Scripture Reading:
"Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling."
1 Peter 4:9

Second Reading:
Red Brocade by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Welcoming the Stranger: A Sermon on Living in Salem in October”

Skaptopara was an ancient town in Thrace, in what is now Bulgaria. It was famous for its market fairs and thermal springs, which attracted visitors from farflung areas in the Roman empire. We know this because of archaeological studies of the site. Archaeologists uncovered a now somewhat iconic stone monument dating to around 238 CE. You might think it was a statue of Mercury, Roman God of commerce, trade and travel. Or perhaps Bacchus, God of festivities. Maybe a marker proclaiming the healing powers of the hot springs?

No, it was simpler than that, just a stone tablet bearing a written inscription, an inscription directed at those who, and I quote, “turn up in our village and compel us to provide them with quartering and most of the other things for their entertainment.” It continues, “We greet the authorities in a most hospitable way by necessity but as we could not put up with the others, we have on many occasions appealed to the governors of Thrace, and they have ordered that we remain undisturbed.”

As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. It turns out complaining about tourists dates back to at least the third century.

I tell this story neither to suggest that we should do the same, nor to shame the citizens of Skaptopara for their lack of hospitality. I share it because this negotiation between welcoming the stranger and caring for the self, the tug between the economic benefit and hardship and inconvenience of tourism has a long history. I genuinely love working tour shifts here. It is so fun and meaningful to meet visitors from all over the world, share our sanctuary and our history with them, and to add up the funds that I know are going to support the important ministry we do all year. So then I feel like a hypocrite complaining about how long it takes to drive somewhere or get a coffee in October. The Skaptopara inscription reminds me that I’m not alone.

See they weren’t just curmudgeons who were skeptical of outsiders. I have to imagine they struggled mightily before deciding to erect that stone message. Because they were part of a culture that took hospitality incredibly seriously, not just as a matter of manners but as a civic and moral obligation. To deny a stranger hospitality would have both legal and religious repercussions. Today, we often talk about the moral imperative to “welcome the stranger” in terms of immigration, which is an accurate, good and righteous use of scripture. But in the ancient world, before booking.com and uber, it also applied to the traveler.

Jewish communities would have remembered not just the story of Exodus but also the story of Abraham and Sarah entertaining three angels disguised as travelers. This was part of Greek and Roman culture as well. The idea that any traveller might be a God in disguise was widely accepted across ancient cultures. A common saying in the Roman world was “all strangers come from Zeus.” Cicero wrote that hospitality was “a most hallowed thing devised by the god to benefit humans.”

Given this, I assume the people in Skaptopara did not take the inscription lightly.

We may not be worried that if we walk in front of a instagram photo shoot by the Ropes Mansion, Zeus will take offense and strike us down with a lightning bolt. But we too are making complicated moral calculations in October, even if it might not seem like it. Even deciding whether or not to come to church on these fall Sundays becomes a more complex equation. We are regularly weighing our values and obligations against our legitimate needs and frustrations over the sheer number of visitors to our city.

And sure, it’s only one month. It might seem silly to preach about it. But I think underneath the seemingly surface level complaints about traffic, lines, and crowds are deeper questions about welcoming and relationships, questions whose implications extend beyond October and beyond Salem.

How far does our commitment to radical hospitality extend?

Who are we willing to welcome and under what circumstances?

What comforts are we willing to sacrifice to welcome the stranger? And what “strangers” do we decide are worthy of that sacrifice?

What obligations do we have to truth and historical accuracy and who decides what’s true or historically accurate?

Where are the lines between all in good fun, disrespect and religious appropriation?

How does a church or a city remain a welcoming community without losing its identity?

Before we put up our own stone inscription, let’s take some time to sit with these questions and to weigh them against the values we hold sacred and discern how we’re called to show up as Unitarian Universalists living and worshipping in the middle of Salem in October. I won’t presume to answer all of those questions today, or to answer any of them for you, but I’ll share a little about my own discernment.

See, as a Unitarian Universalist, I hold three things especially sacred. The inherent worth and dignity of every single person, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and the interdependent web of existence. When taken together, this means a special reverence for each person’s spiritual journey and an understanding of how those journeys are bound up together. This is part of why I’m a minister. I believe at our core we are all seekers of meaning, we have a right to seek meaning freely, and none of us can make meaning alone. As someone who has been on several pilgrimage journeys, I also understand that travel can have a deeply spiritual impetus.

So it’s been helpful for me to think about, and ask people, why they come Salem. To ask these travellers what it is they are seeking and then, in the words of Brene Brown, extend the most generous interpretation to the intentions. Often the answers are surprisingly tender, especially for women and queer folks and others who have felt out of place in their home towns and see in Salem a place of acceptance and exploration.

I’ve met people who come for tarot readings and mediums. They are coming with hard questions they haven’t been able to solve on their own, they are seeking spiritual wisdom, and answers to help guide their choices and orient their lives.

Some people come to take pictures in front of Hocus Pocus filming locations, seeking a sense of childlike wonder. They are nostalgic for a world as full of magic and possibility and adventure as it was when they were kids.

Others come to wear outrageous, fabulous, over the top costumes, seeking a safe place to be more fully, truly themselves, or perhaps an opportunity to try being someone else for a while.

The people in the “1692 they missed one” or “we’re the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn” shirts. At the end of the day, aren’t they seeking a sense of belonging? They are looking for ancestors or a story they can claim as their own, a place among women they understand to be both powerful and misunderstood.

Some people come curious about the pagan and wiccan communities here in Salem and are interested in shops where they might be able to buy crystals or supplies to begin their own practice. They are seeking spiritual practices and rituals to feed their soul, they are seeking a spiritual community where they feel like they might belong, where they don’t feel the shame, fear, or oppression they might have experienced their childhood faith communities.

A colleague recently wondered if anyone had tracked whether Salem tourism trends correlate to national politics. During times of moral panics, when we’re fearful and divisive, perhaps people come here, to the site of this early American moral panic, seeking answers that might help explain our current situation.

In an increasingly disembodied, dislocated world, where fewer people live in the towns they grew up in, where our whole lives are distilled into microchips, is it any wonder that people are seeking meaning in and connection to a physical place with a long history.

When I talk to folks visiting, I am struck that their reasons for coming to Salem really aren’t so different from what brings most of us through a church’s doors? What were we seeking when we came here? Belonging, community, connection to a place and a history and a story we could claim as ours, a place we could be ourselves, answers to hard questions, spiritual guidance, tools for understanding our political reality and fighting back against injustice.

We know what it is like to be seekers, of meaning and community and belonging, and we know what it is like to find that here in this city and in these church walls. Why then should we deny that to others?

But welcoming people with their longings and questions does not always mean giving them the answers they want to hear. It doesn’t mean compromising our values or our identity. Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote, of Gallows Hill (when it was still believed that the witch trial executions took place at the summit), “It is singular how few come on pilgrimage to this famous hill; how many spend their lives almost at its base, and never once obey the summons of the shadowy past, as it beckons them to the summit.” Welcoming guests to Salem doesn’t mean we need to stay at the base of the hill, metaphorically speaking, we can invite people to the summit with us into a richer, more complex understanding of history and identity.

Joan Chittister is a Benedictine nun and author, the Benedictines are famous for their hospitality, the rule of Benedict has a whole chapter about the rules for receiving pilgrims and welcoming visitors. But Chittister also notes that there are special provisions in place to ensure this obligation doesn’t overtake the rest of the community’s mission. She writes, “The community that is to greet the guest is not to barter its own identity in the name of the guest.”

“The community that is to greet the guest is not to barter its own identity in the name of the guest.”

If, underneath all of the cheap t-shirts and instagrammable coffee drinks, what people are actually seeking is authentic spiritual experiences, authentic connection, authentic belonging, we do a disservice to us and to them to meet them with an inauthentic response. We can hold the reasons for coming here with care and tenderness and still say, “They weren’t witches and there weren’t actually any burnings, but let’s dive into the actual history together.” We can tell people who want to look around on Sunday mornings, “We’re so glad you’re here, we’re not doing tours right now because we’re still a working church and worship is always at the heart of what we do, but you’re welcome to stay for service.” We can have honest conversations with curious visitors about how we went from a Puritan congregation to a church with a rainbow flag in the sanctuary and a Black Lives Matter sign out front.

When we respond with authenticity, honesty, and clarity around our values, we move beyond the purely transactional and open up the possibility for real learning, relationship, and transformation. For the guests who visit us and for ourselves.

The gift of living in Salem in October is that it has helped me see in countless others the face of a fellow seeker. It reminds me that everyone setting out on a journey is carrying with them precious and vulnerable questions. And this reminder helps me respond with more patience and tenderness, this month in this place but also other months in other places. And, if I see the folks who come to us this month not as customers or tourists, but as seekers, it helps clarify my obligations, which are neither unquestioning appeasement or banishment by stone inscription but rather the obligations I owe any seeker who finds themselves at this church: an open-mind and heart, authenticity, honesty, clear values and integrity.

Mark Nepo writes, “To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.” This October, may we strive to see the strangers who come through our doors as fellow seekers, and through our authentic welcome and open heart, turn us all into pilgrims, transformed by our shared journey together.