Let’s talk about hospitality.
All of us, I imagine, experience hospitality in our homes and in the homes of our family and friends. It is the welcome we offer to others, the comforts of food and conversation. For some religious folks, hospitality is a ministry of welcome. Well, welcome and coffee. I expect a lot of people experience hospitality as an area of commerce that includes restaurants, hotels, and tourism that is also based on welcoming and feeding. Hospitality for people living in 21st century America usually refers to extras – travel, dining out, visiting friends. We don’t usually think of hospitality as a matter of life and death.
But it wasn’t always that way.
For our ancestors in faith hospitality was born of need. In the harsh environment of the deserts in which Judaism and Christianity and also Islam were born, hospitality became a defining value. It was more than providing food, drink, and a place to stay. Hospitality was a moral obligation.
Welcoming and protecting strangers is a major theme in the Bible. Treating immigrants and strangers as one of our own is an imperative. When water and food were scarce, when political boundaries and leadership shifted, travelers relied on protection from hosts. It was not a social option. It was part of what defined people as followers of God.
Hospitality is so important and familiar a social construct that Jesus uses it to describe the Kingdom of God. Feeding the hungry is the same as feeding him.
There is another key aspect of hospitality for these ancient people that has been handed down to us: it’s bread. Welcoming strangers to your table and giving them bread is connected to this core value of hospitality.
In the story of Israel, offering bread is connected to their sojourn in the desert after freedom from slavery and God sending manna, bread from heaven, to feed them. Knowing that they – we – once struggled as strangers is meant to make us feel and show compassion.
Again and again in his ministry, Jesus not only feeds people bread, he instructs his followers to accept hospitality when they are guests and show hospitality to others as a mark of their faith.
To this day, even in secular contexts, when we say we are breaking bread with others, we mean that we are making peace and establishing bonds of friendship with them.
It is with all this in mind that I read story of Jesus’ despondent disciples on the road to Emmaus. On that seven mile journey, they had a robust theological conversation with someone they didn’t think they knew, someone they talked about scripture with and debated interpretation.
That stranger was, of course, Jesus. They didn’t recognize him in conversation. But two things happen to open their eyes:
First, as tradition and Jesus urged them, they showed hospitably. Night was falling. They did not think they knew this strange man, but they knew that he would need a safe place to stay. So they offered to put him up – to feed and shelter him so that he would be safe.
And it was in that context – their hospitality to Jesus – that the second thing happened. Jesus took, blessed, broke, and shared the bread. He mirrored their hospitality back to them.
Then they recognized him. Hospitality is what oriented these disciples so that they could see Jesus.
The faith of these followers of Jesus gave them particular values, including hospitality. The stories and prophecies of their tradition reinforced those values. Scripture was how they knew about the history of God’s connection to them and love for them. Scripture was how they passed faith and values on to their children and grandchildren. And yet it was actions that revealed Christ to them. It was living those values that opened their eyes.
Jesus meets us whenever we show hospitality to strangers – in churches or in our homes or on the streets. This is how it was for Cleopas and his friend who walked for a couple of hours with Jesus on the road to Emmaus,
Jesus shows us when we live the values he taught our eyes will be opened. We will see Christ in the people around us – the hungry, the lonely, the distraught. We will see Christ in people just like us and in people very different from us.