Recently I’ve been exploring with our church family the need for the church in America to rediscover the practice of hospitality as a means of engaging with “outsiders” to bring them into relationship with Jesus and his church. Increasingly, I become more convinced that hospitality is not merely a requirement for elders and deacons (1 Timothy 3:2), but rather it is the God-ordained strategy modeled by Christ, himself to foreshadow and expand the kingdom of heaven on earth.
There is, however, a problem. Hospitality assumes social interaction and a deep willingness to not only draw near to people but also a commitment to draw people into our most guarded spaces. Hospitality in the local church is never presented on the pages of Scripture as optional. Sadly, though, most of don’t fully understand what hospitality is, and what’s even more tragic is that most have never truly seen hospitality modeled faithfully.
The Apostle Paul instructed the believers in Rome to “contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality” (Romans 12:13), while the Hebrew writer warned his readers “not to neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware” (Hebrews 13:2). Hospitality in the New Testament is literally “love for strangers.” It goes without saying that the family of God must be family in more than just name. The earliest seeds of faith germinated in community as the early church grew in intimacy and in size “in their homes” (Acts 2:46). Still today, the community of faith multiplies and bears its kingdom fruit in the soils of familial relationships with those who are bound together in the person of Jesus Christ when often they have nothing else in common. This is the goal of the church’s mission, to see strangers become family. There is no better way to achieve this objective than by employing the very same practice modeled by Jesus.
Jesus challenged the conventional views on hosting when he said, “When you give a dinner or banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid” (Luke 14:12). All of us have friends who are easy to hang out with. They think like us. They share our values and interests, and they simply make life more enjoyable. But according to Jesus, these are not the only ones who should receive the major focus of our hospitable energy and effort. Instead, when we host a feast, we should “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed” (Luke 14:13).
Volumes could and likely have been written about the biblical understanding of hospitality, but first and foremost, we must simply see that hospitality involves our homes. And in my opinion, this is where the tension exists in the American mindset regarding hospitality. We’ve all heard it said that “a man’s home is his castle,” and most of us take this quite literally. To be sure, few Americans have moats around their castles that are not visible to the naked eye, but rest assured, invisible moats do, in fact, exist. For most of us, our homes are the sacred spaces where we go to retreat and withdraw from the world. And with each passing year, we discover that it gets easier and easier to hold up in our homes without having to engage with people face to face. We can bank online, go to school online, order our groceries online, visit with our doctor online, and some even think they can attend church online. With more and more virtual opportunities, there seem to be fewer and fewer reasons to even leave our homes. But there is one very important reason that the church needs to change how they understand the role of their homes: the gospel!
It is through the rhythms of the ancient world that our perspectives on hospitality must be shaped. Remember that Airbnb and Holiday Inn are modern conveniences that the world 200 years ago knew nothing about. If you needed to travel from place to place in Bible times, your lodging options were grossly limited. If an inn existed in a town, it was not likely that it was a place you wouldn’t want to stay. Inns were notoriously dirty, expensive, and very dangerous. Consequently, families seeking to avoid the risks of bedding down in strange and perilous places developed a vast network of hospitable homes in which people could safely travel and find accommodations in secure spaces.
This travel pattern was dependent upon something called a “tally.” More times than not the travelers were strangers to their hosts, and you can imagine the potential dangers which would be present when inviting strangers into your home. The “tally” was a small physical object comprised of two halves, which when placed together, it would be obvious that they belonged together. The host possessed one half of the tally, and the traveler would present the other half upon arrival to validate his sincerity and identity. If one could produce the tally, he would not merely receive a free meal, he would be treated as one of the family.
When the Bible and especially the New Testament writers speak of hospitality, this system of travel is the backdrop. In his attempt to understand why God’s hand was against him, Job proclaimed, “…the sojourner has not lodged in the street: I have opened my doors to the traveler” (Job 31:32). Job practiced hospitality. Even earlier in God’s story, Lot encounters two strangers (who later turn out to be angels) at the gate of Sodom and he implores them, “…please turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night and wash your feet.” When they refused, Lot “…pressed them strongly” (Genesis 19:1-3) until the strangers finally agreed to spend the night in Lot’s house. Lot was well acquainted with the wickedness of his town, and he knew all too well the jeopardy the strangers would encounter if they stayed in the public square. Lot practiced hospitality. Jesus tells a story about a man who shows up at midnight unannounced at the house of a friend who has no bread to share (Luke 11:5-8). The point of Jesus’ story has to do with persistence in praying, but the story itself is set right in the middle of hospitality because everyone listening to Jesus would have been intimately accustomed to the practice. What was familiar to the biblical world has become unfamiliar and strange to the American church.
Tim Chester, in his wonderful little book, A Meal with Jesus, reminds us that of the many things which Jesus was known for, Luke says, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking” (Matthew 11:19). That seems like a strange thing to emphasize about the man who came to restore creation. What possible objective could Luke have in mind by telling us that Jesus was “eating and drinking?” Chester helps us to see that the manner in which Jesus approached food and table fellowship displays for us how he intends for us to go about engaging the broken and marginalized around us. In a culture like ours which demands bigger, more innovative, attractional strategies and church programs, the life of Jesus stands in stark contrast to our own. He embraces the ordinary rhythms of life as the means by which he intersects with people in spaces where they see Jesus as he truly is and not as the Jesus people want him to be.
If the only image which the world has of Jesus is the one shaped by our Sunday worship events, then it is no wonder that the world has no earthly idea who Jesus is or why it even matters. What takes place in many church services from week to week is so void of Jesus and the power and presence of his Spirit that I doubt Satan himself is threatened by it. But when followers of Jesus crucify the belief that their home is their castle and instead recognize their homes to be the sacred space where we should invite our neighbors, hell will begin to tremble.
Our homes have become havens where we can escape the world rather than a place to engage it. Even as I tried to locate statistics to reveal generational trends regarding eating together in the homes of our neighbors, there were few stats to speak of. In fact, type in the word hospitality into your search bar, and the only articles you’ll find are related to hotels but absolutely nothing related to showing hospitality in our homes. Our culture simply doesn’t even have a category for this biblical mandate anymore.
It seems that Jesus was so well known for table fellowship that there were some who called him a “glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 11:19), and the references to Jesus eating and his allusions to food in his teaching are numerous, not isolated. By the time we come to the Book of Acts we find that this new community which Jesus birthed through the power of his Spirit is multiplying and “breaking bread together in their homes” (Acts 2:46). It would be a gross mistake to think that these references are merely informative rather than a model for how God intends his people to share their lives and their homes throughout every generation.
When followers of Christ invite strangers, neighbors, and friends alike to fellowship at their table a very graphic image emerges. The simple act of opening our homes reflects the open door of Christ through which the elect can enter into relationship with our Creator. By feeding others food which I have paid for and prepared with my own hands, I am demonstrating that Christ alone is the Living Bread and the Living Water, and he is the only thing that can satisfy. Every meal offered to strangers around a believers table is a profound enacting of Isaiah’s prophecy, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food” (Isaiah 55:1-2).
It is time for the church in America to acknowledge that our homes are not our own. They belong to God, and he intends that our homes be filled with his presence and opened to the world around us. There is no greater discipling strategy than the one which Jesus modeled through his own life. Purchase a bigger table, and let’s party!
Rick Kirby 