Hospitality – Welcoming Strangers

For the next several installments, I will be writing about the ten Christian practices that Diana Butler Bass has identified as the ones healthy liberal congregations tend to use. The first is hospitality.

In my experience, religious groups tend to talk about hospitality a lot. Almost everyone agrees that hospitality is not only a good thing to practice, but that it is one of the centerpieces of not only Jesus’ ministry, but of the entire Judeo-Christian tradition. Even more than talking about it, Jesus demonstrated hospitality in many ways. But, what do we mean when we use the term? I have a sense that people can mean many different things by hospitality. I will write about three possible meanings by identifying three classifications of people: aliens (strangers), “Gentiles”, and members of the family.

Everyone knows that we Christians should offer hospitality to strangers. But even the most progressive group that sees itself as broadly hospitable can find itself confronted with strangers who don’t fit their expectations. I am reminded of a procedure that was used by fraternities in college to weed out good prospective “pledges” from those who did not pass muster. When prospective members visited the fraternity, different rooms were identified for different purposes. One room was for those people most likely to be selected, but if visitors said or did something that did not fit expectations, they were subtly moved into another room for those who were not likely to be selected. Hospitality was offered to all, but not the same kind of hospitality. Do we ever do this in our churches? Do we keep some people in second- or third-class status? Are we conscious about the weeding out we do?

The Temple in Jerusalem had a large area called the Court of the Gentiles. These were people who had reasons to be in the temple, but who were not allowed into the area where worship took place. We liberals are often quite critical of the more fundamentalist groups who (in our estimation) check people for the correctness of their theology before granting entrance. We don’t set such boundaries in the same way, but do we communicate in some way that only people who think a certain way about God or the ways of the world are fully welcome in our midst? We have to work very hard to become aware of and then dismantle the walls we build between ourselves and others. It’s not enough to have the right idea about inclusiveness. We have to make the effort to be truly inclusive.

I have experienced hospitality from many church groups over the years, but those experiences have not all been the same. Sometimes I was treated very well, but I didn’t feel that I was being invited to be a “member of the family.” At other times, I have felt invited all the way in. If our hospitality still brands some people as “out of the family,” then we still have work to do. Even within our actual families, sometimes members are not encouraged to be or become their true selves. Instead, there is pressure to have everyone fit in. It is true that whenever members grow into their unique identity, the family is always changed by it, and in unpredictable ways besides. This is true for churches, too. There is a risk associated with inviting people into full membership in the family. They won’t simply changes themselves so they fit in. Their unique selves will change the nature of the group and the individuals in it – and once again, the nature of that change will be unpredictable. Still, it is a matter of faith for us to open wide the doors to the inner family. This is what Jesus has taught us to do. So, let’s take the risk and be less guarded about the door into the heart of our family.

Wayne Gustafson
“No matter who you are, or where you are in life’s journey, you’re welcome here.”
The United Church__of Christ