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The intentional practice of hospitality can be the best and hardest thing you'll ever do. It can bring a host of difficulties but also a wealth of joys. Hospitality is an area that can easily fall into neglect, but the book of Hebrews (13:12) warns against doing so. Hospitality is not just to be practiced once a year at Thanksgiving or Christmas, but it should be a constant attitude and practice. Romans 12:13 says we're to "practice hospitality." This literally means we are to pursue it, and the verb implies continuous action.
According to the 1828 Noah Webster dictionary, hospitality is "the act or practice of receiving and entertaining strangers or guests without reward, or with kind and generous liberality." The root meaning of hospitality is the Latin word hospes, which literally means "guests." In its purest sense, hospitality is sharing our home, lives, personal space, and resources without communicating a need for performance or an expectation of return.
Hospitality should be done out of a grateful heart for all God has done for us, not out of obligation. We are to practice hospitality to one another without grudging (1 Peter 4:9). To be a good steward of God's grace means we let our hospitality be an extension of God's hospitality to us.
Grace is the hospitality of God to welcome sinners not because of their goodness, but because of his glory. God's very being is community-the community of the Holy Trinity. In creating a universe, God made room for others. This act of divine hospitality allows us to share in the love of the divine community. The end of all things is God's great open house where there is feasting and gladness forever. Now that's hospitality!
The Lord repeatedly instructs us to practice hospitality. In addition, one of the mentioned qualities required to be an elder is the faithful practice of hospitality (Titus 1:8, 1 Timothy 3:2). There are many examples of the New Testament believers practicing hospitality (Acts 16:15, 21:8, 16).
Those gifted in the area of hospitality have a special ability to focus his or her attention on a guest. They are able to clearly communicate that it is their privilege to have guests in their home. They value the presence of others in their lives and often do this without words; their actions alone speak volumes.
Galatians 6:2 admonishes us to bear one another's burdens. The practical art of bearing the burdens of others includes hospitality, which is an expression of love. Simply ask yourself, "How can I draw people into a deeper experience of God's hospitality by the use of my home?"
During Hurricane Francis, my cousin opened her very small home in Pennsylvania to her son and three of his friends from college in Florida. I was convicted! Often I've neglected hospitality with the excuse "My house is too small." Now I realize no house is too small to show God's love.
Opportunities to extend hospitality are bountiful. Perhaps a recent widow is lonely. Maybe a new believer at church could use a mentor. Perhaps the missionaries on furlough could use a place to stay. Forget trying to impress anybody. Paper plates and cups are just as useful as fine China. Hospitality comes from the heart; it doesn't require spotless homes, gourmet meals, and perfectly behaved children. Making room for others means we welcome them into our lives just as they are. A relaxed, "this is who we are" atmosphere takes the pressure out of hosting others.
Not everyone is naturally hospitable, but we are all called to practice it as the opportunity arises. The great Swedish theologian, Krister Stendahl, once said, "Whenever, wherever, however the Kingdom manifests itself, it is in welcome."
Hospitality isn't just a nice thing to do if we can; it's the very embodiment of our faith. When we faithfully practice hospitality, we can leave an indelible mark in the lives of others whom God brings at just the right time. And any time is the perfect time to practice hospitality.
Tammy Darling is a freelance writer from Three Springs, Pennsylvania.
The centrality of hospitality to the social practices of many societies attests to its almost universal importance. Necessary to human well-being, hospitality offers protect-ion, provision, and respect to strangers while it also sustains fundamental moral bonds among family, friends, and acquaintances. In the first centuries of the church, Christians gave hospitality to strangers a distinctive emphasis by pressing welcome outward toward the weakest and those least likely to be able to reciprocate. What can a closer look at this practice of hospitality teach us about the moral life more generally?
For Christians, the moral life is inseparable from grace. It begins in worship as we recognize God's generosity toward us. Our morality involves responsibility and faithful performance of duty, but fundamentally it emerges from a grateful heart. We can see this clearly in hospitality, which is first a response of love and gratitude for God's love and welcome to us. If not shaped by gratitude, when we encounter difficult demands or ungrateful guests, our hospitality quickly becomes grudging. Grudging hospitality exhausts hosts and wounds guests even as it serves them.
Christian hospitality reflects and participates in God's hospitality. God loves the sojourner and provides for the vulnerable. God gives the lonely a home and offers us a place at an abundant table. Hospitality depends on a disposition of love; it has more to do with the resources of a generous and grateful heart than with availability of food or space.
Hospitality also reminds us that our moral life is inseparable from close attention to the life of Jesus. In the gospels, Jesus is present as gracious host and needy guest. He welcomes the outcast and depends on the welcome of ordinary folk. In his table fellowship, he challenges cultural assumptions about who is welcome in the community and in the kingdom. Jesus identifies himself with the stranger and sick such that ministry to them is ministry to him (Matthew 25:31-46). Jesus teaches explicitly that we are to include the poor and infirm (those who seem least likely to reciprocate) in our invitations to dinner (Luke 14:12-14). We know what hospitality should look like when we dwell in and on the life of Jesus.
Hospitality helps us see that moral practices are shaped over a lifetime. We learn the skills of hospitality in small increments of daily faithfulness. The moral life is much less about dramatic gestures than it is about steady work-faithfulness undergirded by prayer and sustained by grace. The surprise is how often it is accompanied by mystery, blessing, and joy.
Christine Pohl, author of Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Eerdmans), is professor of Christian social ethics at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. Reprinted with permission from Sojourners magazine, www.sojo.net 1-800-714-7474.
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