Hospitality Remixed
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, my gregarious dad and I talked about times when they had 20 or 30 guests for Thanksgiving dinner. Mom would invite anyone she thought would be alone. Their philosophy was the more the merrier. Dad smiled and said, “Those were very good days.” He meant it.
My parents are wonderful models of hospitality, and I am grateful for their example although rarely do I live up to the high bar they set. Every one of us has unique gifts and personalities, and for the extroverts among us, hospitality is a blast. On the other hand, introverts or those with social anxiety might stress out at the thought of having even a few people for Thanksgiving dinner.
However, biblically, the call to exhibit hospitality is not optional. It was necessary in days without hotels and restaurants in every town, and it’s just as necessary today in a society marked by extreme isolation and loneliness. The good news is there are numerous ways for extroverts and introverts alike to be hospitable.
The common definition of hospitality is opening our homes, but there are many other ways to exhibit hospitality. In his book Exclusion and Embrace, Miroslav Volf called hospitality is “the will to embrace.” We can express hospitality by offering an invitation to friendship, engaging in a conversation, providing a listening ear, or simply by smiling at a stranger. Hospitality is simply exhibiting a readiness to have others enter your life. Using this definition, we can be hospitable in a room full of strangers, on an airplane, in the grocery line, in a hospital, or at church.
Richard Beck, in his book Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise, argues that hospitality is about being willing to embrace those who are unlovely, unlikable, or overlooked. He proposes we do that through little moments of hospitality, like seeing, stopping, and approaching those right in front of us who may have been previously unnoticed. That’s how we meet Jesus.
My husband and I are not as extroverted as my parents, but it’s both encouraging and challenging to know that we can exhibit genuine hospitality in little ways and those ways are powerful. I’m praying that the Lord will open my eyes to those in and around my life who need a smile, a listening ear, or an invitation.
Hospitality begins in our hearts. As we purpose to offer welcome in big and small ways and develop the will to embrace those who most need our hospitality, we will meet Jesus in all kinds of unexpected, surprising ways.
In this month’s newsletter, Afton Rorvik explores the topic of hospitality from a story-focused perspective. We’ve got some additional links and resources on the topic, as well as our team’s December media recommendations. Please take a few minutes to sit back, reset, and reset during this busy season. Welcome! We’re glad you’re here!
On behalf of the Sage Forum team,
Story-Focused Hospitality
by Afton Rorvik
My husband and I hosted a party a few weeks ago, and I found myself praying an anguished, honest prayer as the day approached:
Lord, please go with me into this event. You know I struggle with rooms full of people. And yet, I know you know I want to live connected. I want to live as your hands and feet, and I know I can’t do that by sitting alone in my house. Please meet me in this place. Give me your eyes to see and your ears to hear. Show me the stories in the room.
Every time I gather with people, inside and outside my home, I feel some measure of concern. And, yes, my introversion contributes to that anxiety because I gain energy from time alone, not from time with people.
I struggle with hospitality. And have for decades. Part of that struggle comes from introversion; part of it comes from a hyper-focus on details.
As a young Christian in the 70s and 80s, I devoured books on creating a home and entertaining. I longed to create a home I had never known as a child—a home where people felt welcome and seen. When I did have a home of my own, I worked hard to clean and cook and present a beautiful, serene environment for my guests, something I had read about in so many books. Hospitality!
Or not.
My efforts, truthfully, tended more toward presenting a picture, an image. If my space looked inviting and smelled good, than surely my guests would feel at home. Hospitality became synonymous with doing, crafting a perfect environment. I tended to the food, the table, the bathroom . . .
Details, details, details!
They do matter when planning a dinner party. But over the decades, God continues to teach me that listening matters as much or more than details in moments of hospitality. He has prodded me time and time again to slow down and take time to hear the stories of those arriving through my door. And, He has reminded me that as an introvert, I have a predisposition toward listening.
How interesting that the well-known story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10) appears directly after the story of The Good Samaritan, a story all about taking time to see and listen and help.
Leslie Verner ties it together so well on page 59 of her book Invited: The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness:
Hospitality grips us by the chin and turns our face to notice, serve, and honor humanity inside, outside, and on the wayside. Sometimes we invite people into our homes and lives, and sometimes we go out and join people in unfamiliar or uncomfortable spaces. But we always pray for peeled-back eyes to walk our Jericho roads, seeing and celebrating the souls along the way as Jesus in disguise.
What might having “peeled-back eyes” of hospitality look like in a daily life?
It might look like the hosts of a party who develop and ask specific questions over dinner, aimed at offering all guests a chance to reveal bits of their story.
It might look like a chemotherapy patient who takes her infusion back in tow and greets her fellow patients with a smile and asks them about their journey with cancer.
It might look like an 89-year-old woman who greets and thanks nurses, doctors, and therapists by name from her bed in an orthopedic rehabilitation hospital and then asks these helpers about their families.
It might look like a Diet Coke enthusiast who greets the clerk at the gas station by name every morning and then takes the time to talk with her about family or holiday plans.
Details fade. Stories linger. And everyone has a story that needs telling. True hospitality makes space for those stories, and allows the details of the performance of hospitality to fade quietly into the background.
Additional Resources on the Topic of Hospitality
Becoming Gertrude: How Our Friendships Shape Our Faith (book) by Janice Peterson. Note: If you want to see hospitality and story at work in the Peterson household, take a look at this video of Bono coming to talk to Janice’s husband Eugene about his translation of the Psalms.
Becoming Like Jesus: 3 Ways to Cultivate a Heart of Welcome
What hospitality resources have you found helpful?
Media Picks From The Sage Forum Team
[BOOK] The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell: A Novel by Robert Dugoni. Interesting story about a boy born with ocular albinism, a condition in which the irises of the eye don’t have any melatonin, so he had red eyes. His mother was a devout Catholic and always said he would lead an extraordinary life, but it was difficult for Sam to believe that when other students in his Catholic school called him devil boy. The story of his life shows us that all of our lives can be extraordinary, just not in the ways that we think are extraordinary. (JA)
[VIDEO--Amazon Prime] War and Peace. I recently watched this 8-episode dramatization of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel. I have never read the book, so I can't vouch for how faithful it is to the original, but I did enjoy this 2016 screen adaptation by the BBC. It is beautifully filmed and acted. (SF)
[BOOK, VIDEO--Netflix] All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr. I loved this novel which follows two young people living during WWII--a French blind girl and a young German man forced into the Nazi army. I enjoyed the screen adaptation too, although I wished it had stayed more true to the book. (SF)
[BOOK] Just Show Up: How Small Acts of Faithfulness Change Everything by Drew Dyck. Life has a way of right-sizing the Big Dreams and Audacious Goals of our young adulthood. Dyck’s lighthearted writing carries a valuable reminder to us about the Big, Audacious values of everyday faithfulness and long term perseverance. (MV)
[BOOK] Emotions and the Gospel by Heidi Goehmann. I have often wondered how God views our messy emotions. I loved how the author explores what the Bible says about our emotions--including God's emotions. The book helped me see that God doesn't necessarily rush us through our hard or conflicting feelings, but sits with us in the midst of them and helps us figure them out. (SF)
[VIDEO—Amazon Prime] 44 Pages. This 2017 documentary profiles the history and takes us on a journey through the production of the 70th anniversary issue of Highlights magazine, the general interest magazine for children. If you remember characters Goofus and Gallant, or your kids ever read a copy of Highlights while waiting in the pediatrician’s office, you’ll enjoy getting a peek inside the pages of this evergreen publication. (MV)
[BOOK] The Gift of Empathy: Helping Others Feel Valued, Cared For, and Understood by Joel P. Bretscher and Kenneth C. Haugk. Another book from Stephen Ministries, this practical guide defines empathy, shows what it is and isn’t, and offers guidelines of how to empathize in healthy, helpful ways with some close to you or in everyday random interactions. Highly recommended. (AR)
What are you reading, listening to, and watching this month?
Coming in 2024
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***Coming next month: Our music issue. (And this isn’t about the oldies station!)
Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler. Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes close-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights. — Henri J. M. Nouwen
Great post, thank you. If I might be so bold as to mention my own book: "Room at My Table: Preparing Heart & Home for Christian Hospitality" (Upper Room Books)--50 devotional readings.