Welcoming the Stranger; Recovering Biblical Hospitality

Cultivating Missional Living Sermon 10

Mi Casa, Es Su Casa!

Welcoming the Stranger; Recovering Biblical Hospitality

Matthew 25:31-46, Luke 14:12-14, Romans 12:13, Hebrews 13:3, 1 Peter 4:9

Welcoming the Stranger

Matthew 25:31-46

I do not often talk about Greek words in the context of Sunday Morning sermons, but I want to point a word out to you. It is the Greek word we translate hospitality. It is made up of two Greek words. The words for love and for stranger. The word literally means “love of stranger.” You might recall that Philadelphia, is two Greek words put together, one meaning love, the other brother, to mean brotherly love. Well the word here is philoxenia, joining the words for love and stranger together. 

So some ?s, What is the first thought that comes to mind when you hear the word “hospitality?”

Does the definition of hospitality as “love of stranger” surprise you in any way?

How would you define a stranger? Do strangers include more than those we simply do not know?

When people hear the word “hospitality, we typically picture entertaining around meals, or inviting family and friends into their homes for a night of fun and games. Some may think of the hospitality industry, which includes hotels and restaurants and cruise ships that work to create an atmosphere of friendliness and welcome. Or,….perhaps Church “hospitality” comes to mind, greeters, ushers, and those who set up coffee and snacks for the Sunday Morning gathering. In any case most understandings of hospitality have a very minimal moral component them…hospitality is a nice extra if we have the time or the resources, but we rarely view it as a spiritual obligation or as a dynamic expression of vibrant Christianity. The fact is that over time the Christian Community has very much lost touch with the amazing transformative realities of true biblical hospitality.

Understanding Biblical Hospitality

In order to love the stranger and open our homes effectively, we need to expand our view of hospitality. Jesus commands us to extend the circle of hospitality beyond friends and relatives to include those in need:

Luke 14:12-14 He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a 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. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

And just to be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with sharing a meal with friends and family. In fact, shared meal times play an essential role in cultivating healthy family relationships and are an essential element of biblical community. But, the practice of genuine, biblical hospitality is distinctive from the conventional view because it reaches out to undesired, neglected people who cannot pay us back.

And, to be clear, strangers are not simply those we do not know. …In the strict sense, strangers are those who are disconnected from basic relationships. Making space for hospitality is not only about creating physical environments that are welcoming to others, but it is also about the posture or position we take toward human relationships in general. It is about turning our lives toward those who are isolated. It is about listening well to those who rarely have a voice.

Hospitality is really about inclusion. It is about including others into our lives and our network of relationships. The opposite of inclusion is exclusion, which involves the actions of dismissal and rejection. The lack of a welcome can be deeply hurtful. Do you remember a time in your life when you were excluded? Stop and think for a moment. How did being excluded from the lives and activities of others make you feel? Many people live a life of constant exclusion. Biblical hospitality, when rightly understood and pursued, has the power to break the bonds of exclusion and isolation.

And, when considering the idea of hospitality as more than welcoming the stranger into a physical place, it is worth noting that Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:35, “I was a stranger and you invited me in,” do not refer to a particular physical location for hospitality. Instead, the verse challenges us to examine our practices of welcome to strangers in every setting. Jesus’ words are more closely associated with relationships than with location…I was a stranger and you received me into your group.

Hospitality involves living our life in a way that places a higher value on relationships and community than on consumption and productivity. But, this is counter to the prevailing philosophy of our American Culture.

Barriers to Hospitality

When did we lose the capacity to give and receive hospitality? Why has it virtually disappeared from the life of the church and from those of us who make up the church? The reasons are no doubt very complex, but much of the move away from biblical hospitality can be seen in the changing view of the family. We have moved from family as an extended web of relationships that included aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends to a very individualized, insulated, and in most cases, small ”nuclear family unit.”

The picture then, within most single family homes today is one of both parents pursuing careers and working hard to take hold of the American Dream. The endless pursuit of this type of life leads to a lack of flexibility in several areas of life…..Like, there is no money left over at the end of the month. There is no physical energy left over at the end of the week. There is no time for relationships left over at the end of the day. So the lack of flexibility in our lives becomes an enormous barrier to opening our homes to others. And until we are willing to make hard decisions to create it, there will be little time and space to welcome others into our lives.

However, maybe the greatest barrier flowing out of our changing view of the family has to do with the perceived relationship between family and culture. Over the past few decades, the family has increasingly become a place to achieve safety and security from the dangers of secular society. You know, the home has become a fortress to protect the family from the evils of the world, rather than a place of welcome. We think this is our space and those we chose to welcome are very carefully chosen. So visitors, especially strange ones, stress us out. And while this in some sense is understandable, the negative result in terms of our spirituality is that family has effectively become an idol…a place where the Shema is no longer applied to the whole of our life. So once again, our culture, has undermined our responsibility.

And it is not hard at all to see how this is absolutely disastrous from a missional perspective. Our families and our homes should be places where people can experience a foretaste of heaven, where the church is rightly viewed as a community of the redeemed from all walks of life. Instead, our fears restrict us from letting go of the control and safety we have spent years cultivating.

This view of the family leads to a very high level of skepticism and fear of strangers. We are fearful that the stranger is not like us. They may think differently. They may have different values. They may make us uncomfortable. And stemming from the fear of the unknown is a heightened desire for our safety and security. What do we do?....We add extra locks on our doors, install security systems, and construct higher fences. You know when I grew up here in the metroplex…people had 4’ chain link fences. These were mainly to keep our dogs in…but you could see right through them to your neighbor’s yard. Then I saw how we moved to 6 then 8 and now we have 10’ privacy fences. And we even put overlapping boards so that there won’t be any chance of anybody seeing into a neighbor’s life.

The problem is that people are created as relational beings. God made us to be in a relationship with him, but also with each other. However, because most people have never experienced genuine biblical hospitality, and do not know how to offer it to those around them, they continue to live isolated, sometimes very lonely lives. As followers of Jesus, we must set the example and illustrate for others the transformative power of hospitality.

Pursuing Biblical Hospitality

Romans 12:13, Paul’s says we are to contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. I think the word translated seek, we are to seek hospitality is great. Because Christians are not to simply practice hospitality, but instead are to seek out opportunities to welcome strangers into their homes and lives.

1 Peter 4: 8-9 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.

You know in most areas of life we fall short of God’s best by what we do… infidelity, lying, stealing, jealousy, anger, and so on. These are all examples of sins of “commission” Sins we commit. Not so with hospitality. Here our sin comes through what we fail to do. It is a sin of omission. And it is not just because we fail to lessen or alleviate hurt of others, or that someone is forced to go without food or lives on the streets, but rather because of what is left undone in our own lives. See, every time we turn away from another, our heart becomes a little colder. The doors to our homes close a little bit tighter. And, the worse part…our vision for what God is doing in the lives of those around us becomes a little less clear.

The real question is not how dangerous the stranger is…but how dangerous will we become if we don’t learn to be more open?

Biblical hospitality is an obligation. It is a spiritual discipline and a missional practice. It is simply…the way of Jesus. It is a gift to others and to ourselves. Both the blessing and difficulties of biblical hospitality are most deeply discovered only as it is pursued.

And I know, I acknowledge that pursuing hospitality, along with all the blessings and difficulties that come with it, is at times scary and radical. But it is worth the risk. Because unless we find a way to open ourselves up to others, we will be the ones to grow more isolated and frightened. And if we do not find and practice ways of hospitality we will grow increasingly hostile. Hospitality is the answer to hostility. Jesus said to love your neighbor…hospitality is how!