The Hospital in Hospitality

DAILY BYTE

Have you ever noticed that the word, Hospitality – has at its root, the word, ‘hospital’?

A hospital is not a place where you go for vacation. It’s generally not a place to visit for fun. It’s a place where you go to stay to receive healing.

We’ve been discussing the practice of Christian hospitality this week, and we find that hospitality is about staying with people in a safe space where together, you can share healing.

And thank goodness we are called to create this safe, hospitable place, as people of faith because at one point or another in our lives, we, ourselves, are the stranger. Right now, you and I might be in the “in crowd,” comfortable in the knowledge that we are known and appreciated by the people around us. But, at one point or another in our lives, we are the one who knows no one. We are the outsider. Do you find yourself to be an insider or an outsider right now? Perhaps you are both...

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks said after the September 11 attacks, “I used to think that the greatest command in the Bible was ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ I was wrong. Only in one place does the Bible ask us to love our neighbour. In more than thirty places it commands us to love the stranger. Don’t oppress the stranger because you know what it feels like to be a stranger – you were once strangers in the land of Egypt. It isn’t hard to love our neighbours because by and large, our neighbours are people like us. What’s tough is to love the stranger, the person who isn’t like us, who has a different skin colour, or a different faith, or a different background. That’s the real challenge. It was in ancient times. It still is today.” (from Letty M. Russell, 101-102).

In order to love people, we need to stay with them – not just visit them – and not just bump into them on a Sunday in the church pews. I was reminded this week that many people who attend church together barely know each other’s names – we certainly rarely stay with each other, knowing more of one another than what we wear to church on a Sunday. I was also reminded that as “church people,” we can be very particular about holding our place in the church – whether by holding onto positions of authority (no matter how small they may seem) or by holding onto our literal spot in the pews. I was reminded by some people who are relatively new to the church community I’m a part of that this can be rather intimidating to a stranger...

To someone walking in from the road, are you a part of a hospitable community? Do you open the row you sit in at church, your home, and your life to others?

Perhaps if we do, we will have more of a chance to see Christ in each other – instead of just seeing the face of someone unknown to us...

FOCUS READING

Deuteronomy 10:19 (NKJV)

Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.