A Theology Of Worship And Hospitality

Worship is the symbolic expression of the Christian faith. As the church gathers for worship it provides a picture of the body of Christ. The ministry of hospitality offered as the church gathers for worship communicates the reality of fellowship in Christ and welcomes the stranger into the body.

What we as Christians practice on Sunday, we live on Monday. And one thing we practice on Sunday is hospitality. In order to understand liturgical hospitality more clearly, we must first understand what hospitality itself is and then review what exactly liturgy does. Hospitality is a set of formal, public behaviors designed to advance the common good by making the others around us feel comfortable and welcome. These behaviors do not seek long-term or lasting friendships in the first instance. They make demands upon us and others only for the duration of the event in question and not beyond. Yet it may be that through these behaviors, we may experience God's presence. That, of course, is exactly why people come to church in the first place—to gain an experience of God. They are on a quest to discover what it is that seems to be missing from their lives. Ultimately, what they are looking for is God. Their experience of God may be expressed in words like community, prayer, fellowship, devotion, or even obligation. But by whatever name, the divine One is the object of their search. It is through the practice of hospitable behaviors that we help each other and the strangers among us to experience God. What happens to those who are unsuccessful in their search? They look somewhere else. They look to false gods. Money, drugs, alcohol, or sex might all, for a time, fill the gap the searchers long to bridge. For a short time, the searchers feel better. They find temporary fulfillment and even peace. But soon the contentment wears thin and the search begins again, often leading to despair and hopelessness. What is our role as Christians in the face of this reality? First, of course, we must recognize it. We must make ourselves aware that every Sunday there is a searcher in our midst. There is someone who has come to our assembly to see what gives us strength and spurs us on. For some, this may be the last effort, the final attempt to make sense of it all and find meaning in life—a last-ditch effort to reach out and connect with God. There is somebody like that in your parish and mine every week. In order to reach out to that person, we must be fully conscious of our own faith experience. Is our faith something we take for granted, or is it a living expression of our belief and being? How do we name and express our faith? How can we "?show?" our faith to the searchers and hand it on? The fullest and clearest expression of faith for Christians is the gathered body, celebrating on the Lord's Day. At least it should be. The worship can and should be a solid bridge. It is a bridge to God. It is a bridge that spans the gap we all feel. It is a bridge to the promised land, the heavenly banquet, the Father's house. What Does Worship Do? Worship is made up of a complex set of symbols that interact to provide a metaphorical picture of an indescribable God. St. Paul says that it is like seeing through a dark glass. The whole liturgy depends upon the use of symbols. A symbol is a thing that points to reality that is larger than itself. For example, our wedding rings are a symbol of our love for each other. Our love is not contained in the rings; and yet they are somehow a real part of the complex reality we refer to as our marriage. They give evidence to our love and point to it. The more complex the reality that is to be symbolized, the more complex the symbol must be. It does not have one, clear meaning, but several competing and even contradictory meanings. Think of water as a symbol for baptism. How many different experiences of water could be named by those gathered for the initiation? By contrast, a stop sign is not a symbol. It is flat and literal. It has one clear meaning. It is efficient because there is never any doubt about the intent of a stop sign. Symbols are inefficient. We have to take time to wrestle with them and sort them out. We get into trouble when we try to make our worship symbols efficient because the result is to flatten out the meaning. This is exactly what we have done with the bread, we use for Communion. Real bread produces crumbs; and it can't be stored in the tabernacle for long. It takes too much time to tear; and some people don't like the taste of it. It does not lend itself to being placed on another person's tongue. So we settle for a flattened out wafer that is not at all complex and therefore masks the complexity of the feast. We need strong symbols to describe God because of who God is. We will never be able to say fully who God is. But by using good symbols, with their ambiguous, intriguing qualities, we will come as close as human hands and hearts can come to describing the indescribable One. In the liturgy, we take a number of symbols and orchestrate them into a ritual form (the form itself being symbolic) that is our fullest and most real expression of God. We should be able to answer the searchers who ask, "?What do you believe and why do you believe it??" by taking them to church with us on Sunday. Sunday should be our greatest evangelistic tool. It should be our most complete expression of who we are as Christians. It should, in other words, be a model of hospitality. That is because Christ is hospitality. Christ welcomes the stranger. Christ feeds the hungry and clothes the naked. Christ visits the sick and those in prison. Christ is the great reconciler. Christ is the great unifier. And on Sunday, we become and we are the body of Christ. Hospitality in the Local Parish The critical question each community must constantly ask itself is, "?Are we doing all we can to be a hospitable parish? Are we doing all we can to be the body of Christ? There are three basic things a church community must do to be able to answer yes to that question. The first two, we have discussed. First, our worship must focus on strong, rich symbols that express the complexity of our faith. We must stop minimizing and flattening the central symbols of the Eucharist. Secondly, we must understand and respect the liturgical structure that governs the use of these symbols. That is because the structure itself is symbolic and reveals the Holy One. Third, we must understand the formal role of hospitality in the liturgy. There is a trend afoot to identify particular members of the assembly as hospitality ministers. Sometimes they are referred to as greeters. While this is a positive development, there is a negative side. To the extent that a community shirks its collective responsibility to be a community of justice while placing greeters at its doors on Sunday, hospitality ministry is a farce. It does no good to greet at the doors on Sunday, if it has no effect on our lives on Monday. Our Sunday hospitality is both real and symbolic (as is everything in liturgy). We give a sincere hello to those who come through the door. But our greeting is also a commitment to greet other strangers throughout the week. Our handshake is a commitment to reach out to the fringes of society to lend a helping hand. In finding a seat for our neighbor, we commit to finding room at our tables and in our hearts for those who have been shut out by the larger society. The burden, then, that we lay upon the hospitality minister is the same burden Christ lays upon us. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and soul; and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. The greeters at the doors and the ushers handing out the bulletins are none other than ourselves. And we are none other than the body of Christ, sent by the Spirit to bring about God's hospitable reign of justice and peace.