Matthew 10:11-15; 40-42  ¹¹ Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at that person’s house until you leave. ¹² As you enter the home, give it your greeting. ¹³ If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. ¹⁴ If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. ¹⁵ Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town…

⁴⁰ “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. ⁴¹ Whoever welcomes someone known to be a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward and whoever welcomes someone known to be righteous will receive a righteous person’s reward. ⁴² And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is known to be my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly be rewarded.”

Jesus certainly has an expectation that hospitality will be practiced in the spreading of the Gospel.  It seems that the act of welcome is synonymous with righteousness and even small acts of hospitality reflect a far larger truth of His character and the Kingdom.

Here in our office, as we prepare for upcoming opportunities to host guests, our hospitality coordinator leads us through a checklist of tasks and responsibilities to ensure that we are ready for our guests.  This checklist is necessary to make sure things do not fall through the cracks and expectations are clearly communicated.

But I wonder if there is a weakness to it as well.  Couldn’t it become easy for us to begin to think of hospitality in terms of our narrow set of responsibilities and tasks?  If I know what I am responsible for, I focus in on that one thing and know that everything else is being taken care of by others.  Hospitality becomes distorted into being merely a function, a role, a checklist even.

As I look at what we know of the nature and character of God, it becomes clear that hospitality is central to who we are as believers.  Miroslav Volf paints a word picture of perichoresis—the divine dance when the Trinity exists in a community of perfect harmony, rhythm, and choreography.  In this divine dance, the life of each member is fully turned toward the other two in self-giving hospitality.

“On the cross the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually indwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy (us); in the agony of the passion the movement stops for a brief moment and a fissure appears so that sinful humanity can join in (John 17:21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.) (Volf, 1996)

Volf goes on to write, “We, the other—the enemy—are embraced by the divine persons who love us with the same love they have for each other and therefore make space for us (hospitality) within their own eternal embrace.”

We would, however, be making a mistake if we believed that becoming a part of this “dance” was only for our own benefit.  Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule “that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents.” (Volf)  What happens to us must be done by us.  The hospitality we experience in the welcome embrace of God must be shared with our neighbors.  We must make space for others in ourselves and invite them in—even our enemies.

So hospitality becomes more than just creating a physical space for welcoming guests.  It must begin with a disposition; an inner response to the embrace of God.  “A first step in making room for guests is to make room in our hearts” (Pohl, 1999).  Whether or not we can always find room in our houses, welcome begins with interior lives characterized by love & generosity.  “When our lives are open to hospitality, opportunities will come to make a place for others.”

One of the tings that constantly astounded me during my years in Nepal was the capacity of the Nepali people to make space in their lives for guests.  When someone would come into the city from the remote mountain village of my co-worker and friend Gautam, that person would invariably call the house our two families shared to let us know they had arrived in Kathmandu.  Everything would be dropped and a trip would be made to the bus station to pick this unexpected visitor (and usually several others) up.  It didn’t matter if they had never met, or if they were the distant friend of an acquaintance, they would equally be provided with food, a roof and a warm bed.  We never knew how long these guests would stay and it was culturally inappropriate to ask them.

I looked on it as a burden that Nepali culture obligated us to change our plans, open our home and serve these people who didn’t seem to understand how much they were putting us out.  Gautam and his family seemed, on the other hand, to view each instance as an opportunity to extend God’s welcome embrace to others.  And, indecently, I cannot count how many of those people left after visiting our house for several days (sometimes multiple weeks) as participants in the divine dance.  Gautam and his family didn’t open their home out of obligation to cultural demands.  Their culture just provided them with a better structure to live out an inner disposition of welcome and hospitality.

Hospitality is not just about doing what we can to welcome others.  It is also about being sure that we are aware of what we do that excludes others.  As a community, we have committed ourselves to recognize those who are marginalized and respect all races and genders.  It would seem ludicrous for any of us to imagine ourselves actively or intentionally practicing racial segregation, contributing to a system of apartheid or slavery (all of which are antithetical to hospitality).  Where, however, do we draw the lines between these kinds of atrocities that dehumanize and exclude others and simple carelessness in our hospitality with each other and our guests?  Though it seems absurd, where do we draw the line between genocide and blowing off a visitor—or one another?  “Trying to draw the line where we are trying to draw it, between carelessness and brutality, is like insisting that falling is flying—until you hit the ground-and then trying to outlaw hitting the ground” (Berry, 1993).  Inhospitality is the beginning of resistance of being made agents of God’s welcoming embrace and the beginning of our own exclusion from the divine dance.

Recognition and respect cannot be sustained at the level of abstract claims or commitments.  To have true meaning, they must be lived out in concrete every-day relations.  It’s not enough to believe in service, hospitality, welcome, embrace, loving our neighbor as our self, there must be action that turns that belief into behavior.  Consider the following passages:

• Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27
• And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love one another 1 John 4:21
• · He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’  Matthew 25:45

“Hospitality resists boundaries that endanger persons by denying their humanness.  It saves others form the invisibility that comes from social abandonment” (Pohl).  Our inclusion into the divine dance begins with the hospitality of heart—a disposition of welcome, generosity and gentleness.  And our activism against social and political marginalization, human trafficking, and other forms of dehumanization begins in concrete practices of hospitality; the cup of cold water, including the new person in conversation, sharing your table with a guest.

Refrences:

Berry, Wendell, (1993) Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community.  Pantheon Books, MI

Pohl, Christine, D. (1999) Making Room; Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition.  Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI

Volf, Miroslav, (1996) Exclusion and Embrace; A theological exploration of identity, otherness, and reconciliation.  Ambingdon, Nashville.