The mission of the Alban Institute—where I have worked for nearly a decade—is to "build up congregations and their leaders to be agents of grace and transformation to shape and heal the world." But I've often wondered: what might it look like to be agents of grace and transformation? What do agents of grace and transformation do? How do they live?

Claudia Greer is a Resource Associate at the Alban Institute. Reach her at cgreer@alban.org.

I began to find some answers at Temple Micah in Washington, DC, when my husband and I attended a Bat Mitzvah service for Hannah, our friend's 13-year-old daughter. Part of the service featured a talk by Rabbi Zemel, who had agreed to address any theological question Hannah posed to him. As the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Hannah presented a searing question: "Where was God during the Holocaust?"

The rabbi began to tell the story of Le Chambon, a French town where members of the Protestant community risked their own safety—in the face of Nazi occupation—by offering hospitality and protection to Jewish refugees. When those who offered refuge were later asked, "How were you able to do that?," the overwhelming response was, "How could we not?"

"That's where God was during the Holocaust, Hannah," Rabbi Zemel concluded. "God was in Le Chambon and in countless other places where love overruled fear, where hospitality overruled cowardice."

Not every French town displayed Le Chambon's level of hospitality; the nearby Protestant village of Le Mazet, for example, refused to shelter refugees. What made the inhabitants of Le Chambon such "agents of grace and transformation"? Philip Hallie suggests an answer in his book, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There.

A refugee who spent many months in Le Chambon once found herself reminiscing about her arrival there. "Upon my arrival," she said, "I saw Pastor Andre Trocme, and I knew instantly that he was the soul of Le Chambon...The fact is that when you try to understand the peculiar spirit of Le Chambon…you will find that all roads lead to Andre Trocme"…he was the quickening spirit, the warming force in that gray little village during those poverty-stricken and dangerous years…he "welcomed refugees in a wide embrace," as she put it.¹

Few of us are called upon to display the kind of courage that was seen in Le Chambon and Andre Trocme, but we all can exercise the "wide embrace" of the stranger in our day-to-day lives. Perhaps that means speaking for a few minutes to a newcomer in your congregation. Perhaps it's truly listening to the elderly neighbor's response when you ask her, "How have you been?" Perhaps it's making eye contact with the soup kitchen guest when you ladle up a bowl of chili.

But having heard Rabbi Zemel's talk, having read Philip Hallie's book, and having witnessed many acts of "everyday" kindness, I now suspect that steadily practicing hospitality—in seemingly small ways—eventually makes possible the grace and transformation that enables communities like Le Chambon to say, in the face of tragedy or injustice, "How could we not?"

Not a bad mission—for all of us.

— Claudia Greer, December 4, 2009

Related resources:

Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People

Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition

The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community