Thursday, October 22, 2015

Hospitality


  I am working through a book right now called Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl and it is a really good book so far.  One of the big premises of the book is that it differentiates between what hospitality and entertainment is.  The book makes the argument that as Christians we think that hospitality is more about socializing in our homes among friends and family.  As much as I think that there is a portion of hospitality in this, but this form of hospitality is more of entertainment.  This is a good way connect with people and catch up, but one of the underlying reasons we do this form of entertainment is because we are either repaying someone back for their generosity or hoping to get noticed and be repaid in the future.  There is nothing wrong with making your home open to friends and family, but hospitality calls us to something more. 


   The first thing that hospitality calls us to do is to check our motivation.  Entertainment is about getting noticed or doing something that somehow benefits you.   Entertainment is always looking to impress, or improve ones status.  Hospitality is about serving the other person and is about their needs and not yours.  When we display hospitality, we always put out more earthly treasure than we tend to get back, so our motivation has to be more than breaking even or getting ahead.  Our motivation has to be one of an eternal value where we care more about another persons well being and future than what we get out of it. 


  The second aspect of hospitality is courage.  Showing hospitality usually means we are interacting with people who are not like us.  Whether it is a different skin color, economic status, personality, religion or any other difference, this is where hospitality is a must, because it takes courage to go outside of our comfort zone and to interact with people because they are not like us. We tend to look down on these individuals for any number of reasons.  I work with two people who are universally disliked by everybody.  When you bring up their names, no one has nothing nice to say about them.  I have been convicted as of late to show some courage and treat them with respect and not to blow them off like everyone else.  When we show courage, it often takes us out of our comfort zone and for us to see ourselves and others for who we truly are and most of the time that we are hurting and dysfunctional. 


   The third aspect of hospitality is the one of protection.  How many people to we come into contact with on a daily basis our are hurting and vulnerable.  Hospitality comes in and provides protection and is a stop gap for that person or group of people.  I don't know if this is the best analogy, but they are like a animal that is hurting and the prey can smell the blood and are gathering around for the kill.  How does a person come in and not only help fend of the predators, but help get that person back to health.  The story of the Good Samaritan is good example of this.  It is not about walking by or throwing money at the situation, but it is walking along side the person and journeying with them.  If you have seen the movie A Few Good Men, at the very end of the movie, one of the Marines who were accused of killing a fellow Marine realizes that protecting those who can not defend themselves is more important than following orders.


  The fourth aspect of hospitality is the issue of invitation.  How often do we invite people to where they would not normally go and making them feel welcome.  How do we make friends out of strangers and how do we do so without being to awkward.  I think a big part of it is humility.  Humility is realizing who we are nothing more and nothing less and it is also being comfortable in our own skin.  I think some of our issues come out because we are not comfortable who we are, and it takes a little bit of humility to do some introspection and see ourselves as who we are.  When we see ourselves as who we are, we tend to be at ease and we tend to make other people feel at ease because we are not trying to impress each other and we just value the relationship.  I don't know if this fits, but when I was in grad school, group of us got together for dinner and I didn't know most of the people in the room, but it was one of my most favorite memories because after dinner we sat around and shared stories with each other and we were comfortable with each other. We checked our ego and pride at the door and we saw each other for who we were.  The other cool thing is two of the people there were from Africa, and they shared about life back home and some of the cultural differences.


    This is just the tip of the iceberg when talking about hospitality, and how do we apply it to such issues as illegal aliens and what is our personal responsibility, the governments role and does the church have a place in all of this.  This will be a blog in the future