Why hospitality?

Please don't give me one more thing to do.

In my recent newsletters I posed the question, “What a home for, anyway?” and together we have sampled responses from ancient epics, the Bible, and even Hobby Lobby. “Sampled” is the key word here, because we could take this exploration of home deep and wide enough to fill quite a few books: we could talk about home as a place of personal restoration; as the setting for the formation of children; we could explore the richness of homemaking as single adults; or explore the possibilities for reclaiming home as a place of domestic art and meaningful work. Believe me, if someone would pick up my babysitting bill, I’d gladly set to work writing all of these books.

However, as I do not have “world enough and time” to make an exhaustive study of “home,” I’m going to sharpen my focus on an aspect of home that I believe is particularly neglected and urgent: hospitality.

Maybe I should delete that last line. Because while it’s tempting to major on urgency, I don’t want to add another alarm bell when most us are already overwhelmed by the needs and dangers demanding our attention. I could easily make an argument for hospitality that sounds like this: OUR WORLD IS DYING OF LONELINESS AND ALIENATION AND DIVISION AND WE ARE FAILING AND WE COULD FIX IT IF WE JUST HAD PEOPLE OVER FOR DINNER MORE OFTEN!!

There’s some truth embedded in that hysteria, and eventually I do want to talk about the seriousness of our world’s need for profound and lasting welcome. But let’s not begin with anxiety. Let’s not begin with burdens. It’s Monday morning and we all have more to do than we can manage. Instead, let’s begin with glory.

In reply to one of my early posts, my friend Dr. Steve Schuler pointed out that we might think about the meaning of “home,” with a pattern borrowed from ancient methods of reading the Bible. I’ve copied his outline below:

- Home as a literal, particular, functional, economic place.

- Home as a place of moral formation (and not just for children).

- Home as an analogy for the Gospel story, and the work of grace in this world.

- Home as an eschatological place for which our hearts long.

We could unpack each of these levels in turn, but I’m going to skip to the end: “Home as an eschatological place for which our hearts long.” You might hear “eschatological” and think we’re talking about the end of the world, but it makes more sense to think of this word as meaning, “having to do with God’s ultimate desire for mankind.” In other words, when we talk about “eschatology,” we’re peering into the “why” of our existence - why were we made? and what does that mean for my life today? If we speak of our homes as “eschatological,” we’re looking at them as living pictures of the kind of life God intended for us to have when He made the heavens and the earth.

And here’s where hospitality enters the picture. If we look at the biblical accounts of creation, we see that from the very beginning, before sin or loneliness or mortgages had entered the world, God was joyfully practicing hospitality. Genesis 2:15 tells us that God created a beautiful garden in His new world, and immediately invited someone else to inhabit and enjoy it: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.”

God didn’t need Adam to do this work: there was no urgency, no anxiety: only fellowship. We learn later that God would walk in the garden - a tantalizing glimpse of the unimpeded friendship between God and man that would soon be lost.

Many sad centuries later, as God continued to unfold His plan for the world’s redemption, he rescued the Hebrew people from slavery (and what is slavery if not the antithesis of hospitality? To be forced into another’s home, rather than welcomed and invited?). The first task God gave these newly-freed people was to learn hospitality. They were commanded to build a beautiful home and invite God to dwell with them as their guest. The building of this home—the Tabernacle—in Exodus 25-40 is a rich story, as the Hebrews create a tent of exquisite beauty, and then watch as God’s glory fills it up.

God plants a rich garden, and the guests are glorious beings, made in God’s own image. Former slaves craft a Tabernacle shining with gold, silver, bronze, purple and blue, rich with incense: and the guest who comes is God Himself, world-maker and liberator.

These are the pictures of hospitality that drive me onward and upward: these are stories that remind me why humans want to live in homes and not caves or barracks or encampments under the overpass. Our homes are the places we learn what it means to cultivate and keep, and the guests God sends are meant to be their crown and glory.

In future newsletters we’ll get into the weeds of how we can practice hospitality. We’ll talk about structures and habits and practices in ways that I hope will be liberating and not burdensome. Please hear me when I say that I’m not trying to give you one more thing to do. But I am calling you-and myself—to a mighty act of memory and imagination. What’s a home for, anyway? Oh, friends: I’m quite sure it’s meant for glory and for joy.