The Central Story of the Bible: God’s Hospitality

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part II of our series on Opening Your Home

It is no exaggeration to say that references to God’s hospitality saturate each page of Scripture. For example, we know that…

And the central story of the Bible? God extending hospitality to the most alienated people of all—the Israelites—and, through them, to the whole human race.  The Old Testament identifies the Israelites as alienated people who are dependent on God’s hospitality (Psalm 39:12; see also Heb 11:13). God graciously received the alienated Israelites and met their needs.  He redeemed them from Egypt and fed and clothed them in the wilderness (Exod 16; Deut 8:2-5).  He guided them as sojourners into His own land (Lev 25:23), where He offered them health, long life, peace, and fertility (Deut 11).

Note that on earth, God extends his hospitality to all people, regardless of whether they deserve it or not. As Jesus says in Matthew 5:45, God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

We usually misunderstand this. We get confused when good things happen to bad people. We expect that God should send good things to the good and bad things to the bad.

But that is not God’s character. On earth—the “home” to which God has invited us—God is always a gracious host. He gives good things to all of his guests, even the ones that behave badly.

Because he is a generous host.

When Jesus talks about “reward,” it is for the life to come, not this life. Look up Matthew 5:12 and Luke 6:23. Where do they say we receive our reward?

We really need to understand this: this present life is not a life of rewards and punishments. Sure, there are consequences of sin in this lifetime, and the Bible even talks about God chastening those he loves. But we misunderstand God’s character when we look at what happens to people in this life and say, “God is rewarding them” or “God is punishing them.” In this life, what we receive is God’s gracious hospitality, regardless of whether we deserve it or not. That is the fundamental meaning of grace—God’s undeserved favor.

It is in the next life that God holds us accountable for the hospitality we are receiving from him presently, in this life.

So when people ask, “Why do the wicked prosper?” what is the answer? The wicked aren’t really “prospering;” instead, they are receiving—and abusing—the grace of God, for which they will be held accountable in the life to come.

God’s gracious hospitality is also the basis on which Paul says that all human beings are held accountable by God in the life to come—even those who have never heard of Christ in this life. Paul writes in Romans 1:18-23:

18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

In the language we are using this month, we could phrase Paul’s thought this way: God’s hospitality is evident to everyone. God has made it obvious to everyone that they are being hosted. It is obvious that they receive gifts and goodness that they do not deserve.

As a result, they have no excuse not to acknowledge their host.

However, many do not acknowledge God as host. Instead, they think of other things—nature, animals, fake gods, even other people—as their hosts or benefectors. Or they just credit their own abilities.

And as they worship these things, everything about their understanding of the world (and of themselves!) becomes foolish.

If thankfulness to God keeps our minds from futility, how futile (i.e., bereft of thanks) is your thinking today?

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“Prevenient Grace”: The Theological Term for “Hospitality”

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part I of our series on Opening Your Home

Two Greek words in the New Testament are rendered in English as “hospitality.”

The first is philoxenia (used here, here, here, here, and here) which literally means “lover of strangers.”  In other words, according to the Bible, hospitality doesn’t refer to us hosting our friends and family well.

It refers to us opening up our homes to people we’ve never met.

A second Greek word for hospitality, xenodocheo (used here) is a compound of xenos, which means “stranger,” or “someone without the knowledge of, without a share in,” and dechomai, which means “receive,” “accept,” “take with the hand,” “give ear to,” “embrace,” or even “to receive into one’s family to bring up or educate.”  Hospitality, then, extends even to taking by the hand and embracing into one’s family the other who has no share in or knowledge of one’s own identity and life and values.

Our first instinct is to think about this in terms of ourselves. Could I accept into my home someone who does not share in or know my identity, life, and values?  This is a great question…but it’s not where we want to start. Instead, we start by asking, “How did Christ first perform this Work of Mercy on me?”

When we think about things this way, we see that God accepts into his home a race of people (us) who do not share in or know his identity, life, and values.

Theologically, we have a name for this Work of Mercy of God. We call it prevenient grace.

But before we dive into that, let’s take a step back and ask what we mean when we talk about hospitality. A great definition comes from David Gushee in his review of a great book, Making Room: Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, by Christine Pohl:

This is the biblical meaning of hospitality—making room for the stranger, especially those in most acute need. Such care must not be reduced to mere social entertaining nor may it be self-interested and reciprocal; instead, biblical hospitality reaches out to the abject and lowly and expects nothing in return. Hospitality is not optional, nor should it be understood as a rare spiritual gift; instead, it is a normative biblical practice that is learned by doing it.

Hospitality, or its lack, was immediately apparent in the towns and cultures of the ancient world. As biblical historian Rodney K. Duke notes, in the absence of a professional hospitality industry, the survival of the traveler really did depend entirely upon the kindness of strangers:

The plight of aliens was desperate. They lacked membership in the community, be it tribe, city-state, or nation. As an alienated person, the traveler often needed immediate food and lodging. Widows, orphans, the poor, or sojourners from other lands lacked the familial or community status that provided a landed inheritance, the means of making a living, and protection. In the ancient world the practice of hospitality meant graciously receiving an alienated person into one’s land, home, or community and providing directly for that person’s needs.

That’s exactly what God does for the human race as a whole and for us individually!

On a day-by-day basis, we usually have very little awareness of how completely desperate our plight is without God’s moment-by-moment hospitality!  In our next post, we’ll explore God’s hospitality to the Israelites and the entire human race.

For now, though, stop and ponder: How did God show his hospitality to you today?

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What Protestant Christians (Should) Believe About the Lord’s Supper

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part XII of our series on Sharing Your Bread

At the end of each series in .W Church (and on this blog) we take time to offer ourselves back to God in worship through the offering of Scriptures and songs which we’ve memorized, and the giving of our 70/30 tithes and offerings.

As I’ve mentioned before, this is also the time when we conduct our “AAR” (After Action Review).

Today, in addition to encouraging you to do these same things, I want to ask you to think with me more about the Lord’s Supper, especially in light of all that we’ve covered these past few weeks.

It’s important, as we partake of it, to understand what we believe about that supper as Evangelical Church Protestants. Catholics believe that the bread and wine are transformed literally into the body of Christ. That is not what we believe.

Some Lutherans (not all) believe that the bread and wine remain physically bread and wine but that the body and blood of Christ become locally present alongside the bread and wine each time we partake of it.

We Protestants believe is that it is not the bread and wine that are transformed but the meal itself.

Christ isn’t drawn back down to earth but we are drawn up into heaven to eat and drink with him there. That is, the communion meal becomes something more than just a bunch of people eating bread and drinking juice! Instead, we receive the meal as an invitation from God to dine with him in the spiritual realm even while we are in the physical realm. As we partake of it here on earth, we also partake of it in his presence in heaven. In this way, the food of which we partake endures to eternal life because our focus is drawn up and away from the flesh and toward the spirit, and we learn to trust that he will provide every good gift every moment of every day, even our daily bread.

So when we share the Lord’s Supper we need to avoid making the mistake that the crowd did in John 6.  They focused on the bread. We don’t look for him in the bread, around it, on top of it, or alongside it.

Instead, we focus on the fellowship in the meal: Christ comes and sets the table for us! We eat with him in body, soul, and spirit—simultaneously on earth and in heaven! He provides the food for the meal here on earth, as he does every time we come to the table. The bread we eat is physical and it remains physical, but if we understand “from where” it came and “to where” it points, to him who is the bread of life in heaven, then what we experience as we partake will endure to eternal life.

How else might the Work of Mercy of Sharing Your Bread impact the way we think about  the Lord’s Supper?  How else might the Lord’s Supper impact the way we think about Sharing Your Bread?

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