When I talk about hospitality that goes beyond dinner parties and playdates, the question of safety inevitably comes up. “But is it safe? Do you feel safe? What about your children?” When I lived at Community First! Village among hundreds of formerly homeless men and women (but mostly men), this was certainly the question I received most often from concerned friends and family.
I take these questions seriously, but in light of the recent shootings of Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis, I think it’s important to recognize that our cultural imagination has a profound pathology when it comes to opening our doors. I can think of two films or series I’ve watched in the last year (Amazon Prime’s Wheel of Time adaptation and X-Men franchise Logan) that replay dark versions of ancient hospitality: in both stories, beleaguered companions fleeing evil come to an isolated homestead and are given a haven for the night. However, the dark forces in pursuit soon arrive as well, murdering the innocent hosts and their children. The traumatized guests escape under the weight of a curse: they know that their status as strangers makes them dangerous to anyone who would welcome them back to the life of home and hearth.
I don’t know what dark fears motivated the elderly men who shot Yarl and Gillis, but their actions betray the same primal fear behind those Hollywood tales: strangers are, above all, dangerous. Few of us really expect that someone who knocks on our door at night is an angel in disguise. If we did, how could we refuse them, much less put a bullet in their heads?
I’m not trying to dismiss the dangers and concerns of opening your door to a stranger, however. When we talk about hospitality, safety, and boundaries, it’s important to say the hardest things first: yes, the stranger might be dangerous. More likely, they might be so vulnerable and endangered that they draw danger to your door. This was the case for the Ulma family — Jozef, Wiktoria, and their six young children— who were murdered by the Nazis in 1942 for harboring Jews. Wiktoria was seven months pregnant at the time of her martyrdom. The Ulmas’ story causes me to tremble because I know, without a doubt, that their hospitality was the right and holy choice, even though it cost them their own lives and the lives of their children. I can think of no better picture of heroic hospitality, and yet it is a heroism few of us would wish for our own families. Nevertheless, if we call ourselves Christians, then the alternatives open to the Ulmas—indifference to or participation in their Jewish neighbors’ extermination—are unconscionable.
There. I’ve said it. Hospitality might require faithfulness unto death. But we knew that when we “were buried […] with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). It’s one of those things we hear and even say all the time, but actually imagining what a faithful death might mean can be terrifying.
Rather than let this call to death disable us with fear, we must put outcomes in the hands of God, and trust that the Holy Spirit will give us the power we don’t have: the power to meet a holy death with courage.
Now that we’ve said the hardest thing, let’s say the most mysterious thing, and see if this mystery can draw our imaginations away from fear and toward hope: despite our fears, our homes are actually more secure to the extent we welcome strangers into them.
Now that we’ve said the hardest thing, let’s say the most mysterious thing, and see if this mystery can draw our imaginations away from fear and toward hope: despite our fears, our homes are actually more secure to the extent we welcome strangers into them.
I believe this was true even for the Ulma family, who placed their ultimate security in the hands of God rather than the prevailing Nazi powers. But I have found that this paradox holds true in far more mundane acts of welcome.
Let me tell you a few stories. When we lived at the Village, we knew that most of our neighbors suffered mightily from the long-term effects of trauma - not only the traumas most of them had endured as children, but the long-term abuse, neglect, and hardship of living for years on the streets. Drug addiction and mental illness were two of the most common outcomes from these experiences. You might think, then, that we were constantly fearing outbursts or instability. You might think that it was perilous to share our meals with these neighbors, to invite them into our Sunday afternoons, to place our firstborn in their arms.
In reality, I have never felt as safe, in real and practical terms, as I did at the Village. For example: we once had a neighbor named Jeremy (not his real name). He was one of the younger residents of the Village, in his mid-thirties, and he was in many ways a model neighbor: hardworking, courteous, and with a clever sense of humor. But then something changed - or more likely, returned. He began pacing the Village at night, muttering to himself. He started drinking again to medicate the chaos in his head and heart.
One evening my husband and I were at home when Jeremy knocked on the door. He had recently worked with my husband on some project, and so Steven opened the door and invited him inside. From the beginning of the visit, Jeremy’s conversation was erratic, manic. He kept asking my husband to take his wallet, as though it were a joke, or some sort of game we didn’t understand. His language was charged with sexual innuendo. And while he didn’t actually say or attempt anything overtly threatening, Steven and I both sensed that Jeremy was deeply unwell, and needed to leave.
But this was a dilemma: how do you ask an unstable man, whom you have already invited inside, to leave your house? Would it make him angry? Trigger some kind of violence? I fretted over these questions as I stood at the stove preparing supper, while Steven and Jeremy talked on the couch nearby. In the end, it was an instinct of hospitality than resolved the dilemma.
“Jeremy,” I said, “Our supper is ready, and we’re going to eat outside. Would you like to join us? Have you eaten?”
The simple reality of his hunger (who knows who long it had been since he had fed himself) jolted Jeremy out of his manic commentary, and he nodded eagerly. I gave him plates to cary to the picnic table that was in the tiny front yard of our RV, while Steven and I followed with the food.
The meal had already provided the transition outside, and after we had eaten, Steven was able to invite Jeremy for a walk. Two other men from the Village (one formerly homeless, one a “missional neighbor” like us) had been watching our meal and, knowing Jeremy’s recent behavior, joined Steven and were able to walk Jeremy home.
Why did I feel safe through all this? Primarily because I didn’t feel alone. Jeremy was, of course, not the first person we had welcome into our lives and home at the Village: indeed, our life there was structured entirely on dynamics of welcome, invitation, and participation. We had invited neighbors in for morning cups of coffee. We had taken them to homesteading fairs with us. We had invited them over for suppers and feast days and movies. Those acts of welcome had, over time, created durable bonds of attention and care among us and all our neighbors, formerly homeless or not. And so when a real danger presented itself, those bonds held true. We were upheld, supported, and joined in holding a boundary we needed to keep our home safe.
When we left the Village and began living in conventional neighborhoods, I felt more fear than I had in years. In most typical neighborhoods it is hard even to meet people, much less to invite them into your home and build a relationship. The risk of a Jeremy coming to our door might have been smaller, but had he come, the situation would have felt far more perilous and precarious.
Like most Americans, I now live with my nuclear family in a residential neighborhood. We remain committed to radical, biblical forms of welcome, and while it can be discouraging how slow the work feels, I can also say that with each act of welcome the Spirit allows us to extend here, the more secure I feel in my home. I’ve written elsewhere about our large garden, positioned at the most public corner of our lot, and how many neighbors have stopped on their walks or drives to ask about tomatoes. In the year we have been here, some of those encounters have grown into deeper relationships: a elderly woman who lives alone joins us for Easter dinner, a homebound man and his wife across the street check in on us through text and, when they feel up to coming outside, bring chocolates to my children. These feel like small victories, but the gains are real. When I’m home alone with the children, I can now think of at least four households within walking distance to call if something happens. I now know where to tell my children to run in case of danger.
One more story, and then I want to hear what you have to say about hospitality, safety, and risk.
This past Christmas, my husband drove back to Texas to bring one of our formerly homeless friends out for the holiday. Like Jeremy, this friend (I’ll call him Joe) also suffers from mental illness, but thanks to medication and therapy has gone many years without a severe break. On paper, I suppose it’s true that Joe brings risks into our home: he brings his profound sorrow and depression, he brings cigarettes that could light something on fire outside, and of course he brings the risk of a mental breakdown: of hearing voices and cowering in terror and being generally unable to function.
But here’s what Joe really brought to our home over Christmas: he brought childlike delight in the Christmas tree and other decorations (“I can’t believe it’s so beautiful. I can’t believe I’m here!” he said). When he received a small watercolor set on Christmas morning, he set to work painting a gift for my children — a portrait of the little squirrel they had been watching together from our living room windows. He brought help to my husband chopping firewood. And while I spent most of Christmas on the couch in the thrall of first-trimester pregnancy nausea, Joe brought willing hands to wash all the dishes each night. He brought eyes to keep an eye on the hearth, company for the children while I felt miserable. The theoretical dangers he brought were nothing compared to the spiritual and tangible benefits he brought into our home.
John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople in the late 4th-century, preached that creating a place for the poor in our homes is a mighty defense against the devil:
“There are many poor men and poor women: set apart some one of these constantly to remain [in your home]: let the poor man be […] as a guard to your house: let him be to you wall and fence, shield and spear. Where alms are, the devil dares not approach, nor any other evil thing. Let us not overlook so great a gain.”1
In welcoming the stranger, you might lose some of your leisure time. You might lose money, or your life. But you stand to gain a great deal more.
In my next essay I will talk more about the practicalities of safety and welcome, and how we might make our homes more resilient to risk. Until then, what are you thoughts on hospitality and safety? How do we discern what is dangerous, and respond faithfully to danger?
“Homily 45.” Translated by J. Walker, J. Sheppard and H. Browne, and revised by George B. Stevens. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 11. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210145.htm>.
Patch Adams is another movie in the same vein. “Never try hospitality. It always ends badly!” “Where alms are, the devil dares not approach.” Such practical wisdom!