Guess Who Came For Dinner: Intercultural Group makes a stop at the Brown House

I remember their laughter laced with sarcasm like it was yesterday. We were live on the air on the Larry Young Morning Show (WOLB 1010AM) and somehow we started talking about the impoverished of Baltimore City. I began to ponder aloud what would happen if we who had homes started opening our doors to people who did not. “Rev. Brown, are you crazy!,” one of the co-host remarked.

Maybe I was.

I had just finished reading Shane Claiborne’s book, Jesus for President, where he describes in fresh and contemporary ways what the Kingdom of God might look like in our times. I was inspired by the visions he shared in that book. The Kingdom of God was the principal proclamation of Jesus before He became the object of worship. Borg calls The Kingdom “God’s Dream For The World.” What it would actually look like if God’s Will was done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

I think a part of God’s Dream involves the embrace of the marginalized, the poor, and the excluded. On the radio that day I decided to share my thoughts about how homelessness could be erased in this town by the weekend if those of us with extra rooms just made them available. It might not be as simple as just opening your front door, but with some prayerful planning it’s certainly something that could happen. (And did happen according to Acts Chapters 2 and 4) Some might call it a dangerous level of idealism, but I embrace a dangerous gospel – it comes with the territory.

Since then I’ve been really praying about how my home could be more of a vehicle for ministry. My family and I have a home with some rooms in it that for the most part go unoccupied. Over the years, I’ve pondered about what can we do with this extra space? Have more children? Maybe, but I don’t see that on the near horizon at this moment. What can be done now?

My answer came two weeks ago when my family and I welcomed a group of 12 to stay with us for the weekend. They are a part of an intercultural program that brought youth together from Baltimore and Vermont to learn more about each other’s backgrounds and experiences. Half of the group was made up of young men from the Baraka School – a Baltimore-based international study experience for young, Black males that was featured in the 2005 film The Boys of Baraka. They are hardly “boys” anymore – more like young men. The other half of the group was made up of White youth from rural Vermont who spend a semester studying in Ladakh, India.

Bringing the groups together to stay in our home for the weekend (along with the trip organizers) was a special treat. This once large house with rooms to spare began shrinking instantly upon their arrival. There were people on beds, on the floor, upstairs, downstairs, and to the chagrin of my wife – on the couch as well. (yes, the living room couch!)

Their presence in our home for the weekend helped me to realize why God blessed us with this home in the first place. We were blessed so that (as Reggie McNeal puts it in his book Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church) we could be a “blessing people”. And the crazy thing is that while we thought the blessing would flow from our direction to them for the weekend, they started being a blessing people to us. My sisters from Vermont began washing the dishes after meals, one of my young brothers from Baltimore began talking about how he could come back and help me with home renovation projects that I’m working on, and one of the adult facilitators made breakfast for us on their final day before departure. It was almost like a “who can bless the other more” competition.

They had a tight schedule in Baltimore which precluded us from really sitting down and learning more about each other, but they did visit the church where I serve for Sunday morning worship (my White sisters and brothers from Vermont who are members of Baptist Churches back home said, “Our Baptist church is NOTHING like yours.”) and as previously mentioned we shared breakfast together on their last day – a “love feast” patterned after the ancient Christian communal rite which included words of thanks, sharing, and closing prayer. Before we knew it, they were off to New York headed for a Sikh Temple for the next part of their journey.

All in all it was one of the most meaningful weekends that I’ve had in some time. Something happened within the confines of our intentional community that other “intentional community Christians” like members of Church of the Sojourners in California, Reba Place Fellowship in Chicago and other disciples of what is called “New Monasticism” have have caught onto as well. God reveals God’s-self in the midst of purposeful togetherness in ways that are not always possible in the midst of sanctuaries on Sunday mornings.

Thanks to the willingness of Mama Brown, I think the Brown House will continue to be open to how the Lord wishes to use us to be a blessing to somebody else.

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