Making Room: Recovering Hospitality

March 14, 2008 | Filed Under hospitality |

Hospitality is not optional for Christians, nor is it limited to those who are specially gifted for it. It is, instead, a necessary practice in the community of faith. . . . Several aspects of early Christian life combined to make hospitality central to Christian practice.

First, shared meals were a significant setting for struggling with cultural boundaries in the early church, especially in working through the incorporation of Gentiles into the early communities. At meals together, tensions surfaced between rich and poor believers; meals provided the context for instructions on equal recognition and respect. Hospitality practices in the Christian community were to portray a clear message — that of equality, transformed relations, and a common life.

Second, the gospel initially spread through the ministry of believers who traveled widely and depended on the hospitality of others. Hospitality to those first missionaries and the reception of their message were very closely connected. . . . Hospitality was the practice within which early Christians met the needs of traveling missionaries and leaders, religious exiles, and the local poor.

Third, the early church regularly met for worship in the households of believers. In such a location, hospitality was a natural and necessary practice. It helped foster family-like ties among believers and provided a setting in which to shape and to reinforce a new identity.

For the early church, then, hospitality both participated in and anticipated God’s hospitality. Christians offered hospitality in grateful response to God’s generosity and as an expression of welcome to Christ “who for your sake was a stranger.” For them, hospitality was connected to the promises of God and to the presence of Christ. It condensed attention to spiritual, social, and physical dimensions of life into one potent practice which was fitting conduct within the household of God.

- Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl