The Visitor

The Visitor
(part of a movie sermon series)
Rev. Kerry Greenhill
Highlands UMC
August 9, 2009

Hebrews 13:1-3
Let mutual love continue.
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,
for by doing that some have entertained angels
without knowing it.
Remember those who are in prison,
as though you were in prison with them;
those who are being tortured,
as though you yourselves were being tortured.


Walter Vale is a man
who has forgotten how to live.
I mean, he continues working,
teaching economics at a college in Connecticut.
He cooks dinner for himself at night.
He is trying to learn to play the piano.
But there is no energy, no enthusiasm or passion,
or even really much interest
in what he does.
At the beginning of the school year,
he just changes the date on the syllabus.
He tells people he has a lighter course load
so he can work on his next book,
but he never actually writes anything.
He has had five piano teachers
and still cannot play the piece he practices daily.
He is sleepwalking through his life.

As the movie opens,
we see the latest piano teacher
attempting to help Walter make progress.
But her methods are better suited to children
than grown men,
and when they say goodbye,
he tells her he won’t continue with their lessons.
She lets him know that learning an instrument
at his age
is difficult,
especially if you don’t possess a natural gift for it.
And she lets him know that if he does give it up,
she would like to buy his piano.

We come to find out that Walter was married,
that his wife was an accomplished classical pianist,
and that she died some years previous.
It is clear that grief and loneliness
lay heavily upon Walter.
The piano lessons are an effort to hold on
to what he has lost,
maybe even to keep the clock
from ticking endlessly forward.

But time does tick on,
and Walter’s department chair comes to him one day
to tell him he must go to a conference in New York City
to present a paper he co-authored with a colleague.
Walter protests, he can’t,
he would really rather not go,
he didn’t actually write the paper…
but there is no getting out of this obligation.

So he drives to the city, alone.
But when he enters the apartment
he has owned for more than 20 years,
he is startled to discover
a young couple living there.
After about a minute of mutual panic and confusion,
they realize that they are the intruders in Walter’s home,
and not the other way around.
The man’s name is Tarek,
and he is from Syria;
his girlfriend, Zainab, is from Senegal.
They have been living there for a couple months,
having been rented the apartment
in what turns out to have been a scam.

They immediately pack up their things and leave,
wanting no trouble,
but as Walter watches them from his window,
it becomes clear they don’t have anywhere else to go.
He invites them to stay,
at least until they can get on their feet,
and they gratefully, if hesitantly, accept.

Over the next few days,
the young couple build a tentative friendship
with Walter.
They eat dinner together in the apartment,
and Walter accepts their invitation
to go to a jazz club
and hear Tarek play djembe,
a kind of African drum.
On his lunch hour,
Walter eats in the park and discovers
two young men playing a frenzied beat
on two upturned white plastic buckets.

The next day,
Walter seeks out the drummers in the park
and you can see the rhythm is starting to get under his skin
by the way he moves his head and shoulders to the beat
while eating his lunch.
That evening,
after finding Walter tapping experimentally
on the drum in his living room,
Tarek gives Walter a lesson in djembe.
He says to him,
“I know you’re a very smart man,
but with the drum,
you have to remember not to think.
Thinking just screws it up, okay?”
And keeping a steady beat,
Tarek encourages Walter to start playing,
until Walter’s look of utterly serious concentration
softens to something like enjoyment.

Within a day or two,
Walter and Tarek have made such progress
that Walter joins in a drumline at the park,
and the spirit of the rhythm
and the energy of the beat
has people of all sizes and skin colors dancing,
their whole bodies moving with the joy of the music.
They joke about playing drums
in the subway station together—
something Tarek has always wanted to do,
because it’s supposed to be good money.

But on their way back to meet Zainab,
Tarek and Walter run into some trouble.
There is a glitch with the swipe card Tarek is using,
so he hands the drum to Walter and climbs through.
And is stopped by police
who accuse him of jumping the turnstile.
In spite of Walter’s assurances that he didn’t do anything wrong,
the officers arrest Tarek and take him away.
Walter comes back to the apartment
to tell a worried Zainab what happened.
“It was just a misunderstanding.
They said he’d be released later tonight,”
he says.
But her fear only increases:
“How could this happen?
He knows better,
he wouldn’t do anything wrong.”
“No, he didn’t. He didn’t.
I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
“No,” she tells him,
“it won’t be okay.
We are illegal.
We are not citizens.
And when they find out—”

And of course, they do find out.
Tarek is held in a very nondescript detention facility
in a run-down part of Queens,
and Walter goes to visit him there.
Zainab cannot visit,
because she would be putting herself at risk
of discovery by the authorities
and deportation.
Walter hires an immigration lawyer
to try to help Tarek,
and learns some more about his past:
when he first came to the U.S. with his mother,
their request for asylum was denied.
They appealed, and were turned down,
but Tarek never received orders
to show up for deportation.
We also learn that Tarek’s father
was a journalist in Syria,
imprisoned for seven years
for something he wrote,
and released so sick and weak
that he died just two months later.

Tarek asks Walter if he has been back to the drumline,
if he is still practicing,
and encourages him to demonstrate
what he’s been working on.

Zainab moves out of the apartment,
going to stay with her cousin.
Tarek’s mother shows up at Walter’s door—
surprised to find a more-than-middle-aged white man
who claims to be sharing the apartment with her son.
She has come to New York from Michigan
because she has not heard from Tarek in several days
and she is very worried about him.
Walter takes her in,
insisting that she stay
because he feels responsible for Tarek’s arrest.

Life in the detention facility is not easy,
and Tarek’s usually sunny mood
grows increasingly anxious
as other detainees disappear without warning,
moved from the facility
with no notice of where they have gone.
“What do they think? I’m a terrorist?
There are no terrorists in here.
Terrorists have money, support.
This is not fair.”
“I know.”
“How do you know? You’re out there.
I’m sorry.”
[Tarek gets choked up, tries to compose himself]
“I keep thinking about Zainab.
I just want to live my life and play my music.
What’s so wrong about that?”

Mouna, Tarek’s mother,
meets Zainab, and likes her;
spends time with Walter,
and grows fond of him,
as he does of her.
Although he is worried about Tarek,
Walter has come alive
through the drumming
and these new relationships.
He goes back to Connecticut briefly,
sells the piano,
and arranges to take a leave of absence
from the college
in order to spend more time in New York.

But there is no happy ending.
There is no Disney ending,
no loophole in the system,
no tough-as-nails judge
whose heart is softened
by some persuasive storytelling.
Tarek is deported,
very suddenly, without warning,
early one morning
before Walter and Mouna
can get to the detention facility.

Mouna decides she must go back to Syria
as soon as possible,
for Tarek’s sake.
Her farewell to Walter is tearful
and reluctant,
both of them having found something in the other
they had never expected to find again.

In the final scene,
Walter is takes the djembe down to the subway
where he sits on a bench in the station
and plays.
A few people turn to look
at this older white male,
college-professor type
playing the African drum,
but Walter just keeps playing
without seeming to notice or care
if they are listening.

There is no real hero in this movie,
and no real villain.
Just the story of these people,
connected for a short time,
before their lives take them separate ways.

The movie begs the question,
who is the visitor in this story?
Mouna, in New York City?
Zainab and Tarek, in the apartment?
All of the immigrants,
whose life in the U.S. has no guarantee of permanency?
Walter, when he sees Tarek
in the detention facility?
Walter, in his own apartment?
Or Walter, who starts out a visitor
in his own life?

Of course there’s not just one right answer.
But what stands out to me
is how, in Walter’s life,
the decision to extend hospitality
to two strangers,
immigrants,
foreigners—
becomes a source of rich blessing.

The verse from Hebrews today
reminds us of the story of Abraham and Sarah,
who were visited by three strangers
who turned out to be angels:
not glowing, cherubic figures with wings,
but messengers from God,
dusty from the road
in need of food and shelter,
yet carrying the gift of blessing:
the good news that Sarah
(who was so old
she didn’t take offense at the word “old”)
would bear a child,
that together Abraham and Sarah
would become the ancestors
of multitudes,
of nations that would spread God’s blessing
over the earth.

Amazing, isn’t it?
That’s the thing about biblical hospitality:
although it starts with the assumption
that it is the host who acts benevolently
toward the guest,
it often ends with the host’s realization
that the guest has given more than they received.

Just look at the stories of Jesus
in the homes of Zaccheus,
or Mary and Martha,
even the home of Simon
(the leper or the Pharisee,
depending which gospel you’re reading)
when a woman comes in
to anoint Jesus with costly perfumed ointment.

Because while Walter does what he can
to help Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna,
in the end he cannot fix
any of the problems in their lives.
But what he gains from building a relationship with them
turns his own life around.
From sleepwalking
to dancing.
From a life based in the mind—
and a life half-lived, at that—
a life isolated and lonely
transformed to a life fully embodied,
connected to others,
reenergized by discovering a new rhythm,
a beat that exists within his heart.

The point is not, of course,
that African rhythms are superior
to Western classical music,
that drums are better than piano—
or harp!
Mouna has expressed her enjoyment of classical music,
listening to a CD of Walter’s wife playing piano.
There is nothing wrong with classical music
if that is what stirs your soul.

There is something wrong
with holding onto the past
in such a way
that you cannot take a step forward.
Or with shutting down your hopes and passions
because you are afraid of the pain of grief.

Because the heart of the gospel,
in my understanding,
is the promise that Jesus made
of life abundant,
not just life that goes on forever after death,
but life that is here and now
infused with the Spirit
of love and joy and laughter,
life in all its fullness
where pain and grief are fully felt and acknowledged
in order for healing to be possible,
life centered in God’s love for all people,
all creation,
life in sync with the very heartbeat
of God.
Sometimes we need to be shaken out of our routines,
to have a new kind of experience,
an encounter with a stranger,
to realize there is still more possible
in this life.

May you be ready to receive
The Visitor who comes to your door.

Amen.