Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Setting a Place for Elijah

Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern
April 9, 2006
Palo Alto, CA

Story
Baucis and Philemon

Sermon

The story is told in many lands and many times. The god, the prince, the prophet travels in disguise. He or she can bring gifts of good fortune and happiness. Whether we receive these gifts depends on whether we welcome the unwelcome. The gifts will seldom come from the source we expect. They will come from experiences we would rather have avoided. They will be given to us by people we imagine have nothing at all we want. And so this story, wherever it is told, gives the same advice: prepare a place for the unwelcome, welcome them in, because they will bring you gifts beyond your wildest dreams. I have preached on hospitality twice before, this year. Today I urge you to make a place for whatever, and especially whomever, is unwelcome in your life. And I’m going to tell you why.

Next week, at Passover, in Jewish homes and synagogues all over the world, and in a few churches like our own, an extra glass of wine will be set out at the Seder for a hoped-for, honored guest. If there’s room around their tables crowded with family and friends, some will even set a whole place for Elijah: a comfortable chair in place, the silver polished, the best plates laid out, the crystal goblet gleaming, for the Old Testament prophet whose return is said to precede the Messiah, who (in Jewish tradition) will transform our world from its broken state to one where injustice is unknown, compassion is everywhere, and happiness fills our hearts.

They will make a place, and then they will open the door and sing the song, “Eliyahu, Ha-navi,” Elijah, the prophet: “May he soon come to us, bringing the Messiah.” They will pray for him to enter, and watch the table hoping for a sign. Maybe a child will see the wine go down by a sip. Maybe a parent will jiggle the table slightly to make the wine ripple and a fork shift.

Or maybe, just maybe, someone will actually enter. In the stories, Elijah comes as a beggar, and as a child who saw many beggars on the streets not far from my home, I always wondered what would happen if, when we opened the door to the night, someone was standing there, looking at our lights and listening to the warm laughter within. Would we welcome him in?

It’s all very well if you know it’s Elijah. Or Zeus and Hermes, or Odin, or any one of the gods and powerful people of legend who likes to play this particular game. No one in their right mind would turn them away, even if they wore dirty rags for clothes, had matted hair, and smelled like they needed a shower. We know it pays to be welcoming to those guests. But that’s the rub in all these stories: you don’t know the beggar is a god or the herald of peace, a prophet, a bearer of gifts. As far as you know, he or she is just a beggar.

And that is true. We never do know where the gifts we long for may come from. We don’t even know which of them are truly gifts. Some of them turn out to be burdens we wish we could give back, and then, some of the things that arrive looking like burdens turn out to be our dreams in disguise. When I look at my own life, it seems to be just like that of the farmer in the Taoist story whose horse runs away. His neighbors sympathize, “What bad luck.” “Maybe yes, maybe no,” he says. The next morning his horse returns, and with it are three other horses, wild ones from the hills. “What good luck!” say the neighbors, and he says, “Maybe yes, maybe no.” His son, trying to tame one of the new horses, is thrown and breaks his leg badly. The neighbors bring food and expressions of sorrow for the man’s luck turning bad once again. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” the farmer says. Soon after that, the army marches through on the way to the front, drafting every able-bodied young man, and because of his broken leg, the son is left behind. “Your bad luck has turned out to be good!” the neighbors say. “Maybe yes, maybe no,” says the farmer. The story is still unfinished.

Florence [this morning’s Worship Associate] shared a similar story from her life, and maybe you have one too: of the gift that turned out to be a liability — so far — or the unappealing basement office that turned out to be where you had the best job of your life — so far. Maybe in your past is the story of the person you didn’t even like much at first who turned out to be the love of your life. Maybe you hated your pest of a little sister for the first fifteen years of her life, and now she’s your best friend. That’s what’s so tricky about this whole business of hospitality. You just don’t know which guests you’re going to be happy you welcomed in — until you do it. They have a sneaky way of arriving in disguise.

Our secretary chooses the art for the order of service each week. She is very creative and goes out of her way to find the appropriate image for the service. Often, she finds more than one and asks me which one suits the service better. This week she came up with three. Two of them, she had found by searching for images of Elijah. They were beautiful prints of a man with a long beard, long hair, a robe, a staff, looking careworn and laden with dignity as he walked through classical woods: Elijah in beggar’s guise. Who would turn away such a beggar as the ones in these pictures? They were so much like all the drawings of Moses and Jesus we have seen, they signaled to the viewer that this man is no ordinary beggar, that he is disguised, that he is not asking for gifts but in fact bringing them. In other words, they tipped their hand.

And then there was this one.

Aha! I told her, “That’s the one.” She laughed. She understood why.

This is how Elijah would come to us today: not with a flowing beard, maybe, but instead, with a face that’s unwashed and unshaven. Not in robes, but in a hooded jacket and hands that ought to be gloved but are exposed to the chilly morning. Not walking a lovely trail in the countryside, staff in hand, but crouched on a city sidewalk among the boxes that wealthier people have left empty.

Or perhaps he would come as a newcomer at our church door, not one of the people you hit it off with right away, but someone who seems overly needy or even a little weird, or just not much like you. Perhaps he would come as your teenaged niece who’s in a lot of trouble, and has made so much trouble for her parents that they ask if you’ll take her in for a couple of months.

Gods who wanted to test our generosity in California in 2006 would come to our door as immigrants without papers, without “our” permission to be here, without anything in their hands, apparently, but their longing and their hope. Perhaps they are here even now. Will we turn them away or will we welcome them in? Either destruction or reward will follow. So the story of Baucis and Philemon tells us — but it’s not a myth. It’s simple truth. Only when we welcomed strangers into this country did we receive the talents they brought with them: our cities are now blessed by the buildings immigrants designed and built; our lives have been saved by the great scientific discoveries they made; unwanted immigrants and their children have fought battles to preserve our freedom, and made classic movies, and taught our children, and been our ministers.

We need one another, a reading in our hymnal reminds us. No matter how independent we are, we need other people when we celebrate and when we mourn, when we first enter this life and need care and words of loving welcome, and when we are going down the last steps of the path to death. If we shut people out of our lives, when life becomes overwhelming we will drown. If we bring them into our lives, we will be enriched beyond measure. That is why, as individual as our paths may be as Unitarian Universalists, we don’t each sit in a corner reading Thoreau and meditating all by ourselves all the time. We come together as a congregation to hear each other’s experiences, learn from each other, share books, share thoughts, sing together, know ourselves to be friends among friends instead of strangers in a strange land. What we long to become, we can become only in community.

Who is the person who stands, caught by the camera in the act of deciding: will he welcome this man into his heart or shake his head, move on, forget? The photographer has made him anonymous by neatly cropping off his head: his face. If we could see the expression on his face, we might know if he was about to turn away or offer help or stay and talk, but the photograph leaves it uncertain. This way, he is no one and everyone, each one of us. Who are we? Whom do we want to be? What expression do you want to have on your face as someone looks into it in hope of welcome?

The United Church of Christ has made waves and headlines recently by creating two ads that the networks will not run. The first, which you may have heard about last spring, featured two bouncers at the steps into a church. They have that stern, unwelcoming look and burly build of all bouncers. Some people, they let in. Others — a young Latino man, a gay couple — they turn away. “No, not you.”

“Jesus didn’t turn people away,” the screen says. “Neither do we.”

We Unitarian Universalists pride ourselves on welcoming everyone. We affirm that people of all races and orientations are welcome here; we state it on our website and hang it in front of our church in the rainbow symbol of pride and celebration. We have no requirements for membership but a desire to join and the pledge of a dollar. But it’s not enough not to have bouncers at the door. Even the most conservative churches employ more subtle ways than that to keep unwanted people out, and they’re just as effective, which is why the United Church of Christ ads touched a nerve. To really be a place of welcome means not only to refrain from turning people away, and not only to refrain from preaching against them and the things they hold dear; it means to prepare a place for them at the table.

Imagine this scenario — maybe it has really happened to you. You’ve dropped by a friend’s house to bring by a sweater she left at church that morning. It’s 6 o’clock and the family is clearly preparing for dinner — you can see your friend’s husband hurrying between the stove and the table. The table is set for four, just enough for the family, and it looks pretty crowded already. Your friend is a little distracted as she takes the sweater and thanks you. Just as you’re heading out the door, “Oh hey,” she says, suddenly, “do you want to stay for dinner? It’s not much.” She has her hand on the inside of the door and she is stepping behind you, filling the space you would have to walk through to come back in.

Imagine now that when you ring the doorbell, your friend greets you, she says, “I realized as you were coming over — it’s almost dinnertime and we would love to have you join us. Then we’ll have plenty of time to talk. Can you stay?” She opens the door wide and gestures you inside. The table is already set for five — they were hoping you would say yes! It’s a bit of a squeeze to put five chairs around the table, but they’ve already done it. “Bob’s made his special chicken,” she says. “You’ll love it. May I take your jacket?”

In the first scenario, they didn’t mean to be unwelcoming; they didn’t do anything wrong. But you’d have felt like you were imposing if you’d accepted. You knew it would make extra work for them. In the second scenario, even though they don’t have a lot of extra room, they made a place ready for you. Not only would you not be imposing if you stayed, it looks like they really want you to be there.

Elijah makes it even harder. He doesn’t come disguised as a friend doing a favor. He comes as someone who asks a favor instead. And that’s how many people come into our lives. Unlike the very-much-wanted child we blessed this morning, some babies enter our lives unplanned, unwanted, and we have to find room — make room — in our hearts to love them. Some parents are not the ones we would have wished for, not even people who should ever have been parents. Some co-workers make more work for us instead of lightening our loads. Some friends dominate the two-hour phone call so that we hang up feeling exhausted from having taken care of someone else’s needs and having had none of our own met. Some people come to church not to donate money or help run a program, but because they need companionship and spiritual help. And every single one of these people brings gifts as well. Every single one! But we have to welcome them in if we are ever to find out what those gifts might be. Are you ready?

There are friends out there who are still strangers to you. Because I love you, because I care about you, I beg you: don’t go your entire life without meeting them. Say the yes that they will hear before they even ask, “Can I come in?” Prepare a place for them at the table, open the door, and sing aloud how much you long for their presence. By making room in our hearts, in our lives, in our communities, we can make people welcome before they even approach our door. Before they even raise a hand to knock, we can open the door of our hearts wide — just in case they are out there, looking for a circle of friends with whom to share a meal, looking for a home, looking for someone who will gladly receive the gifts they bring. Set a place. Make room. Open the door.