Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

I want to begin tonight with a story I’ve told before that still makes me chuckle when I think about it.  When I was a freshman at the University of Texas, I lived at University Towers on 24th street.  I shared a bedroom in my apartment with my best friend from High School, William.  Let me preface this story by saying that William is no Mother Teresa.  Judging the book simply by the cover, he sort of seemed, at least back in 1992 and 3, like a stereotypical frat guy (I can say that because I was one) pretty cool, pretty calm, pretty collected (at least as far as he thought).  Nevertheless, no matter how aloof William tried to be, the fact is the boy had and to this day still has a big heart. 

One Saturday morning during the spring semester of that year, I woke up and noticed William still sleeping.  He had come home some time after I went to bed, so I quietly walked into the living room to turn on the TV.  As I began to open the bedroom door, I noticed a pungent smell sort of like overly ripe fruit.  I looked at the couch and lying there asleep was a man—a complete stranger.  It was clear from his attire, hygiene, and the smell, I already mentioned, that he was someone who was living on the streets.  I quickly shut the bedroom door ran to William and shook him nervously and said at a whisper, “William, William wake up!  There is a homeless man asleep on our couch.  He must have snuck in to our apartment sometime in the night!  What do we do, what do we do?  Get up!”  William barely opened one eye and said, “Easy, cowboy, that’s ol’ Gus.  I met him on the street coming home last night.  It was cold, so I invited him up.”  “Oh, I should have guessed,” I thought to myself.  Despite the fact that I consider myself a fairly caring person, I honestly hoped that this was a one-time event.  Well, it wasn’t.  Eventually, University Towers didn’t think our (or William’s) acts of hospitality were so cool.  They said something to us about University Towers not being a Homeless Shelter on the weekends.

In today’s Old Testament lesson, we encounter a Shunammite woman that is a woman who lived in the town of Shunem who knew how to show hospitality.  A gift I believe shared, in particular, by many women.  The Shunammite woman noticed that Elisha a prophet of God often passed through her town.  Elisha, being a prophet, led an itinerant and modest life traveling all over Israel sharing God’s words and wisdom with God’s people.  This lifestyle necessarily required Elisha to be dependent upon the goodwill of those folk living in the towns to which he traveled.  Whenever Elisha would come through Shunem, the Shunammite woman, seeing a soul that needed rest and a good meal would open her home to him.  The passage tells us that every time Elisha would pass through Shunem he would stop at the woman’s house for a meal.  However, the graciousness of the woman’s hospitality doesn’t end with the meal.  She approaches her husband and points out that Elisha passes through Shunem regularly and asks if they can add an additional room to the second floor of their home so that when Elisha passes through he has a place to rest, pray, sleep, and study in addition to a warm meal.  Now that’s hospitality—adding a room onto your house for a person who drifts through town every now and again.      

While the story of the Shunammite woman might be an unfamiliar one to us today, she served as an important symbol among evangelical Christians in the 19th century.  In American religious history, there was a tradition known as "Shunammite households" which played a crucial role in the development of frontier faith communities.   Along the frontier, preachers maintained a circuit.  This means that they had several communities, which they served.  You see there were not enough clergy for every town to have their own minister, so preachers lived an itinerant life constantly traveling from one town to the next.  In some cases, this required the preachers to move on every few hours, not every few years or even weeks or days, the life of one of these traveling preachers was a hard one indeed.  They endured harsh weather, bad roads and poor food as they traveled endlessly about their circuit.  In a hospitable response to their needs, and out of a sense of commitment to their community's spiritual health, numerous homes along the preacher's way would be designated “Shunammite households.”  Each of these would maintain a “prophet's chamber”—a room that was always available on a moment's notice to provide hospitality and warmth to those doing the Lord's work.  Like the Shunammite woman’s rooftop chamber for Elisha, this small space would provide the weary prophet or preacher with warmth and privacy—a place to refresh their bodies with sleep, their minds with study, and their souls with prayer. 

The Shunammite tradition remained a familiar phenomenon in American culture long after the days of the saddle-sore circuit preacher had passed.  During the Great Depression, even people with scarce resources would keep their barn doors open and keep a heap of fresh hay available for down-on-their-luck wanderers who needed a place to rest their weary bones.  In fact, the whole notion of having more bedrooms than family members is a Shunammite holdover.  One of the things I have enjoyed most since graduating from seminary and making a home in Austin is that my house has a guest bedroom.  It has been wonderful to be able offer friends and family a place to stay, and space for them to call home while away from home.  It allows me the opportunity to share my gifts of hospitality with those for whom I care.  Now, we no longer live in a frontier world.  Only the naïve would suggest that we should leave our homes unlocked and take in perfect strangers off the street exposing ourselves and those we love to unknown risk.  The tradition of hospitality demonstrated by the Shunammite woman is now strange and unfamiliar.  The idea of offering a guest bedroom to one of the many itinerant and homeless people dwelling in our urban jungle is a frightening prospect.  So, if we can no longer maintain an “open door” policy in our own homes, how can we live into the Shunammite woman’s tradition today?  The answer is to this question, at least in part, is to make our church home a center of Shunammite hospitality. 

If we look closely at the Shunammite woman’s story, the scripture mentions, at least, three characteristics of the woman that might help us become a more hospitable community.  First, the passage tells us that the Shunammite woman was wealthy.  You and I may not be rich, but we do have time, talent, and treasure, which we can share with those in need or neglect.  Working together, we do have a wealth of resources that can make a significant difference in the lives of those who are suffering around us.  Here at the student center we have an outreach committee that comes together regularly to consider and plan how we can best use our resources to offer hospitality to those itinerant souls in the greater Austin community.  Our mission trips to Costa Rica and Mexico, our toiletry drive, visits to the nursing home, delivering groceries with Meals on Wheels, building a Habitat house, etc…these are all means by which we channel our energy and resources into showing hospitality to those who are underserved in our community.  I challenge you to consider how you might add you talents and treasures to the kingdom building work done in this place. 

Second, the scripture tells us that the Shunammite woman was motivated to reach out to Elisha because she realized that he was a Holy man of God.  In other words, she had the ability to discern God’s presence in Elisha’s life.  For this woman, holiness was something to be respected and honored.  Additionally, she was certainly aware of the experience of her ancestor Sarah who entertained angels unaware.  In the book of Genesis, Sarah and her husband, Abraham, offered hospitality to strange travelers who turned out to be angels and they were blessed for it.  My, personal, experience is that every time I share my life with someone in need, the Holy Spirit is present in that person and at that moment and the experience is tranformative.  It is not always easy to recognize the living Christ in those around us, particularly, in those who are strange and unfamiliar to us.  Nonetheless, we are called to seek and serve Christ in all persons, affirming Jesus’ promise, that whenever we do a good deed to the most vulnerable in our world we do it to him. 

Back To Sermons