Hospitality

Don: The kingdom of heaven is a true community where differences are not just accepted but embraced:

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands;… (Revelation 7:9)

The path to true community is through emptying oneself of preconceived notions, personal prejudices, and cherished ideas; and through listening rather than speaking, thereby opening oneself to diversity and to new ideas. This is what happened in the early Christian church:

All the people kept silent, and they were listening to Barnabas and Paul as they were relating what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. (Acts 15:12)

It begins with a recognition that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace:

“But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.” (Acts 15:11)

None of this is easy, however; as can readily be observed in the world around us. The polarization, anger, hostility, and violence associated with difference is frightening and dangerous. Much of it is centered around religious, social, political, and economic ideas.

What our communities seem to lack is simple, common or garden Goodness—one measure for which might be in-person, face-to-face (that is, not technology mediated) hospitality. The Bible has many references to hospitality. In biblical times, the prospects for a night’s lodging were not like today’s. Clean linen would have been far from the norm, room service and multiple channels of cable TV were non-existent. An inn would have been just a place—a home or a public building—on a well-traveled path or highway, with enough floor space to lay down one’s head and sleep and some catering of food and drink.

The term “inn” appears in three different Greek forms in the New Testament. The American Bible Society describes them thus:

One word describes a place to sleep such as a guest room in someone’s home or a general lodging place, perhaps even with animals. In Luke 2.7 Mary and Joseph cannot find space in an inn, and Luke describes it as a kataluma, which literally means “to unloose” or “to unharness,” perhaps denoting a place to bed the animals for the night as well as a place for people to sleep. The word is generally used to describe a place to lodge rather than specifying the particulars of the lodging. The meaning in Luke 2.7 is actually related more to the idea of a guest room rather than a formal inn. The same word is also used to describe the place where Jesus and his disciples had their last meal together. The setting for the Lord’s Supper was probably a guest room in a private home rather than a public gathering place where rent would be charged and food served.

Another Greek word that is translated “inn” describes specifically living quarters in a person’s home. The apostle Paul is housed in an inn while placed under house arrest. The word used in Acts 28.23, however, is ksenia, which can mean the general concept of hospitality or specific quarters within a person’s home, like a guest room.

A third word for “inn” is found in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan takes the wounded man to an inn. This time the word is pandocheion, which means a public place that would be more like our twentieth-century understanding of hotel accommodations than the other two words used in the New Testament for inn. At this inn, the man could pay money to stay overnight and be given food and a place to keep his animal.

(http://bibleresources.americanbible.org/resource/inns-and-innkeeping)

Any inn was generally a crime-ridden, lousy (literally!) place of last resort if one needed a place to stay. The ABS continues:

The Mishnah [a record of Jewish laws and practices] places innkeepers on the lowest scale of degradation and states that “Cattle may not be left in the inns of the gentiles since they are suspected of bestiality” (m. Abodah Zarah, 2.1). In addition the Mishnah states that the word of an innkeeper is to be doubted: “The Sages said to Rabbi Akiba, ‘And should not a priest’s wife be [deemed as trustworthy] as the mistress of an inn?’ He answered, ‘only when the mistress of the inn could be deemed trustworthy!’”

Because of the bad reputation of these public places, people preferred to have a private room to themselves. But the importance of private hospitality, which stemmed from the experiences of the Jewish people, was stressed by Leviticus:

‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:33-34)

During his ministry, Jesus relied heavily on the hospitality of others:

“The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” (Matthew 8:20)

He told his disciples:

And whatever city or village you enter, inquire who is worthy in it, and stay at his house.… [But] Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. (Matthew 10:11-15)

Hospitality was expected of Christian leaders:

For the overseer must be above reproach as God’s steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, (Titus 1:7-8)

and

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, (Timothy 3:2)

and it was not just hospitality for Christians:

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)

This is a reference to Abraham, who gave hospitality to two strangers who turned out to be angelic incarnations of Jesus (Genesis 18:1-8). We are to be hospitable not only to those we know…

Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaint. As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. (1 Peter 4:8-10)

…but also to strangers:

Beloved, you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren, and especially when they are strangers; and they have testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support such men, so that we may be fellow workers with the truth. (3 John 5-8)

There is something very intimate about eating together. It exposes one to the preferences and customs of others and requires us to accommodate those preferences and customs. And yet, all religions place restraints on what may be eaten and drunk and how and when it may be eaten or drunk, if at all. To be hospitable, we have to respect these differences in others. We might just pass the buck to the guest: “This is what we eat and drink; take it or leave it,” but that would not seem to be genuine hospitality.

Over the years, I have been asked on innumerable occasions about my being a vegetarian. I usually respond that while it has never been a problem for me, it has sometimes been a major problem for my hosts, who did not know how to prepare a suitable meal for me. Hospitality demands that they not only make something vegetarian but that will also appeal to my taste buds.

Sleeping in a stranger’s house is also an act of intimacy, of openness, and ultimately of emptiness. We are at our most vulnerable when sleeping; easy prey to theft and violence.

It is remarkable that of all the things valued in the Judgment, hospitality is one of the most prominent:

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’” (Matthew 25:34-36)

Thus, the importance of hospitality, of emptying oneself in order to provide for a stranger, is so great as to be the major criterion for entrance to the kingdom of heaven.

There is evidently a parallel between the accommodation of dietary customs and the accommodation of ideas. How can we use this understanding to build true community?

David: Hospitality is (almost, if not quite, by definition) temporary. As someone remarked here last week, it’s easier to be hospitable if you don’t have to put up with other people and their differences for long. It seems to fall short of “love”, yet from a guest’s point of view there is a sense of being loved as a fellow human being in need when one is treated with genuine hospitality in the house of a stranger. I can only conclude that the key difference between the kingdom of heaven above and the kingdom of heaven on earth is that hospitality/love is permanent above, where guests can never overstay their welcome; but temporary on earth, where they certainly can and often do.

Donald: It seems that hospitality changes as a relationship grows—and with it, expectations. Hospitality among the members of a newly built church is quite different from that among members of a long-established church. What started as a shared vision starts to fracture.

David: It’s the same with children. We don’t expect them to conform to adult and social/community norms when they are infants, but as they grow older and develop more understanding of “our” ways, we do. So it is with guests from another culture: Their lack of understanding for our ways of doing things doesn’t matter at first, but over time we expect them to learn and conform. Time is the very Devil!

Don: It’s the same, too, in a marriage, where newlyweds are at first oblivious to their differences, but as time goes by, the differences may grow more and more aggravating and annoying.

Donald: Social media help create and strengthen expectations in ever greater detail over an ever broader range. In Biblical times there would have been a tent with a few strangers, all more or less ignorant of the detail of what was happening in the world at large. Their world was much smaller. Hospitality must have been easier for them.

Don: It has been remarked before, and it is my perception, that the culture of hospitality is much stronger in the Middle East than it is in the West,

David: I have read that in some cultures, guests are given food even if the host family has not enough to feed itself. That is hospitality at its finest, and seems to me to be exactly the kind of love that will be rewarded on Judgment Day. Realistically, pragmatically, this is the best we can do but we are incapable of sustaining it over time. Unfortunately, even the cultures that espouse this highest tradition of hospitality are bound to succumb to more modern norms as social media infiltrates their mountain villages.

Michael: In Palestine, the tradition is still stronger than in the West but is being eroded by creeping Westernization.

Don: It seems that people in the Middle East tend to be sincere about hospitality, whereas people in the West tend to pay but lip service to it. “Come and visit any time!” we say effusively to people we meet, but if they show up on the doorstep with suitcases a few days later we are inwardly aghast.

But where hospitality is given, I return to this issue of the vulnerability of the guest.

Donald: Perhaps that is why, when it comes to repairing a broken relationship, we tend to want to meet in neutral territory rather than accept the hospitality of our adversary. The hospitality giver is on home turf and has the advantage, since his rules prevail by convention.

Jay: The time element turns hospitality from being a pleasure to being a pain. Yet the Christian mind seems set in the belief that time deepens relationships, especially our relationship with God. We are urged to spend as much time as we can in prayer and service to God, in the belief that our relationship will grow closer and stronger. Based on our discussion, could that be counter-productive?

David: Being a hospitable host is either a form of acting or else a reflection of our true but usually repressed nature. Whether we can maintain our act of hospitality toward God over mortal time is questionable. I think we can achieve it in short bursts, but few if any of us can live it all the time.

Don: In Palestine, is hospitality a part of the nature of people, or is it an act?

Michael: In all honesty, I believe it is our true nature; it is part of who we are; it is the cultural norm. We enjoy giving hospitality, we enjoy the presence of our guests, and we really put out our best for them. But I have to admit, I personally would tend to get tired if a guest stayed too long.

Donald: Loving one another is paramount, so it is critical that we get this right. Time does seem to play a role, and so does trust—it seems to be not good hospitality if a guest does not feel safe in not just the physical sense but in the emotional and spiritual senses as well. As long as there is unease about safety, the relationship between host and guest will be superficial.

Don: The guest is vulnerable and defenseless by definition, so a feeling of safety is requisite. To a lesser extent, the same is probably true also of eating: How the food is prepared, what rituals accompanied its preparation, and so on, can be causes of anxiety in the guest and inhibit the free and open sharing of thoughts and ideas and—most importantly—of differences.

Dolores: I think we are so enriched by guests who come into our homes. The guest might feel privileged to be invited, but it’s an even bigger privilege to be enriched by their presence. It opens up new avenues.

David: The fear and safety issue works both ways. The stranger we invite into our home might be a murderer. I imagine there is quite a difference between the bedraggled stranger who walks into the Palestinian village and is observed by everyone, versus the same stranger who rings the bell of a high-rise apartment in Brooklyn. We routinely warn our children of “stranger danger”.

Donald: There is something very, very good about making new friends, but only if they fit within certain parameters, including the safety parameter. America feels itself to be “blessed” with technology and drive and progressive ideas. Tanzania has few of these blessings and feels itself to be poor. But in my experience of visiting there, it is richer by far in hospitality. My theory is that the reason they have more hospitality is that they have more time, and that they have more time because they have less technology. In the West we are governed by time. It is not so in equatorial Africa.

David: The trend in both the West and the developing world is toward more technology and less time for hospitality. And yet, I am encouraged by the fact that we recognize the shortcoming and we at least try to ameliorate it. We do so in part by institutionalizing hospitality—we take it out of the personal sphere and make it a societal responsibility. We may not open our Brooklyn apartment door to the stranger in need but most of us are happy to contribute money through our taxes to support welfare programs for the stranger in need. Perhaps that really is the best we can do, given the modern reality of stranger danger and the relentless destruction of village life. Perhaps our humanity and our love for others is not regressing but merely being diverted down new channels. It may seem colder, more distant; yet is it not driven ultimately by love? If we do not love people enough to support welfare programs, why aren’t we voting out the politicians who levy taxes on us to pay for them? Why else should we pay, if not out of love? The kingdom of heaven seems to be the ultimate expression of institutionalized hospitality! 😉

Donald: The world is what it is. We can sponsor a child, contribute to charities, feel that we are doing something. But I can’t help feeling that God expects more of us than that; that Goodness may not be fully represented in institutionalized hospitality.

David: Inherent goodness is probably what drives the inherent hospitality of the Palestinians, but I can’t help thinking that it also drives the development of welfare programs, charities, and other faceless expressions of institutionalized hospitality. The institutions may be faceless but they only exist because individuals with more or less goodness in their hearts contribute to them. Our inner light, the spirit within us, has to find new ways to shine forth in a world of accelerating time and ever more restricted space. The goodness has not been extinguished.

Michael: The problem is that institutionalization removes the personal intimacy and—yes—the vulnerability of hospitality. I think I might choose not to pay taxes if I had the choice of being hospitable in person instead.

Don: So hospitality is not only institutionalized but mandated! Is hospitality more than just a matter of food and shelter? Is it about ideas? Is there a principle to the hospitality of ideas, of thinking, that might be informed by the hospitality of physical comfort?

Donald: Safety and vulnerability may apply as much if not more to the realm of ideas as to the physical realm. Once an idea is expressed, the cat is out of the bag, and might introduce danger where there was none before.

Michael: Does the temporary nature of hospitality contribute to true community, or to pseudo community?

David: It’s quantum—it’s an act but it’s also an expression of our true nature. It is an act of taking out the light from under its bushel and allowing it to shine—until the guest outstays his welcome! Spiritual hospitality among the various religions is what seems to be needed right now. But it will take individuals (many of them!) to bring it about, since an institution—a church, a welfare agency, a charity—can be hospitable only by design, not by nature.

Don: Doesn’t that contradict the notion of institutionalized hospitality? Is it possible only to institutionalize physical hospitality but not the hospitality of ideas and spirit?

David: Perhaps spiritual hospitality could be spread through the pulpits of institutions—of mosques and churches and synagogue and temple. That is both personal and institutional hospitality. But what tends to be on offer is not true spiritual hospitality but biased religious hospitality.

Don: We need to discuss more the contrast between the hospitality of physical comfort and the hospitality of spirit and diverse ideas.

Donald: It’s one thing to recognize diversity; it’s another to celebrate it—which is what we are enjoined to do. It sounds good, but is it?

David: Ideas are intellectual. In the Judgment parable, Jesus did not say: “When did you listen to my ideas? When did you agree with me?” I don’t think the hospitality of ideas is at all important in heaven, as it is on earth. The only intellect in the kingdom of heaven is God’s, since in abandoning our will to him we abandon our intellects. Physical hospitality is an expression of love, and love is not an intellectual concept but a spiritual one. It cannot be rationalized. Physical hospitality is what matters.

Don: In the effort to be hospitable, is technology friend or foe?

Michael: The “Ice-bucket challenge” which raised money through an online campaign has led to the first discovery of a gene involved in the development of ALS. So here is at least one example of an hospitable outcome from social media.

Don: In other words, it would not have occurred (or not so quickly) without social media.

* * *