The Lord appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre while he sat at the entrance of his tent in the day’s heat. He looked up and suddenly saw three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them, he ran from his tent entrance to greet them and bowed deeply. He said, “Sirs, if you would be so kind, don’t just pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought so you may wash your feet and refresh yourselves under the tree. Let me offer you a little bread so you will feel stronger, and after that you may leave your servant and go on your way—since you have visited your servant.” –Genesis 18:1-5 CEB
Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it. – Hebrews 13:2 CEB
At the heart of a Christian ethic of hospitality is the belief that serving the stranger is the same as serving Christ. “When you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me” (Matt. 25:40). Hospitality moves beyond meaningless statements that make us feel better about ourselves (All are welcome!) and look a stranger in the eye to say, “You are welcome, make yourself at home.”
The stranger bears the image of God. Christ died for the stranger. The stranger has the Holy Spirit working grace upon grace in them. We do not serve the stranger only to bless them with God’s love, but because we will also find God’s blessing through them. We have much to gain when we open our lives to the lives of people not like us.
Father Shannon Kearns has this to say about true hospitality:
I don’t want to be in a place where someone who consistently uses homophobic and transphobic language and never gets called on it is welcome. I don’t want to be in a place where every viewpoint and opinion is regarded with the same level of respect. I don’t want to be in a place where white supremacy isn’t being confronted.
So yes, let’s welcome people! But let’s also be a place where oppression can’t continue to exist unchallenged. Where hateful speech and behavior isn’t allowed to persist unchecked…
Welcome means more than putting a rainbow flag on your church or putting a Black Lives Matter sign in your yard. It means doing the actual work to be a community of equity. Which probably means that people who hold a ton of privilege that they don’t want to deal with won’t feel welcome anymore.
And you know what? I’m okay with that. Because those folks can go anywhere in the world and feel welcome and safe and comfortable. And the Gospel of Jesus is always, always, always about centering the lives of the marginalized and oppressed.
So yes, all are welcome, but only if you’re willing to be a part of the equitable community. (Read the full article at QueerTheology.com)
This week, I was inspired to recreate Andrei Rublev’s icon The Trinity, which is based on the story of Abraham’s hospitality to three strangers who turned out to be The Lord. I recognize that mine is a white church retelling of who the stranger is, but that is due to the privilege and power that make the white church so uncomfortable with accepting true strangers. In my picture, the strangers are a wheelchair-bound Syrian refugee youth, a young black man, and a transgender person. What would it look like to truly open spaces for each of these people to feel at home in your life and in your church’s life? How might you be surprised with joy and blessing by truly loving the stranger?