An Invitation to the Table

Embracing the Gift of Hospitality

Michelle Lazurek

• Publisher: Leafwood Publishers
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780891126232
• Subtopic: Religion

Jesus spent a chunk of his ministry eating and drinking with the "sinners and tax collectors" of the world. If we strive to be more like Jesus, shouldn't we do more of what he did?Hospitality involves more than the domesticated event we have grown accustomed to practicing. It is an embodiment of all the Christian life stands for: a gesture of love, opening up our hearts and lives, and sacrificing luxury and security for the chance to display God's glory. To receive hospitality from others is an invitation to receive God's transformative power to work in their lives.Readers will ask themselves these questions: • What is hospitality?
• Is it something I am, or something I do?
• How do I offer my life as a gesture of hospitality?
• What are some practical ways for me to display and receive hospitality?

1

Our Daily Bread

I have nowhere to go. What do I do?

When we began our church plant, we had many people ask what our church was all about. One of those inquirers was a young woman named Liz. Confused about her life’s direction, her addiction to drugs, and her sexuality, she was broke and homeless.

I knew what I had to do. Without another thought, I uttered six words that would change my life: you can come stay with us. In a moment, I had swung open the same doors of hospitality that were opened to me ten years before. Liz stayed in our home for a month, before she found another residence.

Although I was happy to pay forward the generosity I had received from the church family who allowed me to live with them, it did pose a challenge. My husband and I had to set firm boundaries and ask her to contribute to chores. Her healthy appetite made our food costs skyrocket. Dealing with the angst common to most teens, we became instant parents to a girl whose problems were foreign to us. Although she initially struggled with our rules, she understood that our hospitality was a gift and a privilege, not a right.

WHAT IS HOSPITALITY?

Merriam-Webster defines hospitality as “generous and friendly treatment of visitors and guests; the act of providing food, drink, etc. to those who are guests of an organization.” As Christians, we welcome friends into our homes, offer meals, and perhaps provide a place to stay. We display hospitality in a way that promotes comfort and peace and invite others into our familiar territory. That’s hospitality, isn’t it?

Or is it?

Hospitality is so much more than a domesticated program we tack on to an overcrowded schedule. It is instead a spiritual gift that should be utilized both for the edification of the body of Christ and for those who do not know him. Because the couple from my church displayed hospitality by opening their home to me, I reciprocated that gift of hospitality to Liz out of my gratitude.

Robert Schnase, author of Forty Days of Fruitful Living, writes, “The personal practice of radical hospitality involves both the attitude of receptivity and intentional practice. People who cultivate receptivity look for ways to invite God in, rather than to close God out. They regularly ask for God’s help, simply and humbly. They desire God’s presence. They invite interruptions by God in their lives, interventions of the Spirit and unexpected opportunities for doing what is life giving.”¹

Hospitality is not only something you give, but it is also something you receive.

In order to truly experience hospitality, disciples must both display it to others and receive it: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Pet. 4:8–10).

WHY HOSPITALITY?

Hospitality is demonstrated throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. The first expression of hospitality comes in Genesis 2:8–9, which says, “Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

Isn’t it interesting that God chose to reward his first children with an invitation to dine with him? This passage isn’t one normally associated with hospitality, but it establishes God’s intention of welcoming his children into his dwelling place. He not only invites them to inhabit the garden, but he offers them the invitation to eat with him in the form of any tree in the garden. God wasn’t just inviting them to hang out—his invitation to eat of the delicious fruit contained so much more. It was not only his acknowledgement of them as his children, but it was an opportunity for them to recognize God as sufficient provider as well.

AN INVITATION TO RECOGNIZE HIM

Luke 24:13–16 and 28–35 says,

Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. . . . As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

He chose to leave his disciples with the memory of dining around the table, and it’s the same event that allows the disciples’ eyes to be opened and to recognize him as Messiah. Scripture is clear that we are to get together often, “not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:25). It appears the pleasure of knowing God intimately can best be achieved around a friend’s (or even a stranger’s) dinner table.

The Gospels are filled with examples of Jesus receiving his disciples’ hospitality. From his disciples to Mary and Martha, Jesus spent much of his time eating and drinking with his family and friends. Perhaps one of the best examples of hospitality lies within the account of his last days as a free man, at the Last Supper. In Jesus’s last moments on this earth, he pulled up a chair and invited his brothers to join him at the table. Jesus didn’t invite the people who felt, acted, and thought like he did; instead, he chose a diverse group of people. Among that group, a tax collector was invited to dine next to a zealot. The disciple whom he loved sat at Jesus’s right and his betrayer to his left. Yet he offered the same invitation to them all, regardless of their status or righteousness: “Come and eat.” If Jesus saw hospitality as important enough to demonstrate during his last moments as a free man, shouldn’t we spend our days demonstrating hospitality to our brothers and sisters as well?

Jesus spent his ministry meeting the physical needs of the world around him in order to transform their hearts and free them from deeper spiritual hurts. Think about Matthew 14:15–21, which says,

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.” Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. “Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Jesus relied on his Father to transform five loaves and two fish into enough food to feed the multitudes. He received hospitality from his generous Father, and then he extended it to his followers. He understood hospitality as an essential element of growth and ultimate transformation. Jesus embodied hospitality. He didn’t wait to display it when he had a moment of spare time, or pass it on to the disciples, claiming it was not his spiritual gift. It was a part of his ministry. It was a part of him. He assumed both a spiritual and physical posture of hospitality.

Even Revelation makes reference to Jesus’s willingness to acknowledge us through hospitality: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Rev. 3:20). If Jesus is willing to spend his time in fellowship with us, why don’t we make more of an effort to do the same? Jesus uses the act of eating together as an acknowledgment not only of us but also of him.

AN INVITATION FOR JESUS TO RECOGNIZE US

From Matthew 9:9–13:

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus was invited to eat at Matthew's house soon after he called Matthew, showing us that Jesus selects his dining companions wisely. When Jesus accepts Matthew’s dinner invitation, he is acknowledging Matthew as his disciple. It’s like Jesus is telling the world, “He’s with me!” Similarly, the Last Supper was Jesus’s last event with his disciples. But it was more than just meeting their physical needs. Eating and drinking held a spiritual element, too—a recognition of Jesus as Savior. Wrapped in that loaf of bread and cup of wine was an invitation for his disciples to acknowledge Jesus as Lord of their lives.

As the body of Christ, we celebrate Communion as a reminder of what Jesus did for us on the cross. It's also important to note, however, that as we ingest the bread and wine, we are taking Jesus with us when we leave church on Sunday. An invitation to Communion is not a mere remembrance of Jesus’s death on the cross—it is a call to go forth into the world with Christ as a part of us.

Jesus knew hospitality was so important that when he taught his disciples to pray, he included it in his prayers. Even as we pray, Jesus reminds us to ask God to “give us this day our daily bread.” It is a humble admission of our dependence on God for all aspects of our lives—even in the affluent countries in which we live. Hospitality occurs when we receive our daily bread—when we ask God to meet every physical, emotional, and spiritual need so that, in turn, we can meet the needs of others. Not only do we receive from the Lord, but we then give out to others the abundance we have received from him. Not just one gift, or the occasional answer to prayer, but an everyday reliance on God to provide everything we could possible need.

As a pastor’s wife, I understood this most clearly when we applied for a senior pastor position at our current church. Once the church expressed interest in us, they invited us to visit the area. Because we were guests, they provided food, lodging, and expenses associated with the visit. They graciously met the obligation of providing for our needs as their invited guests. We had the job of visiting unfamiliar territory, eating the food put before us, and having no place to call home. Personally, it was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my life. Throughout the process, I gave up the comfort and security I was used to. We were foreigners because we did not know the area where we stayed. Yet the main reason we visited them was that we sensed God sending us to another church that needed a pastor. My comfort and security proved secondary to God’s bigger agenda—fulfilling his mission. Although I had to fight the fear of the unfamiliar, I put it aside to answer the potential call on my life.

In the chapters that follow, I share my experiences with hospitality, both in receiving and in giving hospitality. I share with you my failures and difficulties with it, too. I hope as we journey together through this process, you will glean some insights into this essential yet often missing aspect of discipleship.

Food for Thought

1. What is your definition of hospitality?

2. Do you enjoy extending hospitality to others? Why or why not?

3. What do you believe is the connection between hospitality and discipleship? What role does hospitality play in our spiritual growth as disciples?

Group Application

What are your feelings about studying the topic of hospitality? Do you think this will be an easy study for you to complete? Explain.

NOTE

¹Robert Schnase, Forty Days of Fruitful Living: Practicing a Life of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2010), 29.

No one walks the discipleship path alone. There is no such thing as solitary Christianity. Being a follower of Jesus means being in community with other followers of Jesus. We can be religious or spiritual without the presence of other people in our lives, but we cannot be growing disciples of Jesus Christ without the encouragement, guidance, wisdom, and accountability of other disciples.

—James A. Harnish, A Disciple’s Path

2

Barriers to Hospitality

As I began to write this book, I wrestled with the topic of hospitality and its application to my life. I felt being hospitable meant I had to sacrifice time and effort to invite people into my home and cook them a meal. One day I retreated to my local coffee shop to gain focus and perspective. However, the coffee shop carried its own set of distractions. The clamor of peo...