Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines—Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out.
Although I am an introvert who doesn’t fear long hours alone in study and writing, I long to welcome people into my home. After long years of my residence being more of a hospice than a home, it has been recently transformed into a bright and warm place for others—a place for hospitality. That means a place to offer food and drink, a place for studying and a place for intellectual exploration as I show people around my capacious library and offer to loan books. In the last sentence, I kept writing a place. But now, in virus lockdown, this place is only for my wife, myself, and my dog, Sunny. Any hospitality I now offer is crimped by aloneness. Even time outside is hampered by fear of contagion and the ill-named “social distancing.”
Hospitality is the public outgrowth of love. Compassion and caring always moves outward, towards the other in hopes of friendship, fellowship, service, and community. As Pascal said, “Respect means put yourself out.” How much more does love mean “put yourself out”? Hospitality is a Christian virtue and without it, there is little if any spiritual life in the church and witness to the world. The Apostle Peter writes this:
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:8-9).
So many other texts could be cited, but we need to realize that the imperative to be hospitable is rooted in God’s own hospitality in offering us hospitality through Jesus Christ. The eternal Son took on a human nature and dwelt among us full of grace and truth, making the Father known (John 1).
Hospitality means welcoming or restoring someone into our good graces—or at least offering this. We can extend kindness to others through all the media available to us and perhaps reach into the lives of others we have neglected. We may seek reconciliation with those with whom we are estranged, as Jesus taught us to do in the Sermon on the Mount. Since “love covers a multitude of sins,” we should not hold others sins against them. By so doing, we become hospitable and refuse to grumble. Even in our aloneness and retreat, we can ponder and pray about the meaning of hospitality being eager for its return to our homes, schools, places of worship, and our life together.
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