What billboards are we showing?

Summertime means that hurricane season in the Atlantic has begun.  I will never forget when Hurricane Floyd made landfall in North Carolina in 1999.  I was on my way to a wedding in Solomons, Maryland and had stopped in Eastern North Carolina to visit family when Floyd came.   The hurricane triggered massive rainfall and flooding, creating chaos for residents and travelers.   Most of the roads on which I was set to travel were closed.  I was forced to go hundreds of miles out of my way to get to Maryland.  What was to be a three hour journey was now taking nearly nine hours.   Not being very good with directions added more turmoil to an already stressful trip.  To top it all off, I looked up at one point and saw a billboard that read,  “Do you really know where you are going?”  I wanted to scream. 

I think of that billboard whenever I reflect on how we greet visitors at our Sunday liturgies .  Do our faces, words and actions say, “You are in the right place,” or, “Do you really know where you are going?”   Our liturgy is ultimately the gift of God’s hospitality; God’s invitation to share God’s life and God’s love in every ritual moment.  We who experience God’s hospitality are called to become instruments of it.  A nod, a smile, an invitation, a genuine gesture of interest and caring go a long way in transforming visitors into guests.

As summer will likely find us either giving or receiving hospitality, I am reminded of an old  

Gaelic Rune on Hospitality.   

I saw a stranger yestreen; I put the food in the eating place, drink in the drinking place,

music in the listening place. And, in the sacred name of the Triune, He blessed myself and my house, my cattle and my dear ones. And the lark said in her song, often, often, often,

goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise; often, often, often, goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.