I have been mulling this one over for some time, like more than a year. My seminary readings for 3 of my 4 classes have landed on hospitality at some point this semester. Hospitality comes in all sorts of forms and styles, and happens in a variety of places. In the past few years we learned to offer hospitality at a safe distance, often outside if the weather allowed. In many ways, the pandemic cramped the style of those of us who enjoy gathering people together and do so often.
So what is the definition of hospitality? Well, it’s pretty sterile…
generous and friendly welcome or offering a pleasant environment, treatment, reception, or disposition; or the activity or business of providing services to guests in hotels, restaurants, bars, etc.
– Merriam-Webster
Yes, being friendly and a pleasant space are, of course, important and matter. Yet, that may not be enough to consider an event a great instance of hospitality. So, what makes a gathering a wonderful experience of hospitality? The answer for a gathering of friends and family is going to vary. It is also be different than a business dinner or a casual social time as part of a community group or social club.
As we host gatherings at our home, I find myself balancing my inner Mary (attends to the guest but doesn’t help her sister with the preparations) and my inner Martha (is all caught up in the preparations that she can’t be present to her guests). Hopefully there’s little left to do when guests arrive other than getting drinks and finishing the “just before serving” final touches on the meal. And these days, everyone gathers in the kitchen to chat, help, and enjoy munchies. We’re all together.
While away visiting, we offered to make dinner for the family and friends with whom we were staying. Wanting to make sure we made something everyone would enjoy, we asked about allergies and preferences. We were then told that we were being too fussy, we should just make whatever we wanted, if someone didn’t like it they would find something else. Having known a picky eater or two, I get that a long list of allergies or dislikes make meal planning really challenging. That wasn’t the case here.
Other times hospitality happens outside the home. I suspect we have all been at one of those tables in a restaurant with the check being pulled in several directions, each person wanting to treat the others.
I may have a less conventional take on hospitality, especially hospitality that happens among family, friends, and community (staying at a luxury hotel is not the hospitality I’m talking about here, that’s buying a service). When we first moved into this house a number of years ago, Mike suggested we paint the dining room red. As much as I loved red, I thought it was crazy at the time. But we did it. Today on one wall hangs three photos of bread. On the opposite wall hangs three photos of grapes which were hung long before the bread photos. Adding the bread was very intentional.
When it comes to gathering with family, friends, or community, I have come to realize that I prefer a form of hospitality which includes an element of mutual participation. There’s another word for that — communion (notice the lowercase “c”). One of my courses this semester is called “The Lord’s Supper and the Church as Communion”. For the first paper I looked up the term communion and its etymology (I’m looking up word etymology a bit more lately). That’s where I found the phrase “mutual participation”. Mutual means that something is directed by each person toward the other or the others. We, as hosts and guests, both contribute to each other and to other guests, the overall gathering. Commonly, when we gather with friends and family, everyone brings something to share, that is fairly common practice.
Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, scolds the community for their lack of good hospitality. Yes, they are gathered in the same space and are eating. But they are eating bagged lunch style, not potluck style. That means that some are eating very well and others do not have enough. There’s a lack of mutual participation in a common meal in this set up. In the earliest years of the Church, mutual participation and contributing to the common meal was important. The early years of the Church saw the communities gathering in homes over an actual meal. Granted, the level of meal may have varied, but as the author of Luke writes in Acts 2, “All who believed were together and had all things in common;” (v. 44) and “…they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts” (v. 47). For some members of the community, that might have been the best meal of the week.
Of course, warm hospitality also means that we are welcomed and accepted as we are. Emulating Mary and being fully present is an important piece of hospitality as well. Jesus took hospitality to a whole different level. Sure, the Gospels include stories of his eating with family and friends. But there are many more stories of his also eating with the “others” with whom no one else wanted to eat. And sometimes those “others” contributed in different ways…the woman who washed his feet with her tears, the woman who anointed him with expensive perfume, the tax collector who hosted him at his home.
In the earlier example of asking about preferences or allergies, that’s just part and parcel of hosting…knowing your guests, letting them know that they and their enjoyment matters. It’s not being fussy. As for who pays the bill and treats the others, well, taking turns or splitting would incorporate the idea of mutual participation. Over the years I have heard comments around collections of items, or community projects, that implied not all the community members should be “burdened” with an invitation to participate due to their situations. I understand these comments are well meant, but they do not reflect good hospitality. They do not invite mutual participation in offering one’s gifts. Good hospitality, is welcoming of all, takes care of all as needed and as best possible, yet is also willing to receive what others have to offer as well.
How do you practice hospitality? How do you experience it? What would it look like for our hospitality comfort to be stretched in a good way? Soon, we will hear the story of Maundy Thursday and Jesus’s last meal with his friends and family. It’s a moment of hospitality many of us still return to almost 2000 year later. How might our hospitality practices be radical if we followed the example of Jesus?
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