Looking Up From the Cracks in My Sidewalk: A Theology of Hospitality Part I

2 Corinthians 5:17-21Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

So here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately: HOSPITALITY. I want to know what it really means and what God’s Word has to say about it. I want to know what it looks like in our culture and how to live it out in our context.

I really started chewing on this topic when I read Luke 7:37-50, the story of the Sinful Woman, for a study I’ve been doing with a friend, but it’s also something I’ve been fired up about lately. I’ve noticed a disheartening lack of hospitality among people in our culture (including myself)—not just our culture at large, but our church culture too—a lack of hospitality among brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m not even really referring (yet, although we will get there in this blog series) to the fact that it is a RARE thing for people to invite others into their homes or that it’s no longer a regular practice for church-attendees to greet one another in the service (this has become taboo in our more seeker-friendly church culture because someone might get scared-off if you say hello to them or act glad that they are there).

What I’m super-disturbed about and want to focus this discussion to is the fact that people rarely even bother to speak a generic “Good Morning! How are you?” to each other as they pass on the sidewalks or in the hallways at church. We hide behind sunglasses and smart phones or become suddenly interested in the cracks of the sidewalks or we’re so busy trying to get kids to their places or doing our Sunday-morning “ministry” tasks that we fail to remember to make eye-contact, smile, and greet one another. We seem to have forgotten that the people we’ve just ignored or blown past are just that—people, image-bearing creations of the Creator God who formed man out of the dust of the earth, gave him a helper named woman when God saw that it was not good for man to be alone, and commanded the man and the woman to fill the earth with their offspring (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:18; 21-25). See, God Himself is all about relationship. He desires fellowship and relationship with us and because He imprinted us with Himself, we also desire fellowship and relationship with Him and with other people.

So why then, if God created us with a desire to be relational beings do we sabotage and suppress that desire by trying to be invisible or treat others as if they are invisible?

I think the answer is fairly simple. Like our need to be relational, the origin of our dysfunction in that arena goes back to the beginning of human history. When sin entered God’s perfect world and His perfect people through Adam and Eve, one of the first things it wreaked havoc with was relationships—both man and woman’s relationship with God and with each other (Genesis 3). And since then, our relationships on every level have been pretty messed up.

We’re separated by our sin from our righteous, holy God and from each other by the wicked, self-seeking nature that reigns in us. It’s just pure self-absorption that keeps us from being able to step outside of ourselves for one brief moment to make eye contact and smile at the person walking by us. That’s the bad news.

The good news is there’s a remedy for our relational mess and our serious sin-sickness that blinds us to the needs and desires of others. His name is Jesus and He’s God’s rescue-plan for humankind. Through Jesus, God reconciles people to Himself and restores them to relationship with Himself. In this restoration, we not only gain reconciliation to God but to each other (2 Corinthians 5:18-21)! When God reconciled us to Himself through His Son, Jesus, He erased our old, selfish, sinful nature and gave us a new one. In Christ, we are brand new creations—set free from the slavery of sin and self-absorption to live a life that is pleasing to God and hospitable toward others (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 5:1).

As a result of Christ’s redeeming work in our lives, our desire to be in relationship with God is fulfilled and our desire to grow deeper in that relationship should mount the more we get to know our Savior and God. In the same way, we should desire to be connected to those who’ve also been brought near to God in Christ—our fellow brothers and sisters (Ephesians 2:14-19). Our relationships with other believers should deepen and grow as we grow in Christ and the Bible is filled to overflowing with instructions on how we should be treating each other.

The other relational desire that should grow to exponential dimensions as a result of our reconciliation to God is our love for lost people and a desire for them to be reconciled to God, too. Our connectedness to the rest of the world what has yet to hear of God’s rescue-plan should increase as we learn to live out our reconciliation in Christ. We are God’s ambassadors to the rest of the world of what it means to live in restored relationship to Him through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20). It’s out of this reconciliation to Christ that our ability to demonstrate hospitality flows.

So without further ado, I’d like to invite you to look up from the cracks in the sidewalks and join me in learning just what gospel-centered hospitality means and looks like for us as believers in the 21st century. My hope and earnest prayer for us as we embark on this study is that we will fall more in love with our Savior and His Word, overflow with thankfulness for the hospitality shown to us in Christ, and develop a rich theological framework for biblical, gospel-centered hospitality which will enable us to practice hospitality to both believers and non-believers in simple, practical ways.