So it has been said: “. . . seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:13–18).
The holidays are fast approaching, and my wife and I are looking forward to family gatherings at this season of the year. It is a time we can rest in the company of loved ones and share in the blessings God has provided. I come from a large family of nine children who all have children of their own; several even have grandchildren. So, our opportunity to gather with our own generation has become more and more difficult through the years. This is part of the circle of life, for each new generation begins its own traditions and ways of celebrating the season with one another. As my wife and I gather with our children, we prepare a large family meal, spend a little time in devotional thoughts about our God and Savior and then share in reflection over the past year. We take turns expressing our thankfulness to God and to each other. The afternoon is filled with games and enjoying each other’s company. If your family has not yet established personal traditions of hospitality for the holiday season, I would strongly encourage you do so. As your children mature, they will associate a great fondness with the memories these traditions provide.
The holiday season offers us the opportunity to exercise this kind of hospitality, not only toward close friends and family, but to a wider circle of neighbors in our community and those outside our typical interactions. But this can be a bit more challenging for us. Culturally we have shifted from being a community of front-porch neighbors who publicly interact with each other to being private backyard citizens who have little community involvement. We find that instead of extending open hands of hospitality, we would rather retreat into the comfortable isolation of that backyard world. This can cause our personal worlds to become very small, for we typically invite those into our backyard who have similar likes and traditions and cultures. As we enter this season, I would encourage all of us to become more active in pursuing new relationships and new ways of being hospitable toward new and different people in our lives. We love our own cultural heritage, but other geographical areas of the world have wonderful traditions as well which flow from a heritage just as rich as ours. If we can enlarge our personal worlds, we will find a greater expression of what it means to be part of this family of mankind. If we broaden our horizons of human hospitality, we will find that we share many commonalities in our differences.
The church congregation I belong to has a three-point vision statement which we feel expresses the purpose of Christ’s church in this world: Honor God – Welcome All – and Embody Christ’s Reign.
The idea of hospitality is certainly encompassed in welcoming all, but it is also honoring to God to be people of hospitality, and it enables us to embody Christ’s reign as we live out His benevolence in this world.
The Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that we are to “seek to show hospitality” toward all people. What does this deeper call to practice hospitality look like? According to Paul, it is more than just superficial pleasantries—it is a commitment of life. And in the verses which follow this admonition, Paul expounds upon what this hospitable life looks like. It is more than just being kind. It is a returning of kindness to those who might not be quite so kind to us, or who may even despise us. “Bless those who persecute you.” It is a walking with others in the happiness and in the pain of their lives. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” It is never an evaluating or comparing of ourselves with others. “Do not be haughty.” But it does “what is honorable in the sight of all.” To sum it up, we might say true hospitality is the giving of ourselves to others with no strings attached.
Paul calls us to this kind of hospitality because this is the love God has shown to us in Christ. In His open arms of kindness, He has welcomed us into His heavenly home, even though we were among those who had no regard for or kindness toward God. We were God’s enemies, but in Christ, God reconciled us to Himself and brought harmony into a human race which was at war against Him. “For when we were His enemies God reconciled us to Himself through the death of His Son” (Romans 5:10).
We were haughty toward God; yet He lowered Himself to associate with us. He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). God did not repay evil with evil but poured out His goodness toward us by giving us His life in Christ who is the “bread of God who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33). We see this same hospitality expressed by the angels as they announced the coming of Jesus into the world. For they sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14). By sending Jesus into the world, God brought His peace into the conflict we had with Him. He is truly the hospitable One, and Paul calls us to share that hospitality of God with others.
As we exercise such Divine hospitality, it places us in a vulnerable position with others. But Paul tells us it creates a posture of peace from which relationships can be planted and nurtured. For Paul’s admonition is to the end that we may “live peaceably with all.” Such hospitality not only welcomes people into our backyard circles but into the homes of our lives, just as Christ has welcomed us into the home of our heavenly Father.
Our father Abraham exercised this kind of hospitality toward absolute strangers who were sojourners in the land where Abraham pitched his tent.
“. . . as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, ‘O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant’” (Genesis 18:1–5).
Abraham’s actions exemplify the behavior God intended humanity to exercise toward each other. He offered these men a place to rest and refresh themselves, as well as a bite to eat. His actions were kindness to strangers who, as far as he was aware, had no cause or ability to repay such kindness. Abraham was living as God intended, “peaceably with all.” Little did he know that in this encounter he was entertaining angels, and these three messengers of God brought the promise of God’s covenant fulfillment to Abraham. They announced to him that the promised son which Abraham and Sarah had been waiting for was about to arrive.
Our holiday season centers on the arrival of the greater Son of Abraham, the Son of Peace. Jesus has brought peace into this world, and He beckons us to live in His peace and harmony with each other. This is Paul’s call for the Christian. We are to recognize that we are more than just members of our immediate family, and as Christians, we are more than just brothers and sisters of our heavenly Father. We have a kinship with all of mankind which beckons us to live the hospitality of Christ toward everyone. God’s hospitality is an outworking of His Divine love. And as love has its origin in God, this holiday season of hospitality is our call to exercise that love to the world.
“. . . in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:3–8).
