A Free and Friendly Space

Below is the third installment from the current series we are doing at the Robinson Church of Christ. My posts have not followed the order we covered the material at our church, but hopefully, dear reader, you can still glean something from them.

For the following lesson, the focus was on "Welcoming," and our class members were challenged to follow up the lesson by inviting someone into their homes, either someone from the church whom they do not know well or someone from their neighborhood whom they expect could not return the favor.

Luke 14
In the parable in Luke 14:15-24, Jesus uses the biblical imagery of a great banquet to describe how God welcomes us into his presence. A certain man has prepared a great feast, and now that it’s ready he eagerly sends out his servant to call the invited guests. He receives surprising responses, however. It seems the guests are all too busy with fields and family to attend the banquet. They simply can’t squeeze table fellowship with the master into their cluttered calendars.

Maybe you've tried to identify the “fields” and “oxen” and “wives” that press on you with their urgency and pull you away from what’s truly important. Maybe you've tried to reprioritize so that you don’t miss the precious time at the banquet with our Lord. And yet . . .

Can you identify one or two things that consistently distract you from being with God? They don’t have to be meaningless things like TV watching or Internet surfing; they can be important things like managing your livelihood and attending to your family. What in your life continually challenges your commitment to seek first the kingdom of God?

The material that precedes this parable reveals that Jesus is concerned with much more than our coming to the banquet. Those who have been welcomed should themselves be welcomers. As Jesus enjoys a Sabbath meal at a prominent Pharisee’s house, he makes various comments about “feasting.” Along with parable, he also calls his hearers to a radical hospitality: “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind” rather than your friends, family, or prestigious neighbors. Offer hospitality that honors the root of the word: philo-zenos, “love of strangers.” Henri Nouwen defines hospitality as the “creation of a free and friendly space where we can reach out to strangers and invite them to become our friends” (Reaching Out, 55).

When we practice “hospitality” is it typically “love of strangers”? Who is the “stranger” to us?

What is our goal for hospitality? To be a good Christian? To minister to someone? Or to open ourselves to the blessings of genuine relationship?

Nouwen also warns, “As long as someone feels that he or she is only an object of someone else’s generosity, no dialogue, no mutuality, and no authentic community can exist” (Gracias, 21).

Have you ever felt that you were the object of someone’s ministry duty? How did that feel?

Now we are getting to the real point in Luke 14. It isn’t just about feasting with God or showing hospitality. It’s about humility: don’t seek the seats of honor (14:7-11); don’t throw a party to enhance your image (12-14); don’t assume your salvation and the other’s damnation (15-24); give up everything and take up the cross (25-33). Humility of this kind is an essential element of hospitality; otherwise, it can slip quickly into condescension and self-aggrandizement. You aren’t opening your home to the stranger because you are in a superior position from which to dole out blessing; you are opening yourself to be blessed because you need the stranger as much or more than he needs you.

Jesus welcomed you just as you are, one of the poor, lame, crippled, and blind, into a place of safety, healing, and genuine relationship. Dare you do the same?