In 2003, when my husband and I exchanged rings and vows, Martha Stewart was the gold standard in hospitality. While her focus on the home may have inspired a renaissance of the domestic arts, it set an impossible standard for most women. Many of us could barely pronounce the ingredients in her recipes, much less locate them at the grocery store.
When millennials came of age, however, hospitality trends began to change. Authenticity was key. In Christian circles, a willingness to invite people into your space, such as it was — dirty bathroom and all — was a mark of spirituality, and serving PB&J was more “real” than serving Martha’s “Perfect Roast Chicken.”
Though trends fluctuate, the heart behind truly Christian hospitality never changes. It is God’s love for the stranger that drives our hospitable efforts.
Stranger-Love from the First
The Greek word for hospitality, philoxenia, literally means “love of strangers.” While the Old Testament doesn’t have an exact Hebrew parallel for this word, its stories are flush with illustrations of stranger-love. Traveling was a risky pastime in the days of the patriarchs and prophets. Roads were dangerous, as were public inns (for people who could even afford them). Those who took to the road often had to rely on the hospitality of strangers for provision and protection.
Consider Lot, unwittingly taking in angels at the gates of Sodom to protect them from the perverted plans of the townsmen (Genesis 19:1–3). Think of Rahab, shielding the Israelite spies from discovery (Joshua 2:1–7). Consider the old man of Gibeah, offering food and shelter to the sojourning Levite (Judges 19:16–21). Remember Job’s defense of his blameless life, declaring to his friends that he had been hospitable to the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the needy (Job 31:16–23). Each of these showed love to strangers.
Love for strangers was also codified into Israel’s law, which expanded the category of “stranger” to include society’s most vulnerable: sojourners, foreigners, widows, orphans, and the poor (see Deuteronomy 10:18–19 or Leviticus 19:33–34, for example).
These laws commanded the Israelites to make provision for the needy. They were to leave forgotten sheaves in the fields for the foreigner. They were to beat their olive trees just once, leaving what was left for the poor. They were to make one pass through their vineyards and not to “strip” the vines, so that the sojourner could share their bounty (Deuteronomy 24:19–21). Boaz embodied the spirit of Israel’s hospitality laws when he instructed his harvesters to intentionally leave grain behind so that Ruth, a foreigner at the time, could gather and share it with her widowed mother-in-law (Ruth 2:15–16).
Hospitable God
God expects this kind of hospitality from his people, from those who have been the recipients of his divine hospitality. Once, Israel had been foreigners in Egypt, where they suffered brutal inhospitality until God heard their cries and delivered them from their misery. And once we were “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). But through divine hospitality, we “are no longer strangers and aliens,” but “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19).
The words separated, alienated, strangers, no hope, and aliens graphically depict our position before God outside of Jesus. If God had anything other than a heart of love toward the stranger, then surely we would have perished.
But the hospitable God looked on our plight with mercy — not with the kind of mercy that throws spare change into a plastic cup, but with a mercy that completely reverses fortunes, overwrites histories, transforms identities, and honors immigrants, even rebellious beggars, turning them into his cherished sons and daughters. God’s redemptive intervention in Jesus is the greatest display of hospitality the world has ever seen.
Like Father, Like Son
But not only does Jesus display God’s hospitality. He embodies it. Despite not having a home to open to strangers, Jesus practiced hospitality. We see it in his care for the sick and dying. He drew near to the fevered and to the leper. We see it in his care for the poor, offering bread for their bodies and “the bread of life” for their souls (John 6:35). When Jesus surveyed the multitudes following him, he didn’t wrinkle his nose at their filth or roll his eyes at their ignorance. Filled with compassion, he gathered them to himself.
Often exhausted and hungry, he nonetheless continued to love these strangers — healing them, feeding them, teaching them, touching them, engaging them, and forgiving them. No one was below his notice — not the little children who flocked to his side, not society’s outcast at the well in Samaria, not the Canaanite woman with the demon-possessed daughter, and not the sinners and tax collectors with whom he broke bread. Jesus welcomed those with questionable reputations, even permitting a prostitute to touch him by washing away the dirt from his feet (Luke 7:36–38).
Mere hours before his arrest, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. He fervently prayed for them and warmly expressed his love for them. And then, in his final breaths, he welcomed a thief into paradise and pleaded with his Father to forgive his murderers. Hospitable unto death, Jesus embodied the stranger-loving heart of God.
Historically Hospitable
Like Abraham before him, Jesus left his Father and home to dwell among us as a stranger. Though rich, he became poor and lowly. And in that lowliness, he not only offered hospitality but received it. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and other women supported his itinerant mission from their own resources (Luke 8:1–3). Mary, Martha, and Lazarus received Jesus into their home.
Once Jesus returned to heaven, his apostles continued the tradition of relying on the hospitality of strangers, as they set up their gospel-preaching operations in the homes of new converts. This is how we meet Lydia. Priscilla and Aquila played a similarly hospitable role in Paul’s ministry when they partnered with him in Corinth and again in Ephesus.
Later, as the church grew, Christians extended hospitality to one another by sharing their resources. Some went so far as to sell their property, donating the proceeds to the apostles to distribute as needs arose. When persecution spiked in one quadrant of the empire, making believers the new societal outcasts, collections were taken in all the churches to provide relief for the suffering. Often, believers imprisoned for their faith relied on gifts from God’s people to supply their basic needs.
Today, healthy churches continue to depend on the hospitality of their members. Peter understood this and so urged the Asian churches “to love one another earnestly and to show hospitality without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9). As it was for Jesus, hospitality is both a giving and a receiving for believers.
Made for More Than Homemaking
Despite this rich biblical tradition, today’s hospitality is often reduced to a dinner invitation where the entrée, the skill of the host, or even authenticity is the main feature. But true hospitality is so much more than a meal; true hospitality displays something much more worthy than the abilities of the homemaker.
Christian hospitality begins with a warm and welcoming disposition toward your neighbor — and not just the nice-looking, clean-smelling, not-very-needy friend-from-church kind of neighbor, but also the one who isn’t all that pleasant, the one who may sneer at your cheerful greeting or the one who may post uncomfortable political comments online.
Christian hospitality is a heart of mercy toward the outsider, eager to fold them into the family of God. It is a heart of sacrificial love toward fellow believers and a generous heart that uses its resources to meet the needs of missionaries. Ultimately, it is the overflow of a heart that has been utterly transformed by divine hospitality.
That overflow might very well be an invitation to dinner in your home. But it could also be a phone call to check in on someone you haven’t seen in a while, a warm greeting to a newcomer at church, an encouraging word, or a moment’s pause to listen and truly understand. Hospitality may require biting your tongue or faithfully wounding a friend. A bag of groceries, a ride to the doctor, an after-school pickup, childcare, a hospital visit, a check to cover an unexpected expense, housecleaning, a cup of coffee, a gift of flowers, a hug — each of these reflects the hospitable heart of God.
And astoundingly, Jesus eagerly receives your hospitality as an expression of your love for him:
Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. . . . Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. (Matthew 25:34–40)
So, do not grow weary in showing hospitality — your King sees and welcomes all your efforts. And one day, he will welcome you into his heavenly home as the recipient of a divine hospitality beyond your earthly imagination.
Desiring God