Every one of us enjoys feeling welcome and at home. Hospitality is a spiritual grace, a gift from the holy spirit to be experienced whenever, and wherever Jesus people are present.
Churches often regard hospitality in the context of the Sunday gathering. They ask, “Do people feel welcome at our church event?” They place smiling greeters at the door and provide valuable instructions for those first-time visitors who aren’t sure where to go. But is this the essence of hospitality?
Hospitality is first found in the genesis of creation. God, the Gardner creates place, and space, and welcomes life into a place of sustainable flourishing. We belong here, and we know it. Yet, in our fallen state, humanity has adopted a theology of scarcity, believing the best route to personal fulfillment is to hoard, and even steal resources as if they belong to us.
Joong-Sik Park notes in his essay, that hospitality is the primary context where authentic evangelism takes place. Yet, not in the sense that many evangelicals would suppose. Rather than seeing welcome as a means to an end, the means of welcome is itself the stage from which the love of Jesus is demonstrated in living color. “The Christian Gospel is the Word become flesh. This is more than and other than the Word become speech” (Niles 1951, 96). Hospitality is not simply a stepping stone toward a spoken word, but is in itself a demonstratable, and experienced message.
The incarnation has so much to teach us.
Park says, “The whole life of Jesus was that of hospitality”, and as Pohl states, “Jesus gave his life so that persons could be welcomed into the Kingdom” (1999, 29). If God’s own creation wasn’t enough to reveal his heart toward us, Christ in the incarnation should make it crystal clear. Yet, humanity still questions whether our hearts find true rest in God. The church hasn’t demonstrated Christ’s welcome as it should.
Rather than point to our own wealth and generosity, “In Christian hospitality, the ultimate host is Christ, says Park, and we, as believers, are welcoming neighbors to the table of Christ’s resources. “We come as equals” (Pohl 1999, 158). It’s not the host serving the guest(s), but the guests sharing in the bounty of the One who welcomes us all to the table.
We, as a family, love to entertain, create space, and allow for human connections in our fragmented, and disconnected world. What we’re learning, however, is that to offer food, and a warm atmosphere is just the beginning of the sacred liturgy that is hospitality. We must incarnate this loving attribute by entering the lives of others and offering ours. It’s one thing to open a door and welcome someone in, it’s quite another to open the heart.