Hospitality in the early Church

We are strangers in this world. This was a world view that many early Christians held. In Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century (2002. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press) Amy Oden wrote a chapter titled “God’s Household of Grace: Hospitality in the Early Church.” She wrote: “Many Early Christian texts insist that Christians understand themselves first as strangers in order to then extend hospitality as strangers in the world” (39).

Christians today should be sharing fellowship in homes where they show up as guests but end up serving as hosts. This is the way Christians should behave. If so, why is this often not the case? What forces or influences push against such notions? Jesus shows us the way in stories like the one found in John 2. Here we read that he shows up at the wedding in Cana as a guest and ends up providing an important element for the wedding celebration, an element that is the best of all that is served up until the point when Jesus provides this best wine from common water.

Oden notes that this practice of hospitality, this gracious way of living, “is sometimes accomplished through the deliberate confusion of roles of host and guest” (39). This “stranger” notion in Christianity has its roots in biblical history, not the least of which is that the people of God once found themselves as strangers in Egypt. This history made them more conscious of the stranger, made them more aware of the needs of the stranger, and called them to be the agents of God who were to provide for the stranger. Some of this call to provide for the stranger is found in Leviticus 19.

Perhaps, the Church in contemporary practice has forgotten this, or at least has moved away from such a notion. I believe it has. Current worship practice often displays this as its creates worship services for “home” folks, almost mindless of guests in the midst, strangers who are present. This needs to change. None of this is done without the gracious initiative of God, but it also needs the gracious response of God’s people.

We are to be strangers who recognize the needs of others who can only be provided for through the cooperative venture of God and God’s people. We are called to be servants in the household of God, strangers in this world who purpose to host the stranger to the feast. Oh that we might become stranger hosts who are responsive to the leadership of the Holy Spirit who are living out the example of Jesus.