Open Hearts and Open Minds

Is this a monumental sermon? Not really, and maybe that's the point. I transcribed it, perhaps, for the sweet, straightforward message about hospitality that my father offers as much as anything else. It also includes a favorite parable, "What kind of a town is this?"

Thus the lack or presence of a spirit of hospitality within the family circle can mold its individual members. It can create individuals who are withdrawn and shrink back upon themselves, or it can create individuals who are outgoing personalities interested in humanity about them, and carried to its extreme conclusion can influence the character of our entire social order.
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THE TORAH PORTION OF THIS WEEK[1] GIVES US a picture of Abraham in the role of host. We read of the three men who approached his tent, and Abraham received them hospitably, and provided them with water to wash their dusty feet and with a lavish meal with which to refresh themselves. Of course, these men, according to tradition, turned out later to be messengers of God, but Abraham did not know that when he received them into his home. It may be argued that Abraham did nothing exceptional by thus offering these men of his hospitality, because in the pastoral society of those days, it was the customary thing to do. Hospitality was a matter of sheer self-interest. As the shepherd wandered about land and frequently strayed from his own group to points far off, he never knew when he himself would be dependent upon someone for hospitality. There were no restaurants for him to drop into, and he was completely dependent upon the strangers dwelling in tents along the way. If one wanted always to receive hospitality when in need, he also had to provide it. It became, out of sheer necessity, the code of the desert. It indicated a generous heart, but it was also a selfish virtue as well.
 
Nevertheless, the rabbis tell us that Abraham's hospitality was something special. He ran forth to meet the strangers, and did not merely sit idly and wait for them to reach him.[2] He only offered them a morsel of bread when he was speaking to them, but he later put before them a wonderful meal, and he stood by them as they ate, ready to be of further service to them. In the rabbinic mind, therefore, Abraham became the symbol of the utmost in hospitality, and his character in this respect is offered to us as an ideal that we, too, should measure up to.
 
Hospitality is, after all, for us too, not merely a pleasant virtue that we ought to practice out of a sense of duty, but something which, as in ancient times, is also dictated by enlightened self-interest.
 
Psychologists today lay great stress upon the importance of the shared experience of eating together. During the High Holy Days I made mention of eating together as one of the important family experiences that makes for greater devotion and greater solidarity within the family. Its benefits extend, however, beyond relationships within the immediate family. Karl Menninger[3] points out that being given food is the first expression of love which the child understands, and thereafter in the unconscious, food is equated with love. For that reason a dinner party or a social luncheon is a perpetual medium of expressing and building friendship. "Good bread, well beaten, in company" to use a phrase of Stephen Vincent Binet,[4] thus becomes a source of great emotional as well as physical comfort, and a builder of goodwill. Bonaro Overstreet[5] also points out how the practice of such hospitality in the home can affect the attitudes in later life of the individual members of the family who live in that home. She quotes the reports of two adult students with regard to their childhood experiences. One student wrote, "Whenever the doorbell rang in our house, we heard Grandma from one room or Mother from another saying, 'Don't open the door unless you know who it is!'" As a result the student reported that even a telephone bell was now startling. The other student wrote:

In our house it was always bedlam when the doorbell rang. We converged on the door from all parts of the house. Even the peddlers were welcome…. If we bought nothing, we always gave them some fried cakes or cookies. I still retain an interesting curiosity about strangers.

Thus the lack or presence of a spirit of hospitality within the family circle can mold its individual members. It can create individuals who are withdrawn and shrink back upon themselves, or it can create individuals who are outgoing personalities interested in humanity about them, and carried to its extreme conclusion can influence the character of our entire social order. It is a sad and lonely person whose psychological makeup is such that he withdraws from friendly and trusting contact with others. And there are more such people among us then we might suspect, who are either conditioned by their past to follow such a pattern or who thoughtlessly and selfishly drift into it. There are too many of us whose lives fall into a routine which centers only about our immediate family circle and perhaps a few limited chosen friends with whom leisure time is spent, and that becomes the extent of close acquaintanceship with other people. We close ourselves off from close contact with others who for some reason or other are considered not our type, and no effort is made to cultivate strangers either from an attitude of superiority or from sheer laziness to make the effort. We ourselves are consequently the losers. We lose the spice that comes from meeting faces that are new, and coming into contact with new ideas, new thoughts, and new manners. We lose the opportunity of bringing variation into the monotonous patterns of living into which so many persons carelessly fall. The old proverb, "Variety is the spice of life," is trite, but exceedingly true. Very often those people upon whom we look with askance and those strangers that we think are so dull that it doesn't pay to bother with them, may surprise us with their cleverness and their interests. Thus, hospitality is not only good for the person upon whom it is bestowed, but upon the bestower as well.

Hospitality applies to organizations as well as individuals. Just as the individual grows in character and in maturity if he has learned to draw close to other people, so an organization also will grow and prosper only if it cultivates a similar spirit. Quite naturally, I have congregational life, in particular, in mind, and especially our own congregation. From time to time we hear the report brought back to us that people have not become interested in the congregation because it is cold and unfriendly. Frankly, I don't always put too much credence in these reports. Very often such a report merely reflects the state of mind of the person who makes the complaint. The following story, for example, which I've told on other occasions, will illustrate what I mean by this.

A man moved to a new town and went into one of the local merchants and said to him, "What kind of a town is this? Is it friendly? And the merchant answered, with a question, "What kind of town do you come from?" The man said, "It was a terrible place. The people there were very unfriendly and cold and paid no attention to anyone.” In the merchant said, "You will find this place the same way." A second newcomer came a few days later to the same merchant with the same kind of query. Again the merchant replied with his question, "What kind of town do you come from?" This time the newcomer said, "I come from a very friendly place. The people there were just wonderful." And a merchant said to him also, "You will find this place the same.

A great deal of so-called coldness depends on the newcomer, his attitudes, his willingness to come half way and to throw himself into the activities of the community. This is not merely a story, but the fact that I know from personal experience with newcomers to communities through the years. The same community which to one family seems cold, is declared by another to be warm and friendly. However, a congregation must not content itself with placing the burden upon strangers. The congregation must also make every effort to make the newcomer feel at home. It must receive him hospitably and show interest in him. When a congregation is new, there is no question about its hospitality. It seizes eagerly upon every new hand, because everyone is conscious of the need to grow and the need to acquire interested helpers. When a congregation has become more or less settled, however, those who have been with it through its early stages tend to forget the continuous obligation on the part of such a group to welcome the stranger. Sometimes it is because they have acquired a certain sense of ownership, which they do not altogether want anymore to share with others. Sometimes it is pure inertia or weariness. But the same thought applies to an organization as it does to the individual. If we want people to take to us, we must take to them. If we want to draw people into our activities, we must disarm the hesitancy with which they sometimes approach us by running forth to meet them. Our own open and outgoing manner must be infectious, and we must fill them with enthusiasm for us. After all, the stranger that comes to our door, no longer comes to us from the desert and he no longer is dependent upon us alone. There are many doors upon which he may knock, if indeed he decides to knock on any. Our hospitality and our friendship must, therefore, influence him to be with us and to remain with us. We need the help that these newcomers can give us now just as much as when we were beginning. We need their energy and their new thinking. We need their freshness. We need their stimulation and their challenge, and we offer something worthwhile in return. I should like every member of this congregation to be an Abraham running forth to greet every strange face he may see sitting in this auditorium at our service, and running forth to greet the stranger that may come into his neighborhood to bring him into our midst.
 
The Talmud tells us that the action of fathers is a guide to the life of their sons. In the pattern set by our father Abraham in the Torah portion of this week we have a guide well worth following. It is worth following because of the noble ideal that it represents, but it is also worth following because hospitality extended is one of the very few things of which we may say the more we give away, the more we receive in return.

[1] Va-yera, Genesis 18-22

[2] Genesis 18:2. My father chose not to mention that this act of kindness was all the more commendable in that Abraham was circumcised in the previous biblical scene. Presumably he was sitting in his tent in some discomfort when he ran to greet the strangers.

[3] Karl Augustus Menninger (1893 – 1990) was an American psychiatrist and a member of the Menninger family of psychiatrists who founded the Menninger Foundation and the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.

[4] Stephen Vincent Benét (1898 – 1943) was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, The Devil and Daniel Webster and By the Waters of Babylon
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[5] Bonaro Wilkinson Overstreet (1902-1985), an author, poet and psychologist. For more than three decades, Mrs. Overstreet and her husband, Harry A. Overstreet, lectured widely on adult education, mental health, social psychology and political philosophy. Outspoken defenders of civil liberties and academic freedom, they co-wrote many books.