Tag: hospitality

I Thirst

Posted on by petegath

As I arrived at Manna House a guest said, “Could you get me some water? I’m really thirsty.” He along with a few others were waiting for me to open the gate to the front yard. They are the early arrivers, hoping to get on the shower list.  

The heat and humidity have been unrelenting the past few weeks. Guests arrive exhausted, drenched in sweat, thirsty. The numbers of guests who come early is increasing.

Though it’s well over an hour before the morning hospitality will begin, I go into the house and get a pitcher of cold water and some cups. When I return to the porch everyone is delighted to get a drink. Several ask for and receive refills. It only takes a few minutes, but the relief on the faces of the guests is obvious. A drink of cold water will make their wait a bit more tolerable.

Once Manna House is open, we have a water cooler in the backyard. It empties quickly as thirsty guests drink cup after cup of water. We will refill this five-gallon cooler three or four times before the morning is over. 

Water. The Bible is filled with references to water. For the biblical writers living in semi-arid lands, water is precious. Water for them, as for us, is life. 

In Psalm 23, the Bible speaks of water as signifying God’s presence. 

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

    He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

    he refreshes my soul.

The Bible sees the provision of water as a provision made by God. When Hagar and Ishmael are near death in the desert, God provides water (Genesis 21:8-21). In the Exodus story as the people of Israel move through the desert, they thirst, and God provides water (Exodus 17). Isaiah the prophet often uses water to symbolize the care God has for God’s people, “For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants” (Isaiah 44:3, see also 49:10, 58:11). In the prophet Amos, water symbolizes the full coming of God’s justice, “Instead, let justice flow like a stream, and righteousness like a river that never goes dry” (Amos 5:4).

When Jesus on the cross says, “I thirst,” the violence of his execution is intensified by his need for life giving water (John 19:28). Those who stood by and mocked him did not bring him water to drink. They give him vinegar. Earlier in his life Jesus taught, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me,” and he identified with those who need water, “I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink” (Matthew 25:31-46). 

Our guests thirst because water is hard to come by on the streets. Like Jesus’ executioners mocking him as he thirsts, businesses respond to those crucified on the streets by posting, “Restrooms for customers only.” Water in our society is a commodity reserved for those who can pay. As a city we have very few public water fountains, and they typically do not work. Memphis, like most major cities, is not hospitable to people on the streets. 

In the Book of Revelation, a vision is shared in which water fulfills God’s healing of the whole creation. Water is redemptive. 

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:1-2).

In contrast to this joyous vision of life-giving water, there is the angry and hateful rhetoric of today’s rulers who reject the joy of God’s reign. Their politics of scarcity and fear cannot imagine a world in which we share basic goods like water. Instead, for them everything has a price. The cash nexus determines all human relationships. 

After I had served water to the guests on the front porch, I went back into the house to set up for the morning’s hospitality. I was thankful. The thirsty guests had invited me into the joy of God’s reign. As I shared cold water with them on a hot morning, I sensed the loving, liberating, and life-giving presence of God. God had brought me to the water.

Start Small, Stay Small

Posted on by petegath

Therese of Lisieux and Dorothy Day emphasized “the little way” or what Shannon K. Evans terms “the worthiness of the small.” The little way endorses being modest and not running after grandeur and the grandiose. About twenty years ago, those of us gathering to discuss a vision for hospitality for Manna House sought to be faithful to the little way. We committed to starting small and staying small. Hospitality, we believed, required welcoming our guests as individual persons with names, stories, dignity. We did not set as goals “ending homelessness”, or “saving” people.” Rather, we sought to offer hospitality, to meet a few modest needs in a little way that would respect our guests as human beings made in the image of God.

            I have found over the years that I sometimes fall into three temptations to abandon hospitality animated by this little way. 

In the first temptation, I seek control over those we welcome. This is evident whenever I focus on being more efficient. In offering showers, I try to do more and more showers in less and less time. In offering “socks and hygiene” I just hand over what we have instead of taking the time have each guest say what they want. When I seek control, I forget that “efficiency is the work of the devil.” Instead, I fall into the oxymoron of “efficient hospitality.” When I seek to be in control, I offer hospitality according to my convenience and desires. I rush guests rather than respect them as persons.

            In the second temptation I engage in the opposite of control. I practice a grandiose generosity in which “anything goes.” I violate boundaries. I give without concern for consistency. If a guest asks for it, I give it. Like control, anything goes is more about my desires than hospitality. I desire to be lauded as generous, as kind-hearted. Anything goes feeds my desire to be a savior who can do everything for everyone.

            The third temptation is also grounded in my expansive ego and reflects the oxymoron of “successful hospitality.” In this temptation, the hope I have for every guest, that they will have good lives, gets distorted into my desire to remake guests in my image. In this temptation, I measure my “success” in hospitality by how many people I get off the streets. I use my white middle class standards to define what our guests should aspire to. I want them to conform to my social standards of respectability. I deny their agency, their hopes, dreams, desires, and woundedness—their personhood. They become means to my ends. 

            In contrast, hospitality offered in the “little way” asks me to simply welcome people as they are. As Michael Sean Winters writes, “Success is not a Gospel category.” Rather than pushing others to conform to my expectations, I must drop my ego, and allow the guests to change me. In hospitality it is much more likely that the guests save me rather than the other way around. This was Jesus’ point when he said, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46), and when Paul said, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you” (Romans 15:7).

            So, the hospitality offered at Manna House in the little way is not much. Two mornings each week for showers, socks and hygiene, coffee, sanctuary. One Monday meal each week. Each morning, six to eight volunteers, 100 or so guests. We do not pretend to be efficient, to provide a “solution” to homelessness, or to meet every need or to successfully remake people on the streets into productive citizens. 

Our purpose is hospitality, not charity doled out from above nor social services to get people back into the system. We do not get people off the streets or out of poverty. We provide a place for people to be welcomed as people. It is a small thing. It doesn’t amount to much. Like a mustard seed. And we hope, in the words of the prophet Zechariah, we will “not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin” (Zechariah 4:10).