"Welcome to my home. May I take your coat? Please have a seat and make yourself at home. Can I offer you something to eat or drink? Would you like to freshen up?" I heard my mother issue these comments to friend and stranger alike. Mother should have worked for the Welcome Wagon. In fact, many times when we were traveling I would hear my mother say, "Now if you are ever in Florida, you must come to Ocala and look us up. We'd love to have you visit us." I used to imagine that droves of people would all of a sudden flock to our house, people I would only vaguely remember seeing once or twice.

My mother, who was raised Episcopalian, came from that generation where one did not discuss religion. She was very private in her devotions. I never heard her say to anyone, "I welcome you in the name of God." But I am convinced that is what she was doing. She was hospitality personified...in the true biblical sense.

In the ancient Near East, hospitality was the process of "receiving" outsiders and changing them from strangers to guests. Since a stranger who was traveling lacked legal or legitimate standing within a community, it was imperative to be under the protection of a host. The host not only offered food, drink and shelter as hospitality, the host also offered protection. Those strangers who were invited in, removed their sandals and their feet were washed, thus marking them as strangers no more...now they were guests.

And so today we hear about the prophet Elijah, who has just been through a pretty bad time his life – which is another story for another time – God sends him to this particular village to get some respite from his troubles. He shows up at a widow’s house and asks for water – and while you’re at it he says, ‘How about some food?’

Under the ‘hospitality’ rule the widow should have immediately invited him in and seen to his needs but instead she gives a very poignant and sorrowful response to his request.

‘Sir, I have just enough food for my son and myself. We’ll eat this meal together and then that’s it. We’ll starve and then die.” She is telling him that things are so bad that she cannot offer him any kind of hospitality at all! It is hard to believe that anyone could be in such a dreadful and appalling situation that they could not even offer the least little bit of food and drink. We would never imagine this happening in our country.

But this passage reminded me of a parishioner at the cathedral in Florida who told me a very unsettling story about a beloved pet that ran off. As the man was searching the neighborhood for his dog he went up to a house that was run down. The mother of the family was outside – she looked haggard and hungry. Her three children looked about the same – they had that gaunt, hungry look. The man asked the woman if she had seen his dog. She said no…but he thought she hesitated a bit so he wondered about her answer…thinking maybe the family was keeping the dog as a pet. Later as he was walking, still looking, he came upon what he described as the pelt of his pet – lying in the road. As he picked it up he noticed that the paws were still attached but the rest of the dog – the meat of the dog – was all gone.

He thought the pet had probably been used as dinner for that struggling family. He was asked by friends if he was angry. He said no – rather he was sad that he had not noticed that a family living right in front of him – was in such bad shape that the mother had to resort to this drastic act in order to provide food for her children.

And I recall years ago reading about the lost boys of the Sudan who were brought to the United States. When they were taken to a grocery store – after walking down the aisle of dog food and cat food they remarked what a great country this must be – look at how they provide for their animals.

Now Elijah was probably thinking, “O Lord, why did you send me here?’ But perhaps this was, for him, and for the widow, an opportunity to really trust in the goodness of God. Trust means believing that God does care, no matter how dire the situation. What makes trust so difficult is that most often we would like to be in control of all that happens to us in life, our friends and families, and God, but in the end, the desire for control just leads us down a path of frustration, because it is an impossibility.

Elijah could have said to the woman “Sorry to bother you, I’ll just go on down the road to your neighbor’s house.” But instead he stayed. Trust turned into mercy and hope as the widow and her son found that what they needed in order to live, never seemed to run out. She recognized the power and mercy of God that came through Elijah.

Perhaps we should be asking ourselves, “Who are our neighbors who are hungry and need hospitality from us? Who might be right in front of us, struggling to make do, and we do not really see them?

In today’s Gospel Jesus is just walking into town and he encounters a funeral. Now one of the shortest verses in the Bible occurs when Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus has died. The verse is “Jesus wept.” We know Jesus cared deeply for Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. But today he met total strangers…and he looked upon the stricken mother and had compassion for her. Perhaps he might have has flash of the image of Elizabeth, mourning when she learned that John, her son, the cousin of Jesus had been executed or maybe Jesus saw a glimpse of the future with the face of his own mother, stricken with grief at the loss of her son. Jesus had compassion, mercy, on this woman who was a stranger to him. To have compassion, and to be moved by compassion, is to take the suffering of other persons into oneself…so he said to her, ‘Do not weep.’” And Jesus restored her son to her.

This scene of somber mourning followed by great celebration reminds me so much of a New Orleans funeral. The brass band begins its solemn procession at the church, playing hymns like "Just a Closer Walk with Thee"- there is no improvisation, no frills, just sadness blown low and blue to the beat of a muted drum all the way to the cemetery. This procession forms what is called “The first line.”

But at the cemetery, after the final words are spoken and the body is lowered into the ground, and the mood changes. Bright umbrellas suddenly appear, and the funeral procession heads back into town to the raucous strains of "When the Saints Go Marching In." People nearby have been waiting for the procession's return, and many of them join in – waving handkerchiefs and creating a ‘second line’ because they know a celebration's coming...and no one in New Orleans wants to miss the funeral celebration.

Such was the scene when Jesus gave life back to the widow and her son. The people were amazed and said, “This man is a prophet from God. God has looked favorably on God's people.”

What would you do for a stranger to bring about new life?

In the Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible I came across Dorethea Dix who was born in 1843, and lived in Massachusetts. She was asked to teach the Bible to women who were imprisoned. She agreed to go but when the class was over heard all kinds of noise coming from the depths of the prison. She asked who was below and was told the mentally ill. Now this was a time when those who were mentally ill, or who perhaps had what we now call Altzheimers, or senile dementia – were shut away, unloved and forgotten. Dorethea found these people locked in cages, living in their own filth. She went to every prison in Mass., documenting who was there. This was during the time when no proper lady would call attention to herself. She was scorned by society matrons, criticized by newspaper editors, and condemned by the clergy. But she used her research to bring about reform in Mass and then she moved on to Rhode Island, then to New Jersey. In her lifetime she worked in 15 different states until her death at age 85. She saw that people were in pain, yearning for love and wholeness and she was willing to extend herself to bring about some healing to these broken people…because she said, “Jesus said when you do this to the least of these, you have done it to me.”

What acts of mercy would you be willing to do for a stranger?

There are many people in this world whose daily lives consist of one long struggle. We normally think of people far across the sea from us as being the most in need but now, right now, in this country, all up and down the Gulf Coast we are shocked and in mourning about the catastrophic oil spill in our own water. Our faith on these days is somewhat fragile.

We all ache for the people of Louisiana and the Central Gulf Coast and pray that some solution will be found because this spill is impacting not only the land but the livelihood of people as well.. At the same time when people continually say, “The President should do something” I think, “Like what?” He has all the power in the world – he has told the oil company to ‘fix it.’ And it doesn’t seem like they can right now. His own advisors can’t seem to fix it. Do we expect him to put on a wet suit, dive down to the leak, and like the little Dutch boy at the dike, plug the leak? How we expend our energy when we are mournful or fearful is important. What if we all prayed for strength and guidance – perhaps all those collective prayers floating out in the universe would give the needed inspiration – life – for those who need to find a way to fix it. Or we can scout around and find out what we can do – whether it’s sending what money we can or getting ourselves down there to help clean off the wildlife.

Yes God is the one who offers mercy and relief, but God uses human agents. That makes us the face of mercy. Ours are the faces or voices that are seen and heard by our sisters and brothers who receive assistance and hope. Putting our energy into positive acts of mercy, whether through prayer or deeds will bring results much more quickly than looking for some political leader to make everything right.

I leave this afternoon to go to Kanuga, North Carolina, to talk to a group of women from Province IV. The leader of this group of women and of the conference, started driving up from Florida, by herself on Thursday. As she was driving she received a phone call that made her pull over to the side of the road. Her granddaughter, who lives in New York City, had been attacked by a stalker. What to do? She told me that the medical team at the hospital gave gentle and compassionate care to her granddaughter, that they kept her in the hospital until her parents could get there, and the team of care-givers had helped her granddaughter to see that her spirit, the essence of who she is, had not been taken away from her.

Trust means believing that God can work wonders through each of us if we’re open. God’s mercy and goodness can be in each of our mouths, in all of our actions. Each and every one of us, using the abilities and gifts given to us by God, can, through our words and actions, bring healing, compassion and mercy to others, even strangers. What are you willing to do?