Pre-Reading Introduction
I remember being on a mission team in Papua New Guinea almost 20 years ago. The strange smells, the red mouths and tongues of the men, from chewing some sort of drug. The tropical warmth and humidity. The mosquitoes. The bumpy roads. The huge bats. The palm trees. I remember our team preaching the gospel in little huts and under a tree. PNG was in fact the place where I first began preaching. But most of all I remember the meals we had after the services. Food cooked in a hole in the earth. Wrapped up in banana leaves, placed on read hot stones, buried with earth to slow cook. I remember the sweet potatoes and the chicken. I remember the fresh coconuts, pineapples and sugar cane. In fact often there would be a pile of fresh fruit and vegetables about 5 foot high and 3 foot wide, given as gifts most places we went. And above all else I remember finding out towards the end of that mission that the people didn’t usually eat chicken. They were too poor for that. But everywhere we went we’d eaten chicken! In other words, everywhere we went people had gone out of their way to give us the best. I began to eat that chicken more appreciatively.
In India I remember a destitute widow serving us her last cup on rice, and insisting we eat it. A local believer pointed out to us quietly that she had no other food or money left.
In South Korea I remember the constant invitations to dine out with the Korean believers. We were ministering in many churches. But the Korean Christians were feeding us up and sending us home with bags full of presents.
And I could tell you a hundred stories about the Muslims we met on our travels, who opened their homes, fed us, protected and hosted us.
I’m grateful for what God is teaching me about hospitality. But I still have a long, long way to go. I’ll be honest and say that we as British people have got a long way to go. Things have changed. We’ve become a nation of individualists who tend not to find communal living very natural any more. This is a cultural characteristic we must be aware of. On certain points the values of the kingdom of God are radically different to the values of the United Kingdom!
Reading: Psalm 23
Psalm 23 is not just a psalm about the Lord my Shepherd. But it is also a psalm about the Lord my Host. About an hospitable God. A God who invites us in. Who prepares a feast for us. A safe place. A God who invites us into his house forever! To join in the feast with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
It is not for nothing that the Bible urges God’s people to practice hospitality. All theology flows from and starts with who God is. And God is a welcoming God. A host.
So our topic tonight is Hospitality. Our title: Practising Hospitality.
First, I would like us to define that word and look at where it is found in the New Testament. Then I’d like us to see what hospitality might practically mean for us as a church.
I bring this word to us this evening because I believe,
There is no church without hospitality
(the church is not programmes it is people);
There is, is a sense, no holiness without hospitality
(in Leviticus 19, the holiness chapter, hospitality to visitors is part of what it means to ‘be holy as God is holy’)
There is no leadership without hospitality (as we shall see, hospitality is one of the key qualifications of leadership in the church).
Briefly, we could say much about Jesus and his experience and teaching on hospitality...
Jesus constantly received hospitality. Martha and Mary, Luke 10:38, for example.
Jesus regards the giving of hospitality to him and his followers as a sign of whether or not a person has received the Gospel. If they won’t welcome you in, shake the dust off your sandals!
And at the final judgment Jesus will say to the righteous,
I was a stranger and you invited me in! Whatever you did to the least of these you did to me!
So some definitions...
The Greek word is found in 2 forms: philoxenos and philoxenia.
philo means fond of or a lover of.
xenos means strangers, foreigners.
So philoxenos means fond of/lover of strangers and/or lover of hospitality
The other form of the word is philoxenia which means entertaining strangers.
The word is found in five places in the New Testament.
1. Hospitality is commanded
Two incidences of the command...
Romans 12:13 “Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”
(see also Hebrews 13:2 “Do not forget to entertain strangers...”)
Placing this verse in context, it is at a key point of the letter to the Romans. Paul has done the theology – he has explained the amazing grace of God revealed in the gospel.
All have sinned..... wages of sin is death... gift of God eternal life... so if we confess Jesus as Lord...
And from 12:1 until the end of the chapter, Paul is now urging a response from the Christians, from the Church. 12:1, “therefore in view of God’s mercy...”
This is an important point.
We practice hospitality because God has shown us mercy.
God has been philoxenia to us!
Just like God reminds the Israelites in Deuteronomy 10:19, “And you are to love those who are aliens, [WHY?] for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt”
We were estranged from Him, but he invited us to fellowship with him.
Therefore, we are to invite others to fellowship with us.
2. Hospitality is a requirement of leadership
Again, two incidences of this requirement...
1 Timothy 3:2 (New International Reader’s Version) “A leader must be free from blame. He must be faithful to his wife. In anything he does, he must not go too far. He must control himself. He must be worthy of respect. He must welcome people into his home.”
The requirement is repeated again in Titus 1:8.
The leader, “...must be hospitable”
Why did Paul teach that hospitality was crucial for Christian leaders?
I think because it’s easy to think of leadership as lordship. As telling others what to do.
To put it into our context: It’s easy to be a leader standing in the pulpit.
It’s easy to be a leader sitting behind a computer and planning.
It’s easy to be a leader sitting in a leaders’ meeting.
It’s easy to be a leader and an individualist... an isolationist.
But Jesus models real leadership. A leadership that interacts with people, that eats with outcasts and sinners, a leadership that goes and spends time with people.
Christian leadership has no place for those who won’t welcome strangers into their homes. For those leaders who won’t take the time to entangle themselves in other people’s lives. The church won’t be built by people who only stand in pulpits. It will be built by redemptive relationships. It will be built as we embrace new people as our friends. As those God has sent us to love and serve.
Leaders, said Jesus, are to wash feet. And washing feet was part of the NT practice of hospitality (Luke 7:44).
3. Hospitality is to be done in the right spirit
1 Peter 4:9, “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling”
How easy it is to do the right thing in the wrong spirit!
Especially those of us with a sensitive conscience and a desire to be faithful. We tend to be like the older brother in the prodigal son story. He is doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons. He’s doing it out of duty but not out of joy.
God never asks us to do something we can’t do!
And I believe he doesn’t ask you to take on any ministry that it is detrimental to your health or to your life as a family. _________and I sometimes say no to people who want to stay with us, or even who want to come in when it’s just not good that they do. We all need certain boundaries in our lives. And as we keep in step with the Holy Spirit we’ll know in our hearts and through the wisdom God gives, just when and whom we should invite around.
Here at HBC, perhaps half of our congregation are xenos, relatively new to this town, strangers and foreigners. But many of them are also God’s children. As God observes our life as a church, what would he say about our communal life? What would he say about our attitude to new people who come along? Does he find us those who intentionally seek out the newer people on a Sunday; those who intentionally embrace those we don’t know?
God wants to take us to the place where we can offer great hospitality, and for the right reasons. How can we get to that place?
Application
Seven very brief points of application...
1. God commands us to do good to everyone, but especially to fellow Christians, (Gal 6:10).
Point number is simply that first we need to make sure we’re looking after our brothers and sisters. Next we need to widen our hospitality to our non-Christian friends including those who come to church.
2. A cup of tea/coffee is a good start
If hospitality seems like it’s going to be the straw that breaks the camels back, start off small. Perhaps even start by inviting someone to go out for a coffee... Or having them round for one.
3. Hospitality is not formality
You don’t have to get out the best silver. You don’t have to put on a 3-course meal. Beans on toast is allowed! Let them eat what YOU eat! Be relaxed. You’re not trying to show what an amazing celebrity chef you are. You are not ‘keeping up appearances’ like Mrs Bucket!
It’s you and your guest, just as you are.
4. Being intentional
Make a plan. For example, mark in your diary one day per month when you will invite someone around. Choose one non-Christian and one Christian. Invite the non Christian one month and the Christian another month. Build up your contact with them. Or, choose different people from church. Plan one Sunday per month when you make an extra meal and invite someone...
5. If the house or apartment is not yours, then ask for permission to invite someone around. If you can’t then choose a cafe or a Macdonalds and take your guest there instead!
6. Having a guest room (2 Kings 4:8-10 & Luke 10:38)
Those of us who have more bedrooms than we need to ask God what He wants us to do with those extra rooms. Can we do what the Shunamite woman did? Set apart and equip one room as God’s room? For the people he sends us?
7. Hospitality is exciting! (Hebrews 12:2)
Who knows who we are entertaining? Angels, maybe like Abraham and Lot?! Well, they may or may not be angels, but they could be president’s queens or future world leaders.
In the future, will people tell stories about you? About the hospitality you showed them in Jesus’ name?
We have a hospitable God, A God who calls his people to be like him.
How wonderful it will be to one day look Jesus in the eye and hear him say to us: I was a stranger, and you invited me in.
