Radical Hospitality...Again

Yesterday I watched a 2008 documentary titled For the Bible Tells Me So.  The description of the film says:

Through the experience of five very normal, very Christian , very American families - including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson - we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child. 

Humans can be rather horrible people. The venomous, abusive language made me cringe. Worse, the use of subtle gender weapons...you don't want to run "like a girl" or "play football like sissies." Apparently, the worse possible insult for a man is to be compared to a woman.

Having lived through the women's rights movement, having recently revisited the civil rights conflicts, we should at least be more creative in our opposition to those we perceive as different or unworthy. Our language is the same, our behavior is the same, our arguments, our rationalization...we just find a different group on which to focus.

People of God can be the worst because we assume God is on our side in any conflict. We won't listen to people who are hurting, struggling, outcast. We don't have to if we label them sinners. That simple seven letter word gives us free reign to behave badly.

We don't seem to limit ourselves to the issue of homosexuality...it is just easy pickings now. We can find someone to attack at every turn, whether it is the child with glasses and a dirty shirt on the school playground, or the Muslim praying in his office at our workplace.

God's radical hospitality is practiced again and again. The entire biblical text is God's attempt to offer us shalom, health and wholeness for ourselves and our communities...and our response of trying to explain to God why we are not broken, our taking for ourselves power over others, our refusal to live loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

We are called again...and again...and again to God's radical hospitality. It is given to us. We are encouraged to give it to others.

The practice is not once and done. We are too good at creating outsiders.

So all I can say today is I'll try again.

and again.

and again.