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Open House, Open Life

Home is Where the Hospitality Is

My roommates and I just moved into a house about a month ago. A big house. (With lots and lots of room.)* This spacious abode is a welcome change, since my one roommate and I had been living in a tiny apartment for the last two and a half years. Now, don't get me wrong — the apartment wasn't bad. It was enough room for two of us, and we made it just fine. But this new place is pretty fantabulous — there's a guest room, a family room and a finished basement. We even have a yard. With grass. Awesome.

This new house has plenty of room for entertaining, which is great. We had all but quit inviting people over to our apartment because we could barely fit anyone anymore. (We are very popular so everyone wants to come to our parties, obviously. You're invited too.) With our new place, however, we can have lots of people over and everyone will be able to breathe — quite an improvement.

One of our first big events in our new home will be Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone will bring a dish and we'll share food, laughter and sarcastic comments. Most of those comments will probably be directed at me, since my roommate Jaci and I are in charge of making the turkey. I'm going to recommend that everyone bring some lunch meat, just in case things don't turn out so well.

I'm looking forward to our Thanksgiving dinner as a way of opening our home to our friends because as we've gotten settled into our home, my roommates and I have thought a lot about hospitality and what it means. We want our home to be open to people for dinner, quality conversation and old school Nintendo tournaments. If people need a place to stay, we want our guest room to be a cozy and welcoming environment.

We want all of these things to be true of our home — at the moment. But I realize that it's easy to be hospitable during a holiday season when everyone is supposed to feel all thankful and fellowship-y. But opening your home and your life just any old day when you may want to spend time on your own is something different.

But I think it's in this everyday hospitality that we can learn the deeper meaning of the word. God calls us to hospitality — not just in the sense of having people over, but of allowing people in. I think it is when we begin to allow people into our lives — into the messy room or the dirty kitchen, into the good and the bad of our lives, the happy days and the sad times — that we learn the deeper meaning of a hospitable spirit.

Klingon Connections

It's pretty easy for me to whip up some queso and chips and have my friends over to watch a football game. It's another thing entirely to open up my home to someone I don't know very well. This is where my hospitality shows its true colors.

When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt a long time ago (you can read about it in Exodus and Leviticus), He specifically gave them some rules regarding hospitality to strangers. He would often remind them to be kind to foreigners because they knew what it was like to be living in someone else's land: "The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God" (Leviticus 19:34, NIV).

God wanted the lonely, the stranger, the unknown to be taken care of. He even tells the Israelites not to harvest all of their fields so that the poor and the strangers can come along and glean the extra. Now, most of us don't have any fields for people to glean from, so what does this look like for us today?

Well, I think it means inviting people to your parties who you may not automatically get along with. It means accepting invitations to spend time with those you may not know too well — to get out of your comfort zone. It may mean writing a note to the homesick girl down the hall or inviting the guy who insists on speaking Klingon to watch college football with you. (Hey, no one ever said it would be easy.)

Friendly Hospitality

All of the suggestions I just gave are fairly elementary in that we know that it's good to be welcoming to people. But if we're going to get at the heart of hospitality, I believe we've got to go beyond being nice to strangers — because, by definition, strangers don't usually last for too long. It also requires us showing kindness to, and being understanding with, those we know best.

This may sound odd to you, but I sometimes have the most difficulty showing hospitality to those I'm closest to. I'm talking about my peeps, my homies, my dawgs, my crew, my … OK, I'm done now. These are the people you would think I'd be kindest to because I'm close to them. But it doesn't always seem to go that way.

It is often easiest for me to be rude to my close friends and family. I say what I'm feeling, when I'm feeling it. If I don't want to smile, I won't. If I don't feel like saying a kind word, I don't. It is because I feel most comfortable with my mom, my dad, my roommates, and my closest friends that I don't feel the need to be kind.

Now, I know this is a very twisted way of doing things. But it happens. And I would guess that it happens with you as well.

But I believe the hospitality we're to strive for extends to our attitudes, to our smiles. It may mean stepping outside of ourselves — outside of our daily routines or our preferences — to notice when someone else is having a bad day. And I also think it means accepting the hospitality of others, even when you might not be in the mood to be kind. It's allowing people to minister to you — to share God's grace even when you don't necessarily deserve it or even want it.

It might be an inconvenience to have to be kind or accept kindness when you don't feel like it, but I think that being interrupted in order to listen to and serve others is part of what creates Christ-like community.

Learning Hospitality

I honestly believe that the community that God talks about in the Bible is something we don't fully understand, simply because we're not forced to. We live in a very individualistic society, which means that we only need to show hospitality when we want to, when we feel like it.

I recently heard a speaker talking about the lives of Jesus and His disciples. As a rabbi, Jesus had twelve disciples who followed Him around everywhere. A disciple's deepest desire was to be exactly like his rabbi, and in order to do that, he had to know every detail of every single thing his rabbi did. This was hardcore community living. And it would drive me crazy.

Most of us would really struggle with this kind of community. But I honestly believe that our truest hospitality is tested and refined when we allow people into our day-to-day lives. We may not have a beautiful meal prepared, and our apartments or dorm rooms may not be spotless, but it's when we allow people into our homes and our actual lives that we began to learn and live out our hospitality. Lauren Winner puts it like this in her book, Mudhouse Sabbath:

At its core, I think, cultivating an intimacy in which people can know and be known requires being honest — practicing that other Christian discipline of telling the truth about where we live and how we got there. Often I'd rather dissemble.¹

True hospitality requires that we tear down our facades and share in a community that is broken but striving for the better way that God has called us to.

Reflecting His Nature

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In what ways can you practice hospitality?

Join the discussion!

Hospitality means that we open our lives and our homes to others, and allow them to do the same for us. It's a responsibility we have because we've been called to live in community, to love others as we love ourselves. It means giving up some of our privacy and our time, but gaining a godly perspective and better reflecting His Trinitarian nature.

And it may mean eating cold cuts when your friends undercook the Thanksgiving turkey. Just so everyone knows.