Opening Your Heart to Strangers

In reading the account of God’s interactions with humans throughout the centuries, I am struck with the hospitable nature of God. From the wilderness wanderings of Israel, where God provided manna and quail, to the New Testament where Jesus plays host to a diverse group of people, welcoming the rich and poor, children, sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes, we have to conclude that first and foremost God’s heart is open and loves to entertain and feed anybody. We might even say there is a banquet going on and God is sending out invitations to even the strangers and “least of us.”My earliest memories as a child run back to rural Mississippi where a meal at my grandparents’ house was usually a memorable event. I owe these memories to my grandmother whose whole countenance said, “Welcome.” It did not matter if you were a little towheaded boy, distant kin, or a friend of someone she knew, you would always find a welcome, good conversation and a tasty meal around dinner time. I do not reflect upon this with nostalgia or even pining for the “good ole days.” I used to, but not anymore. Those times in rural Mississippi and those summers lived in a kind of Huck Finn existence, though rich and sustaining, are not the context of my life now, nor are they the context of life around me. But I am interested in the embodiment of the Christian ideal that was behind all of it––hospitality. I know from experience that this was not just rural America in an idyllic age; I knew as many mean-spirited people then as I know now. Rather, it was driven by a view of God. My grandmother knew that God was a welcoming God and that some “entertained angels unaware,” so she sought to do that.As a matter of fact, if truth be known, we are more strangers now than we ever were. If there was ever a time that hospitality should be cultivated, it is now. If ever there was a way in which the claims of Christianity could be validated, it is now. We don’t expect hospitality anymore. In fact, we are shocked if we see it. We expect people in traffic to be rude and not gracious, we don’t expect to be invited into people’s homes, and further more, people are so afraid to get involved with strangers, often we see people walk right by even if we are hurt. This happened to my wife soon after we moved to Collierville. In the parking lot of a large store she tripped and, while sitting on the curb, an infant and two small children in tow, not one soul stopped to get involved or offer help.In the book, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Christine Pohl says that only the church’s care of strangers could account for the rise, spread, and credibility of Christianity. This tradition began to disappear in the eighteenth century. With the change in society, care for strangers, which once took place in homes, was moved away to hospitals, hostels, hotels, and hospices. Though this was good in a sense, it moved hospitality from a radical, personal, face-to-face welcome to one more distant and anonymous. I wonder what a rediscovery of hospitality would mean. Living in suburban America, this thought haunts me. Living in the midst of plenty, but with strangers all around me, what might the church look like if it treated the strangers in her midst as Jesus?The strange thing about Christian hospitality is that Jesus is both host and guest. By that I mean the Bible teaches we are to see Christ in every stranger, and, paradoxically, when we offer hospitality we are “being Christ” to the ones we show grace. The more we invite the strangers around us into our lives, the more we, on the one hand, give credibility to the claims of the Gospel and, on the other, “take on” the image of Christ. What happens when we show hospitality to strangers? “…we welcome them into a place to which we are somehow connected––a place that has meaning and value to us. In hospitality, the stranger is welcomed into a safe, personal, and comfortable place, a place of respect, acceptance, and friendship. Even if only briefly, the stranger is included in a life-giving and life-sustaining network of relations.” (Making Room)If there is a place that needs this kind of embodied Christianity, it is suburban America. Almost everyone is a stranger in one sense or another. What would happen if we opened our hearts and our homes and our tables to those who come into our midst, whether in church, in a club, or community? We would make Christ’s presence real, in the way it was made real to us when we were strangers and aliens and He died for us anyway. Is this risky? Yes! Does this take skill? Certainly! But isn’t it worth it to show the grace we have known in Christ to those around us who are disconnected from basic relationships and with no secure place in the world?It is no accident that meals occupy such an exalted place in both the Scriptures and in our Christian tradition. When you host strangers for a meal, you are feeding them spiritually, physically, and relationally. You are blessing them and you are multiplying blessings in your home. I have heard the church and Christians called a lot of things by outsiders in my life, some of it not so good, but I have never heard it said of Christians, “You may not agree with them, but they are the most caring and hospitable people in the world.” But when that was said of the Church long ago, they changed the world, one stranger at a time.The place where “outsiders” become “insiders” at St. Patrick is in Community Groups. We cannot become friends in a large corporate gathering on Sunday, but in a living room––anything is possible. Now is the time when new groups are forming, old groups are getting back into a rhythm, and everyone is putting out the “Welcome” sign. This is the heart and soul of our ministry. Jesus said, “When two or three gather, I am in their midst.” Glory.