Hospitality is about folded cloth napkins, hors d’oeuvres, and chocolate mints on the pillow. It’s about grilling the meat, having an open-door policy, and living an interruptible life. It’s about adopting your enemy’s children, developing long-term relationships with prisoners, and not waiting for the prodigal to come home but proactively going out to find him. My pastor preached a really good sermon the other day about hospitality, saying it’s about more than just food, but that it almost always includes food. He told us that Jesus basically eats and drinks His way through the gospel of Luke. Jesus doesn’t just welcome us into His Father’s house; He is Himself our refuge. And He has an agenda to make us fit to live in God’s presence!
Christian hospitality is not about concentric circles that start with me, my family, my church, and eventually include people who speak difficult languages. Christian hospitality is refreshingly different because it starts with Jesus who intentionally locates Himself in circles far away from our comfort zone. When John Calvin was preaching the whole counsel of God in Geneva, what external evidence emerged, indicating that the people of Geneva were no longer just talking about Jesus but structuring their lives around Him? Church historians record the remarkable way that Calvin’s Geneva welcomed refugees who spoke other languages, some of whom eventually repatriated to Scotland and practiced the reformed Christian community that had been such a blessing to them. “Christ has shown us in the parable of the Samaritan that the term ‘neighbour’ includes even the most remote person,” Calvin wrote in the Institutes.
We are familiar with the word “xenophobic,” as it’s a common insult to cast around, as if phobia or fear of the “xenia,” the stranger, were the factor holding us back from Christ’s posture of grace. But I don’t think our main problem with strangers is fear. Our main problem when it comes to hospitality is self-love. I’m speaking for myself, really, but see if the shoe fits you as well. My reluctance to welcome more people into my living room, into my schedule, and into my budget is not driven by fear so much as by an assumption that giving time and energy to others will mean less joy for me and my immediate family. But if the Holy Spirit is present in the situation, the opposite will be the case: somehow your joy actually increases even as you give more of yourself away. We’ve all heard it too many times to ignore it, that on the mission trip, the missionaries received more than they gave. Douglas Webster observes, “In Christ, we learn that we need the fellowship of the needy if we are going to understand the hospitality of God’s grace.”
The Bible’s antidote to xenophobia is one of my favourite words, “philoxenia.” Just as “philadelphia” means “brother love,” so “philoxenia” means “stranger love.” We see these two words side by side in Hebrews 13:1-2 – “Let brotherly love (philadelphia) continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality (philoxenia), for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” I keep waiting for those angels to show up at my door, but Jesus keeps sending me strangers instead. Abraham and Sarah killed the fatted calf in Genesis 18 for the LORD and the two angels that approached their tent. But the heart behind their hospitality can be seen in Abraham’s rescue of his nephew Lot, in his prayers for Lot’s city, in his trust that God would provide on Mt. Moriah, even as Abraham prepared to offer up much more than a fatted calf in Genesis 22. What do you think was going through Jesus’s mind when as a boy He first read Nehemiah 5:17 – “Moreover, there were at my table 150 men, Jews and officials, besides those who came to us from the nations that were around us.” Even as Nehemiah was building some necessary walls in this fallen world, he was inviting people from all nations to enjoy a seat at his personal table. Jesus is known for tearing down the dividing walls, and for spreading a meal of infinite value, a meal of true communion, true sustenance.
When I’m on a long journey, I sincerely appreciate the hospitality industry. When I’m a tourist, I love VRBO and Airbnb. But Christian hospitality is of a different genus and species. Christian hospitality is planning in advance for a long-term guest to stay in your house. It’s signing up to be a foster parent. It’s organizing a support team in your church to surround those foster parents with love, friendship, and respite care. Christlike hospitality is not just spontaneous, it’s a planned-out ambitious offering of community to those who cannot easily access the “industry.” Christlike hospitality doesn’t see this as a burden to be endured but as a delightful opportunity to represent the Jesus who fed the five thousand, who owned no home in any Galilean gated community, but rather laid down His life to prepare a place for us in a house that has “many rooms.”
Sadly, even our healthiest congregations are simply not set up for much life-on-life ministry. I fear that our best diaconal mercy ministries assume a middle-class person who’s merely experiencing a little bump-in-the-road problem. We’re not half-bad if that’s the case. But we are inadequately prepped to take chronically dependent people and carry them for the long-haul. We are disposed to outsource practical help to the professional counsellors and social workers, instead of building a team that would include church members while also accessing the social safety net.
If you start hanging out with people on the margin and listen to their stories, a common thread is that they have burned their bridges with their relatives. They might have genuine Christian relatives alive somewhere on the planet, but those relatives are the last people on the planet who are going to lift a finger to help them, because this needy person has frankly been a royal pain seventy-seven times in a row. I admit that I have relatives that I hope someone else will help; I’m not sure I want to be involved. This is where the church, the body of Christ, is so strategic. We, the crazy church, can believe that God is the God of the impossible when all the decent relatives have given up hope. We, the crazy church, can approach a situation with fresh eyes and begin a relationship with little to no baggage, fuelled by prayer. We can even seek to re-engage those burned-out relatives, recruiting them back onto a team, assuring them that they will not have to act alone.
Jesus’s hospitality was marked by what theologians call the sincere offer of the gospel – whosoever will may come. Jesus’s hospitality does not perpetually leave us in our filth: He washed Peter’s feet. Jesus’s hospitality uniquely demanded that He die in our place to bring us into the Father’s house. On a day that I pray will come soon, we will find ourselves seated at His table, at the wedding supper of the Lamb, where we will enjoy eschatological hospitality. Like the wedding guests tasting that miraculous wine in Cana, we will testify that Jesus saves the best for last. With very few exceptions, the people seated at that table in glory will be able to tell you this: that table in glory is not the first table at which they sat with Jesus. That meal in glory is not the first meal they have had with Jesus. The first time they sat at a table where Jesus was present was not in heaven but in the fellowship hall at your church. The first meal they had where Jesus was the host was a meal they had with you at the beach or in your backyard. The Father’s eternal house will not be the first Christian home they’ve lived in, because last week you let them crash on your couch. The hospitality you extend today is the foretaste, the firstfruits, the preview of the wonder that is to come.
