Hospitality in Scripture

• Genesis 18:1-5, Abraham and the three men
• Leviticus 19:10, leave some of your harvest for the poor and alien
• Psalm 23:5, set a table in the presence of my enemies
• Isaiah 58:6-7, did you choose to loose the bonds of injustice and to share your bread?
• Matthew 22:9-10, the wedding banquet
• Matthew 25:34-36, I was hungry and you gave me food
• Mark 14:22-25, the Lord's Supper
• Luke 10:33-35, the good Samaritan
• John 21:12, having breakfast with the Lord
• Romans 12:13, hospitality to strangers
• Hebrews 13:2, do not neglect hospitality
• 1 John 3:17, God's love abides in anyone who helps those in need

Reflections on Hospitality

A Virtue

Hospitality is the virtue that wants to clear some space for others and welcome them into this space. You make room for people and then you receive them there. In this setup, others are outsiders and you are an insider. They are guests and you are a host. Your job as host is to diminish the distance between you and your guest. If your guest is a stranger, you want the estrangement to be over. If your guest is alien to you, the idea is to reduce the alienation. It's worth noticing that your guest might never become your friend, at least not your close friend. Hospitality occupies the large middle ground between estrangement and friendship.

Hospitality in Hard Climates

For most of human history, travelers routinely depended upon the food and drink and shelter of strangers. They couldn't travel any distance without it, and in hard climates it often meant the difference between life and death. "Hard climates" include those of hostility to Jews in Germany during the 1930s and 40s, when Gentiles in the Netherlands and other countries risked their own lives to hide and protect Jews.

Binding to Another

Handing food to a guest is momentous. It binds you to that person. When you pass a dish of food to another person, you are saying that you want that person to live or even to thrive. Handing food to a guest is a sacramental act. It binds you together with goodwill. That's why the Bible talks about food so much. There's food all over the place in the Bible: fruit trees in Paradise, a Passover meal at the Exodus, manna in the desert, gleaning laws in farmers' fields, the multiplication of loaves and fishes in the desert, breakfast on the beach with the resurrected Lord, and parables that are fragrant with cookery and with promise of banquets to come.

Origin of Hospitals

The great hospitals of Europe came from the diaconate of the Christian churches and from the hospices that were opened for pilgrims and travelers, which eventually made room for the hurt and the handicapped and then for the old and the orphaned and the impoverished.

The Most Sublime of Mysteries

The communion for which Christians give thanks is plainly a ritual of hospitality. Jesus Christ receives believers at a table, and in the most sublime of mysteries — one so sublime and almost so bizarre that Christians should never get comfortable with it — the host becomes the meal and we end up eating and drinking our God. The point is that for us pilgrims such hospitality may mean the difference between life and death.

A Small Domestic Nicety

Hospitality cannot be reduced to a small domestic nicety. At the center of the universe the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit harbor each other at the center of their being. The glory of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is its declaration that ultimate reality consists of three persons united as one holy God, each of them God only with the other two, each enveloping the other two in a ceaseless exchange of hospitality.