Hospitality 3

Don: The ministry of Jesus is remarkable for its relationship to hospitality; in particular, eating. The gospel message—the good news about God—is bound up in the common, mundane practice of offering/taking food. The methods of Jesus, and the scathing rebukes of his contemporary critics, are often related to it.

Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners (Luke 5), with a Pharisee (Simon — Luke 7), with the multitude of 5,000 (Luke 9), and with Mary and Martha (Luke 10). He accepted the hospitality of Zaccheus, the hated chief tax collector (Luke 19), he ate with the disciples at the Last Supper (humbly washing their feet) (Luke 22), and after his resurrection, he ate a meal with two of the disciples, in the village of Emmaus, and then went to Jerusalem, where he asked the disciples for food (Luke 24). It seems he so much liked to eat that he was criticized for it:

For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners! (Luke 7:33-34)

At a luncheon in the home of a Pharisee, the host awoke Christ’s wrath with his concern for ritual cleansing:

Now when He had spoken, a Pharisee asked Him to have lunch with him; and He went in, and reclined at the table. When the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that He had not first ceremonially washed before the meal. But the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness. You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean for you.

“But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the chief seats in the synagogues and the respectful greetings in the market places. Woe to you! For you are like concealed tombs, and the people who walk over them are unaware of it.” (Luke 11:37-44)

Jesus taught some specific principles of hospitality:

And He began speaking a parable to the invited guests when He noticed how they had been picking out the places of honor at the table, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place. But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

And He also went on to say to the one who had invited Him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, otherwise they may also invite you in return and that will be your repayment. But when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

When one of those who were reclining at the table with Him heard this, he said to Him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:7-15)

Jesus ignored and crossed all the barriers to hospitality: gender, race, religion, caste, sinners. For example:

Now one of the Pharisees was requesting Him to dine with him, and He entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner; and when she learned that He was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner.” And Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he replied, “Say it, Teacher.” “A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?” Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have judged correctly.” Turning toward the woman, He said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave Me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss My feet. You did not anoint My head with oil, but she anointed My feet with perfume. For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” Then He said to her, “Your sins have been forgiven.” Those who were reclining at the table with Him began to say to themselves, “Who is this man who even forgives sins?” And He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:36-50)

In a real sense, Jesus was crucified for how and with whom he ate. It figured largely at his trial. He crossed barriers and limits to hospitality—specifically, the kosher laws of the Old Testament, found in the Book of Leviticus, with instructions detailed to the level of what crockery to use for certain dishes, intended to keep the Jews together and separate from others. They reinforced the pseudo community, but by breaking the taboos Jesus restored true community. He did this so often that he was clearly sending an important message.

But as was asked at the end of our meeting last week, are there different levels of hospitality, as between, for example, immigrant vs. vacationer? And what about the dangers of giving hospitality to, or receiving it from, “others”—strangers? Is the vulnerability inherent to opening oneself to strangers itself a barrier?

Lloyd: I don’t think it was by accident that Jesus put himself into vulnerable situations by accepting hospitality as he did. He knew the risks he was taking.

Jay: Vulnerability is key. The level of intimacy is much greater at a meal in a home than merely exchanging pleasantries in the street or at church. It creates a relationship, it changes people—as it did Zaccheus. It helps build community.

David: Jesus exemplified several different levels of hospitality. Giving someone who doesn’t need a free meal may help build human community, but the level or kind of hospitality that gets one into the community of the kingdom of heaven seems to be based on the need of the recipient. Jesus is ultimately about building spiritual community, yet our religious institutions seem reluctant to offer even the most basic level of hospitality—politeness—to others.

Jay: There are many stories of people offering hospitality to Jesus but not many of him offering it to others (his feeding of the 5,000 is one of the few instances). He mainly used the hospitality of others to teach and build the true community of the kingdom of heaven. Perhaps our religious institutions could learn something from that.

Lloyd: I wonder what the disciples thought of all the invitations of hospitality to Jesus by people they would have considered disreputable?

Jay: Once we try to organize our faith we begin to break down the principles Jesus sought to establish. Our faith communities become so rigid and inflexible, they make it hard for hospitality to occur. In all his ministry, Jesus never took the opportunity to create a church. It was established only after he died and was resurrected. It grew to be very powerful. Yet Christ never showed any interest in establishing it. He took issue with the prevailing Jewish religion of his time but did not seek to replace it. His faith community consisted of small groups concerned with basic principles of individual fulfillment rather than collective power. If only we could replicate that faith community!

Lloyd: Jesus often said that his kingdom was not of this world. He wanted us to focus on our relationships with one another in order to reach it. Churches and all of us tend to miss this message and to miss out on opportunities to respond to it. We do have our small study groups and so on in the church, but perhaps we could do more in that direction.

Jay: The disciples and their interaction with Jesus and with each other are essentially a metaphor for ourselves and our interactions. When the disciples were with Jesus, they wanted him to be something that he was not. When he left, they disagreed about how to define him. They did so at the expense of focusing on building the community Jesus had urged upon them.

Lloyd: In their defense, they must have been left reeling from all that they saw Jesus do and heard him say. It was contrary to everything they had been taught, to the kind of God they had been accustomed to.

Don: An example of their confusion was evident when the disciples came back to Jesus, having left him at the well (where he met the woman) to bring food from town:

Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. (John 4:31-34)

Jesus was on a completely different level from them, including with regard to what hospitality meant.

Jay: It seems to be a transfer of the meaning of hospitality from the physical to the spiritual. They brought him food for his physical needs, but he spoke to them of food to meet spiritual need. This was the principle of hospitality he was trying to teach them.

David: We tend to think that Jesus encouraged the development of a human community—a church—to represent him. But it seems to me he was against such community and the type of hospitality a church tends to offer. I think again of the remarkable hospitality of Pashtuns toward individuals of other races and religions who need it, while their own community is rigid and intransigent in its beliefs. I believe that this is the level of hospitality Jesus was calling for, one that creates an exceedingly close interpersonal and caring community that utterly ignores the organizational lines drawn by Pashtun community.

The kingdom of heaven on earth is destructive of human community because it brooks no lines. The moment we start to create a human community we are into lines and hierarchies. We create organizational charts. We create leaders and subordinates, and draw lines between them and boundaries between the functions of the organization. Jesus told the disciples, in answer to their question which assumed (because they were only human) that it too must have an organization chart, that there was nobody in charge in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus was trying to encourage the kind of hospitality that will build the community of the kingdom of heaven on earth, which has no lines and only one rule: Love.

Don: There is often some niggling concern about engaging with people we don’t know, especially by inviting them into our homes or accepting an invitation into theirs. Do we worry too much about our vulnerability? Jesus must have been very vulnerable—and known it—when he went into the homes of tax collectors and permitted prostitutes to fawn over him and so on. It left him wide open to attack not just inside these places but also in the wider community, by the Pharisees and other detractors.

Lloyd: He had to run away from beatings and stoning, from time to time.

Anonymous: I think our fears are overblown. Though I have never been in a really vulnerable situation, I feel that there should be no fear of meeting with our brother or sister in Christ, our fellow sinner.

Lloyd: It’s easy for those of us who have never been attacked to say so. It seems legitimate for people who have suffered attack to be afraid. We do live in a crazy world, with people who do crazy things. But that ought not to increase our fear to an extent that prevents us from reaching out at all. It did not stop Jesus!

Anonymous: If we have known enemies, there is reason to be afraid. But if you have no known enemies, one would seem to be free to love one another, as Jesus wants. Jesus had known enemies, but acted as though he didn’t.

David: The Christian message is that we must strive to follow the Way, the Truth, and the Life of Jesus. That means we should take the same risks he took. We should open the door to the stranger, and if the stranger happens to be an axe-wielding maniac, we should simply offer the other cheek. If necessary, we should be prepared to be crucified, and that is absolutely fine in the grand scheme of things. That is why we really have no reason to be afraid; but as weak and worldly humans we find following the Way to be practically impossible.

Jay: The kingdom of heaven on earth does not confer mortal protection. You can still get sick or be killed. But in the divine scope of things, mortal death is meaningless.

Don: Most people want church because it seems to offer protection, a better life, a safe haven, on earth. But Jesus offered the Way of the Cross, which clearly does nothing of the sort. We seldom hear people praying for that kind of Life! We hope and pray for the exact opposite. There should be no place for fear, but that is an extraordinarily high bar.

Anonymous: How can we love our enemies if we are afraid of them? But if we don’t, we are not Christian, we are not following the Way.

David: In the community of the kingdom of heaven—on earth as it is in heaven—enemies do not exist. Your mortal enemies might disagree, but you don’t have any!

Don: Our religious divisions center upon differences in ideas and beliefs. At the local level of a church, they are not centered upon real or imagined potential physical dangers, but our sense of vulnerability grows as we climb to the level of international religions. Hence, I think, the fears about immigrants. The hospitality Jesus wants is a transformational one; one that turns an enemy into a friend.

David: If I may return to the topic of community and organization: In a sense, Jesus did create an organization, a community, consisting of himself at the top, the disciples immediately following, and the masses below them. It was not a community where the last came first. It was a community organized to feed Jesus, assist in his ministry, and give him physical protection. I wonder if we would even have heard of Jesus, had he led his Life alone, without this community? Despite my misgivings about human organization, I have to admit that I think we might not.

Don: We will pick up on this question next week, as we discuss this passage:

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons, bowing down and making a request of Him. And He said to her, “What do you wish?” She said to Him, “Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit one on Your right and one on Your left.” But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to Him, “We are able.” He *said to them, “My cup you shall drink; but to sit on My right and on My left, this is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father.”

And hearing this, the ten became indignant with the two brothers.  (Matthew 20:20-24)

* * *