Hospitality – the practice of God’s welcome
by Revd Dr Margaret Jones - May 2021
Margaret Jones traces the biblical roots of Hospitality and suggests that it is a practice closely linked to justice and inclusion.
Despite the immense problems created by the pandemic during the last year, the innumerable acts of kindness and compassion witnessed everywhere have, to some extent, helped to mitigate this. In the face of so much anxiety and distress, people have found all sorts of ways to meet the needs of others. This has included cooking meals and delivering them, distributing food parcels, and finding various ways to keep in touch with those shielding. To alleviate suffering in these difficult times, people have reached across difference to offer hospitality, using a wide variety of practices.
In today’s world, ‘hospitality’ is most often linked to personal entertainment or to the hospitality industry. Yet, hospitality is a paradigm found firmly rooted in both the Old and New Testaments and this has informed and influenced social practices and doctrines of Christian tradition throughout history. The Old Testament reminds us that we should show hospitality to the stranger, the widow and the orphan (e.g. Leviticus 19. 33-34; Deuteronomy 12.17-19; 24.19-22). This is a responsibility required because of God’s great care in delivering his people from slavery in Egypt. In the New Testament, there are frequent accounts of Jesus offering or receiving hospitality and his actions and parables affirm the place of welcome, particularly for the social misfit and the outcast. Frequently, it also leads Jesus to challenge the religious, social, political and economic establishments of his day.
For Christians, hospitality is a way of showing God’s welcome and when we reach out to others, we share with God in the task of bringing justice and healing to our world in crisis (Russell, 2009, p. 19). Jesus’ attitude and actions also make it clear that the practice of hospitality is something he wants others to engage in. This is seen, for example, at the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the Samaritan, who has shown hospitality to the man who fell among thieves, is identified as neighbour and Jesus says to the lawyer, ‘Go and do likewise’ (Luke 10.37). Hospitality, therefore, becomes “a root metaphor and practice … that encapsulates its crucial elements with regard to how the church relates to its neighbours” (Bretherton, 2010a, p. 128).
In the parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25. 31-45), Jesus reminds us that by feeding the hungry, giving a drink to the thirsty, and welcoming the stranger, we are, in fact, feeding him, giving him a drink, welcoming him. Jesus suffers alongside anyone who is suffering and, when we reach out to meet a sufferer’s needs, we meet Jesus and offer him our help too. For the church, hospitality has always been central to shaping its relations with its neighbours, as evidenced in the care shown to the sick, openness to immigrants, educational initiatives, and peace-making endeavours. It is the ministry that every church member is called to engage in and as we join in solidarity with ‘strangers’ and build a mutual relationship of care and trust, so “we share in the struggle for empowerment, dignity and fullness of life” (Russell, 2009, p. 20). During the pandemic, a significant feature of the hospitality that has been offered, is that, regardless of whether stakeholders come from religious or secular settings, it is open, inclusive, showing solidarity with the ‘stranger’ and valuing those who might be identified as ‘guests’.
Inclusivity is, I suggest, an essential element when defining hospitality and when we offer hospitality, we need to try to understand the people we are working with and the social context. To be able to achieve inclusivity, we have to put an end to the ‘lady bountiful’ frame and endeavour to meet others, “not as objects of our charity, but persons in their own right, capable of making choices about their destiny” (Russell, 2009, p.81).
Community organizing can be a way the church can show hospitality since it respects its neighbours’ beliefs and practices, whilst honouring its own tradition (Bretherton, 2010b, p. 87). By being open to others and sharing vulnerabilities, frustrations, hopes and dreams, new understandings begin to emerge as the perspectives of those involved broaden. Developing this idea, Bretherton uses the metaphor of the tent, which, from a scriptural perspective, he sees as “a mobile, provisional place … [in which] the encounter with others and their stories informs the sense of what it is like to live on this mutual ground, to dwell together in a given and shared urban space (pp. 87-88). Tent making provides an opportunity for mutual learning and a means of helping people re-connect with each other.
The interactions of those involved with the local food bank at a community church in south Manchester offer evidence of this notion of tent making. One of the food bank organisers explains:
We have a lovely mix of church and community and I try and mix the two together when I do the rotas. And the conversations that are going on amongst the volunteers are so rich both ways round, church people naturally talking about how great church is and why don’t you come along kind of conversation, but also members of the community, many of whom themselves are struggling, explaining what it’s like living, you know, on benefits or whatever and how difficult it is and how they have to manage things. It’s helping some of the more middle class church people get real insight as you’re sitting there just chatting with one another. It’s really enabling people to get better insight into what it’s really like.
There is often an assumption that hospitality is something that we give rather than receive, but, as this example suggests, learning from those to whom we offer hospitality is as important as offering it and it can be a transformative experience. It means that if we are “willing to receive the hospitality of others … we relate to people from a place of vulnerability rather than one of power (Steele, 2020, p. 81). When the hospitality we offer is relational, with the host being “open to learning from the guest” (Morisy, 2009, p. 172), it ensures that it is not in any sense patronising.
A Grub and Gossip event hosted by the Rotary Club of which I am a member first led me to reflect on the impact guests can have on their hosts. People from the local community, including a group of Chinese elders attended this event, held in a community church centre in Moss Side. After sharing a meal, the Chinese elders performed a Tai Chi routine and then invited everyone else to participate. It led me to comment:
The guests had become the hosts, which also had the effect of creating a greater atmosphere of community and a ‘fusion of horizons’, a realisation that sharing things in common, sharing hospitality, can help to overcome some of the barriers we face in our societies today.
Hospitality is an important paradigm found in the community-based partnerships, which started to emerge a decade ago following the financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent austerity measures, and are continuing to appear and develop to address the current crisis. It is apparent that where stakeholders are working with rather than for those they seek to help, the hospitality they offer is open and inclusive and it is valuing and giving agency to those who might be identified as ‘guests’. Such an environment provides a safe and welcoming space where people can find their own sense of who they are and their worth. Joining in solidarity with those who find themselves struggling at this time leads to a redistribution of power and enables agency. It offers opportunities for all to join in and thus to build webs of connectivity and places where all are welcome.
In God and the Pandemic (2020), Tom Wright suggests that as Christians we are called to be “sign-producers for God’s kingdom” (p. 64), and to show through our actions, signs of new creation. The model of engagement that more churches are now embracing is one that recognises that it is not simply about meeting needs, but about being creative, working with others, and building relationships and a society in which all can flourish. It is a model in which congregations, even small ones, and their leaders prayerfully re-envision their mission in today’s fragmented world and reflect on the theology that underpins all that they undertake. It is recognising the call to be incarnational, to look outwards and show loving concern for all. It is about helping to transfigure injustice by shining a light on the issues and effecting change through a redistribution of power that enables autonomy and agency. It is about reimagining hospitality and creating spaces where all can feel welcome and valued; and where hosts have the opportunity to become guests and vice versa.
Bibliography
Bretherton, L. (2010a). Hospitality as holiness : Christian witness amid moral diversity Farnham: Ashgate.
Bretherton, L. (2010b). Christianity and contemporary politics : the conditions and possibilities of faithful witness. Chicheste: Wiley-Blackwell.
Morisy, A. (2009). Journeying out : a new approach to Christian mission. London: Continuum.
Russell, L. M. (2009). Just hospitality : God's welcome in a world of difference. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press.
Steele, H. (2020). Living his story : revealing the extraordinary love of God in ordinary ways. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
Wright, T. (2020). God and the pandemic : a Christian reflection on the coronavirus and its aftermath. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
Margaret Jones writes: More than twenty years of teaching in an inner-city High School in Manchester with its challenging and changing social issues strengthened my long-held concerns for the poor and the marginalised. Through research undertaken for a Doctorate in Practical Theology, I identified potential opportunities for the church to engage with other agencies in social action to address some of these issues and, by working with rather than for those who are disadvantaged, to be able to help build up local communities in which all can flourish. My concern for those who are struggling, particularly financially, continues to influence my ministry as a priest and my role as a Trustee for Transforming Lives Together (Chester).