Theologian Christine Pohl reflects on the biblical call to hospitality:
Communities in which hospitality is a vibrant practice tap into deep human longings to belong, find a place to share one’s gifts, and be valued. The practice of hospitality reflects a willingness on the part of a community of people to be open to others and to their insights, needs, and contributions. Hospitable communities recognize that they are incomplete without other folks but also that they have a “treasure” to share with them.
Hospitality is at the heart of Christian life, drawing from God’s grace and reflecting God’s graciousness. In hospitality, we respond to the welcome that God has offered and replicate that welcome in the world. While many current understandings of hospitality are limited to the hospitality industry of restaurants and hotels, coffee and donuts at church, or well-planned dinner parties, the practice itself is biblically, historically, and theologically much more substantive and significant.
The practice of hospitality is important for communities as they reach out to others and as they work to strengthen their internal relationships. A community is also important for the practice of hospitality. Those who welcome strangers from within a community can find friends with whom to share the work and the blessing, help in maintaining perspective, and opportunities for rest and renewal. [1]
Preacher-activist Sandra Maria Van Opstal encourages the church to expand hospitality from something we do to an expression of who we are:
What is this shift, this journey from doing to being? It involves a deepening relationship with both the Holy Spirit and people who may not look like us or share our experiences. Shifting our focus from doing to being allows us to become more fully the community that Scripture calls us to be. Though we may begin with hospitality, where we are saying “we welcome you,” Scripture calls us to journey from that place, through a place of solidarity (“we stand with you”), and ultimately to mutuality (“we need you”), where we comprehend just how deeply the global community of Jesus followers need each other in order to be the people of God we are called by Scripture to be….
While we tend to think of this journey from hospitality to mutuality as a one-way process, our life in Christ is far from linear. Jesus exemplified mutuality in every way: in the stories he told, in the way he related to others, and even in the way he died. When the church works to embody mutuality in their daily life, and especially in their approach to immigrants and refugees, we learn to lament, celebrate, and learn together. Ultimately, this leads to the healing and wholeness that God wants for [God’s] creation! And this means not just doing but being the reflection of Christ’s love, which the church is called to be; to witness to Christ not just in our words but in our mutual identity as members of [Christ’s] body. [2]
References:
[1] Christine D. Pohl, Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us (Eerdmans, 2012), 159–160.
[2] Sandra Maria Van Opstal, “Beyond Welcoming,” in No Longer Strangers: Transforming Evangelism with Immigrant Communities, ed. Eugene Cho, Samira Izadi Page (Eerdmans, 2021), 69, 83.
Image credit and inspiration: Lucas Dalamarta, Untitled (detail), 2024, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. When engaging with an unknown being we practice holding space for the other and leading with an open heart, even when we don’t know the outcome.
Story from Our Community:
I am a practicing Tibetan Buddhist. A Christian friend told me about Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations, and I subscribed. I’m finding that the Christian contemplative tradition shares so much with my own faith by centering on oneness and love. The first Daily Meditation I read featured Barbara Mahany’s reflections on Brother Lawrence’s “Book of Nature.” I offered some key passages to one of my Buddhist meditation groups, and it brought our leader to tears. A copy of this reflection now sits permanently on the group’s notice board. Thank you for this wonderful resource of deep humanity.
—Richard H.
