develop self-sufficiency and skills for women, and immigration services. CENTER is a hub for refugee students, parents, teachers, schools, volunteers, and other nonprofits that work with them across Tucson.”)

Sunday February 7^th, we plan to greet Jamie Flynn from Alitas, a program of Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona. (“The Alitas Program serves migrant women and children who have left their home countries to escape violence and poverty. We provide care, short-term shelter and help to reunite with family members in the U.S.”)

Refugee Focus and the Alitas Program welcome refugees from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The other local agency that provides hospitality to refugees arriving from overseas is The International Rescue Committee of Tucson – and they will be with us to celebrate Mardi Gras!

During Lent our spiritual formation course will be built around the ancient practice of lectio divina (sacred reading) …

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

Tucson, Arizona

"You are always welcome here!"

http://standrewstucson.azdiocese.org/

Ruth and Facebook

My sermon this Sunday begins on Facebook:

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John Leech

November 1 at 7:35pm ·

733 pm during World Series game nov1 first xmas related commercial aaagh

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Diane   Hallmark channel started showing 24-7 holiday movies a few days ago. Last year, I think they ran into January. Do you have any idea how many really bad holiday movies there are? Yikes!

Like · Reply · November 2 at 6:02am

John Leech The hallmark movie plot : she finally meets the right man. Grandma is happy.

Like · Reply · 1 · November 2 at 8:25am

John Leech The hallmark Christmas movie plot: she finally meets the right man, just in time for Christmas. Grandma is very happy.

Like · Reply · November 2 at 8:26am

Diane  Got it in one, unless it's the equal opportunity version where the guy is looking for the right woman! LOL

Like · Reply · November 2 at 8:26am

The story of Ruth that we read today is a lot like a Hallmark Channel movie - at first glance. A capable woman meets a righteous man, marries him, settles down, and they have a child. Grandma is happy. 

But the story did not start that way. The four-episode story of Ruth begins with a much graver situation than you'll find in any Hallmark movie.

As the story begins a woman leaves her hometown of Bethlehem - where there is no bread: it's a time of famine - and travels with her husband and her two sons across a couple of boundaries. They cross the valley of the Jordan to an unlikely place, the unfriended land of Moab. But there is food there. And her sons find wives. But her husband dies and after ten years her sons die as well. She is left, in that ancient patriarchal culture, without male support. Husbands and sons were the security for women. Without them the woman - the women - fall to the bottom of society.

The woman hears that the famine is over in her homeland, and so she makes plans to return. Her daughters-in-law accompany her part of the way but she discourages them. She has no husband and no prospect of sons. She cannot hold out hope to them that, in-laws as they are - but now to become foreigners in a strange land - they would find any comfort there.

Orpah goes back. Fair enough. Ruth surprises her mother-in-law and vows to continue with her, to stay in relationship with her, and indeed to adopt her homeland and her family - and her God - as her own. So forsaking all others she goes with the older widow on her journey.

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

When they arrive it is early spring. The barley harvest is beginning. It's the first sign of hope, as episode one closes.

In episode two, the women of Bethlehem welcome home their relative, Naomi. But Naomi is bitter at this point and sees no happy way out of her circumstance. Bereft of husband and sons, and prospect of a child, she has little left. Except Ruth.

Ruth with permission from her mother-in-law becomes a gleaner, one of the poor ones following the harvesters as they reap the grain. And she is seen. The owner of the field approaches, speaks his appreciation of all she has done. She has taken care of her mother-in-law, leaving all her other support behind her. He blesses her for seeking protection under the wings of God.

The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.

The man, Boaz, sees that Ruth has placed her total trust in God. He praises that. And he looks after her that day and sees that she does not go home empty-handed. Naomi is glad to hear how the day went for Ruth and indeed notices that the owner of the field was none other than her own close relative. A hopeful ending to episode two.

Episode three begins some weeks later as the harvest season is coming to a close. Naomi, now in much better spirits, has come up with an idea. And so Ruth seeks out Boaz - and the upshot is here in today's reading. She seeks shelter under his wing - for life. And in episode four, we get the happy ending. Ruth and Boaz marry, and Naomi gets a grandchild.

But remember where we started and see the story as a whole. The book began with six characters, three men and three women, only two of whom survive to the second chapter. From exile the older woman returns to her own land, and with her comes a woman who is seeking safety, shelter, and a new home in a place she has never been before. God bless you, says a new friend, for what you have done. And the story turns away from famine, scarcity, and sorrow to abundance, fullness, and joy.

That is the story of Ruth - an immigrant and a widow - who found a welcome in the household of God, among the people of God in a place she had never known, that now she would make her home.

Questions I am asked and challenged by:

What do you do to make a home of a place you have never been before? And what do you do to make your place a home for the alien, the widow, the stranger, and those seeking a new life in a place they have never been before?

Ten or eleven years ago at the bishop's conference on the border (organized by Tom Buechele) some one asked if there were any Bible passages about borders and migration. Three came to mind, right away:

"My father was a wandering Aramean,..." or, as the King James has it, "A Syrian ready to perish was my father,..." (Dt 26.5) This is the story of how Jacob, patriarch of the Hebrew people, migrated to a foreign land in a time of famine.

"You were strangers once in Egypt...." (Dt 10.19) "Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
 This is an admonishment to the people of Israel to extend hospitality to foreigners. And even, at Passover, to welcome them into their homes for the family dinner on an equal footing with themselves.

And the kicker:

"I was a stranger and you welcomed me." (Mt 25.35) Jesus at the final gathering of all peoples responds with welcome to those who have been welcoming...



When I first came to southern Arizona eleven years ago I had to find ways to make it home. One advantage I had was a bit of history of my own from long ago: my grandfather was a forest ranger in the Arizona territory before the first world war. And my future parents-in-law met at the University of Arizona. But family connections are not enough. I had to get to know the place, the land, the fauna and flora. And I had to get to know the story of Arizona, the stories of the people who live here.

Those stories are many, and carry on. Among them are many stories of people who have come to Arizona for work, for family, or to start a new and better life. There are people who have fled war, civil strife, or natural disaster. Famine. And there are those who find here a fresh start in a place of abundance. They are welcomed. There are some who are greeted with an attitude of scarcity, of not sharing. (Where I once lived in another state, we called this "closing the door behind you" as all of us had been immigrants not long since.)

The story of Ruth - of Naomi and Boaz and the people of Bethlehem - gives us hope. It gives us a story of welcome and hospitality. It gives us in quiet ways a story of how God can work with what we have - even if it is only two women who stick together in hard times - and make a new thing begin.

How do we make something bloom in the desert? How do we make ourselves at home in a new time or a new place? How do we begin to welcome home those who have been long away? Or those who have never been under our roof before?

And how do we celebrate the welcome of God to all of us as God welcomes us into his house, his hospitality, and we find shelter under his wings?



8 November 2015
Twenty Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 27

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Psalm 127
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44


Notes for a sermon given at St. John's Episcopal Church, Bisbee, Arizona. JRL+

everybody welcome

A day's wage ... how does that relate to hospitality?

A landowner recruits some day laborers. He goes down to the marketplace - or the Shell station. There are people standing around, hoping someone will hire them that day, give them a chance to get their daily bread.

Give us this day our daily bread...

So the landowner takes whom he can find and sends them out to work in the vineyard.

It is a hot day, we are told; perhaps they are in Sonoma - or Arizona.

In the heat of the day - here in America - workers get a lunch break. They take it in the shade of the trees by the side of the road. You see them on the way to the tasting room. 

How did they get here? Today - you know. This season - perhaps they live here, perhaps they have green cards, perhaps they "entered the United States by a legal point of entry." 

Perhaps they are among the one-third of vineyard workers who have no papers to show.

But they come and work, anyway.

Are they welcome?

The wine industry, one vineyard owner told me, would collapse without them.

A long time ago there was a harvest in another field. It was the barley harvest and the landowner was Boaz. It was his family farm - near Bethlehem. 

He saw someone out in his field, following his work crew, picking up the grains that had fallen, that they'd missed.

- Who is that gleaning in the field?
- It is a stranger, a foreigner, who walked across the desert, for several days, from the mountains of that other country. 
She is here, a widow, destitute.
- She came alone?
- No, she came with her mother-in-law, to look after her. Naomi.
- Naomi. My cousin.

We are all cousins here, Steven Talmadge the Lutheran bishop said. All of us here along the Borderlands. And in Tucson sometimes you feel that's true. We are all related - to the land, to each other, to our common situation.

Sometimes we are the stranger, welcomed or not. And sometimes we are the host.

Boaz put down his hoe, ran his hand across his forehead, and thought a minute. 

- Let her glean - among the sheaves ... even pull out some grain for her. And let no one bother her - tell the men that.

Later he saw her, and said, 

- I have heard about you, about all you have done for your mother-in-law, since you left your own country and came here to a land you did not know. You sought shelter under the wings of Yahweh. Bless you!


I was a stranger ... did you welcome me?



A stranger comes to town, a man goes on a journey: two stories  - the only two, some say - but they are really one.

Once some years ago I went to call on Cele Peterson in her store. She said she only had twenty minutes as she was expecting a visitor. In the time we had she said of the border, "We've got to stop doing this" - and she held her hands palms-out as if fending off a stranger - "and starting doing this" - and she faced her hands towards each other and interlaced the fingers. And then I opened the door to Gabby.

You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing .... You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear.  

(Deuteronomy 10:19, 17-18, 20)

In Scotland, in Duddingston Village, I was the guest - and invited to a Queen's Jubilee wine-and-cheese party. (We were about a mile from Holyroodhouse and she was in residence.) There in the garden someone introduced me and someone identified me ... Oh, you're the foreigner ... strange feeling.

When the priest takes your offering, you shall make this response before the Lord your God:

"A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there..." (Deuteronomy 26:5)

I was a stranger and...
 ... you welcomed me.
 ... you did not welcome me.
(Matthew 25:35, 43) 

Who are we welcoming? By the oaks of Mamre Sarah and Abraham pitched their tent. In the heat of the day three strangers approached. Come stay with us. Let us prepare you something to eat. Here, let me wash your feet. You must be tired...

When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.

Over and over in the Old Testament we hear stories of hospitality, of welcome to strangers; Lot, in Genesis 19; the father of Gideon, in Judges 6; the father of Samson in Judges 13. Like the father of Isaac (to be) they welcome strangers...

Who are we welcoming?


In the story of Abraham and Sarah and the three men at the oaks of Mamre, what do we see as the ideal of hospitality?

In the story of Ruth, who is the stranger? 

What does the story of the vineyard tell us about the abundance of God? 

In a time of harvest plenty, or of famine, what is fair? just? generous?

What do these stories tell us about fear, hope, longing, joy?

What do they tell us about home?

Come down, Zacchaeus, for tonight I must stay at your house.


"God of unfailing generosity, making no distinctions of wealth or ability, root out from us the spirit of envy and greed, and transform our bitterness into an open-hearted welcome of those we are tempted to despise. We pray this after the pattern of Jesus and in the power of the Spirit." -- collect prayed at the Come and See service, St Philip's in the Hills, Tucson, 4pm Sunday 21 September 2014. (from Jim Cotter, http://cottercairns.co.uk)

These are notes for a leading a reflection on the gospel on Sunday 21 September 2014 at the 4pm Come and See service at St Philip's in the Hills, an Episcopal Church in Tucson, Arizona. JRL+