Neighborhood Hospitality

Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, Genesis 18. 1 - 16

In today's reading from Genesis, three men arrive at Abraham's tent as they wander in the desert. Abraham immediately jumps up and invites them in, offering them a meal of bread and meat and what we would call good old fashioned hospitality. It is an early story about welcoming the stranger and the blessing that comes upon one who does that. Before the wanderers leave, they say Abraham and Sarah will be blessed for their kindness, and the blessing will be that Sarah will have a child.

Since the 1930's, Bistro Roca has been a bar and watering hole for the people of the little town of Blowing Rock. Though at times it is full of tourists, locals know that they can always walk in and grab a seat at the bar or one of the bar tables and get a good meal served with great hospitality. I can walk there, and there is a certain point right before I turn the corner when I can see the smoke from the wood burning oven and smell whatever is cooking, anticipating the comfort and hospitality of this extraordinary spot. Brooke and Julia and Mark are the servers I look for, and Jen is usually at the front, like Abraham, inviting people in and finding tables for folk. During covid, most of us in the neighborhood ordered take-out from Bistro as often as we could to keep their business going. Last Friday it was packed as many of us gathered in the restaurant's warm embrace to have what we called "the last supper" before the predicted winter storm of the century arrived.

Bistro Roca burned to the ground last Sunday. Even yesterday the smoke still rises out of the rubble. The community is devastated, not only because of the loss of our precious go to place, but especially because of the impact on the servers and owners who welcomed us with such hospitality. The community has raised $100,000 just for the employees to support them until they can find other work. You might notice that I used the present tense in the first paragraph, because I know that Bistro Roca will rise again. I still walk down there, and the smoke still rises as I believe that place of extraordinary hospitality will rise.

Just as Abraham and Sarah were rewarded for their hospitality, so the people of Bistro Roca will be rewarded, especially by the community they served so well. "Hospitality is the mark of a great civilization," a wise woman said. Bistro Roca is an example of what a great civilization we have in this little hamlet in the mountains of Western North Carolina. May she rise like the phoenix and be a sign of the resilience and transformation of a great civilization.