As you enter the home, give it your greeting. If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.
Matthew 10:12-14 (NIV)

Other than a four-year collegiate sojourn in the Chicago area, I have lived in Iowa my entire life. I just read an article a few weeks ago about the fact that Iowa has among the happiest people in the world. You’ll never read that or hear about it in the news. Every year you’ll hear the major news streams buzz about Scandinavian countries and Bhutan being the happiest places on earth, but that whole thing (like most things coming out of the main stream press these days) is a complete sham.

Of course, happy places have their quirks, and so it is with living in the midwest. For example, there is an etiquette to visiting others and being visited. When you arrive, it’s customary to bring something with you for your host. Typically it is food of some kind. Wine is what Wendy and I most often bring with us when invited to another home for dinner. I once invited a musician over to the Vander Well Pub for a pint. He brought the entire collection of his jazz combo’s CDs as a gift. There were, like, six of them. Awesome. I love jazz.

There is also an unspoken but well-worn tradition of guests leaving a host’s home here in Iowa. You don’t just leave. There’s a type of dance you do that begins with non-verbal signals to everyone that it’s about time to leave. This proceeds to small verbal hints like saying, “Well, this has been lovely. Thank you.” Then there’s the rising from your seat and continued banter as you make your way toward the entrance. More conversation. More giving of thanks and offers to reciprocate. The host makes a show of sending you home with the leftovers of whatever food you brought, which must be rebuffed. The promise of returning your casserole dish is given, by which you turn it into an invitation to have your hosts over to your house. You put your coat and shoes on as the conversation continues and discussion of possible future get-togethers commences. If you know your hosts well, you might experience a series of good-bye hugs during this entire culturally choreographed good-bye dance. It can sometimes take upwards of a half-hour from the first non-verbal hint you’re ready to leave to the point you are in your car driving home.

I thought of this as I read today’s chapter. Jesus sends The Twelve out into towns and villages to proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God has come near. Jesus gives them instructions for entering and leaving hosts’ homes and tells them to bring their “Greeting” which in the Jewish tradition of the day meant bringing the blessing of “Shalom” which translates as “peace” but means so much more than that. Jesus then offers instructions for when the disciples are not welcome or if the hosts turns on them once they hear the message the disciples bring with them. If that happens, Jesus tells them to let their “shalom” return to them, shake it off, and go on their way.

Sometimes on this chapter-a-day journey I run across a passage and God’s Spirit whispers to my spirit that I need to spend some time meditating on that. So it was with these verses I pasted at the top of today’s post. I have never once heard a sermon given on these instructions of Jesus. They are verses that I myself have read countless times without even giving them consideration. Yet there is something there in the being a guest and how I enter and leave another person’s home that I think is worth more consideration.

When I enter another person’s home, what do I bring with me? I’m not talking about a casserole, dessert, or bottle of wine, but shalom. Do I bring a blessing? Do I enter with God’s peace and presence to gift to those who invited me in? What spiritual blessing can I gift and impart to my host and their family? In the quiet this morning, I find myself needing more time to meditate on these instructions and to consider what it might mean for me and Wendy, especially in light of the well-worn cultural dance of entering and leaving here in Iowa. I’ve learned along my life journey that sometimes one has to do something novel in order to “cut in” during a deep-seated cultural dance.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.