The Challenge of Radical Hospitality

The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. - Psalms 37:23

God has blessed me with an hour-long commute to work. Before switching jobs last year, the thought of swapping a 10-min commute for an hour-long one gave me pause, especially since I thought that commute would be sending me down certain roads, chock-full of stoplights and traffic, that I loathe. However, as I explored different routes to work, I found one through the winding countryside where I see water, wildlife, and open valleys that sing with all the beauty of God’s creation. Also, despite the new commute, in my current position as the Director of a Career Technical Education consortium, I leave home later and get home earlier than my previous position often allowed. This translates into more time with the family.

1st half of my commute

2nd half of my commute

But the blessing of the commute goes beyond the catharsis born of meandering through stunning landscape. It is coming from the guests that accompany me during my drive. When I swapped my jams for audio books chosen specifically to stretch my mind, my horizons changed.

While I have always loved reading, I rarely find the time to sit down with a good book. Between raising three young boys (3 yrs, 2 yrs, 4 mo’s respectively) and life at large, the time rarely manifests. Audio books have allowed me to re-engage with literature. During a normal workweek, I now currently read, on average, about 2 books. The genres have ranged from motivational to business leadership, historical biographies to Christian nonfiction. This week, I have recoiled in horror at Nazi depravity and celebrated subsequent justices through Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History and am currently reflecting on my thinking practices through John C. Maxwell’s How Successful People Think.

Interestingly, God has woven profound threads of interconnection between the texts that come across my virtual shelf in a way that I cannot ignore. I will be sharing some of those threads in the coming weeks through my blog. I started my diet of audio books in April a Christian seemingly in a good place with God yet content with my status quo. However, 28 books later, and I am profoundly aware that God is stretching and pulling at my very being, reshaping me into a man intent upon following Him and living according to His will.

Recently, I read Francis Chan’s Crazy Love. Outside of the Bible, this has to be one of, if not the, most life-changing book I have ever read. I will be dedicating an entire post to it at a later date but, for now, I will be brief and share that it woke me up to my complacency. I believe in Christ and have a relationship with Him. However, am I letting Him steer the boat? Hardly. Henceforth, let me never rest content with comfort and complacency in my life as a believer.

Enter Rosaria Butterfield’s The Gospel Comes with a House Key. In the last couple months, God has absolutely put hospitality on the hearts of my wife, Lorra, and I. This book, which I finished this past weekend, stretched and pushed my concepts of hospitality in ways that I must share. In recent weeks, Lorra and I have been opening up our home with regularity to work colleagues, neighbors, missionaries from an opposing religion, and friends both inside and outside of our church. However, this has just been the appetizer. I awoke one day recently and was convinced that Lorra and I need to go big. We need to bite of some hospitality goal that would shock us into new practices and habits that demonstrate God’s love for us and the love He calls us to have for others. More on that big goal at a later date, my friends.

In The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Mrs. Butterfield details the opening of her home to her neighbors, friends from her past, recovering addicts, doctoral students, and people from vastly different walks of life. She and her husband have created a haven of God’s love where people come to break bread and experience Godly hospitality through loving fellowship. She details an absolute departure from what has become the norm of “hospitality” in our society, which I would contend is generally restricted to major holidays. In fact, she details how her own coming to Christ arose from the “radical hospitality” of a pastor and his wife.

Throughout the book, Mrs. Butterfield contrasts “entertaining” with “hospitality”. Entertaining is being stuck in front of the oven making sure everything is perfect while the guests enjoy one another in the other room. Hospitality is enjoying overcooked bread because you were too busy laughing and fellowshipping with others to be overly concerned that the food came out perfectly. Hospitality is opening your home to a hurting neighbor when you yourself have had a long and trying day, when the sick is not quite empty of dirt dishes, and when the kids have placed every item they own in the most disruptive place possible. This contrast is obvious yet profound.

To go further, Mrs. Butterfield points out that hospitality, in many cases, is inversely related to wealth. Guilty as charged, my friends. Are you convinced that all of your “stuff” needs to be in order and in its proper place before having guests over? Where does God call us to love our neighbors as long as the laundry is put away and all the house projects are complete? I missed that verse. Allow me a moment to share a contrast. In high school, I was blessed with the opportunity to go to Hermosillo, Mexico three years in a row for a short term student exchange. There I witnessed love unbound by material possessions. I found friends quick to have others over, to share in their meager blessings despite a society open to corruption and unfairness (e.g. one kind soul I stayed with named Efren lost his ability to maintain an operational car due to another individual hitting him. While my friend wasn’t at fault, he didn’t have a way to fund repairs after the other individual provided a bribe to the responding police officer in exchange for an untruthful report. Efren took this in stride, shrugged his shoulders, and told me how he was still blessed with health, family, and friends. Efren passed a number of years ago. Rest well, my dear friend.). When I stayed with Efren, he borrowed his sister’s car, who I believe then took the bus to work, so that he could chauffeur me around the city for a few days. Two other students and I stayed in his home comprised of two rooms - a living room with several beds in it and a small kitchen. The bathroom was in his brother’s apartment next door and there was no phone anywhere to be found. Hospitality and joy weren’t found by the size and cleanliness of his dinner table. They were found in the laughs and smiles shared by new friends working through language barriers and eating quesadillas while sitting on freshly made beds (and laughs as several American youth daily brushed their teeth with Coca Cola instead of the local water).

Luke 14:12-13

12 When you put on a luncheon or a banquet,” he said, “don’t invite your friends, brothers, relatives, and rich neighbors. For they will invite you back, and that will be your only reward. 13 Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind..”

So I ask you - who are you blessing this week by adding them at your dinner table? I promise exercising hospitality will expand your heart, your relationships with others, and your relationship with the creator. If you have a spouse and kids in the home, expect the same for them. And go beyond your friendship circle. God doesn’t call us to be hospitable only to our dearest friends. Invite a family at your church struggling to make ends meet or a neighbor who probably hasn’t experience a Christian home in recent memory. You may find your own opinions and judgements of others melt away through the love of Christ (I know mine have). Use empty chairs at your table (or empty potential chairs) be a challenge of something to fill. And read Butterfield’s book.

May my home be known as a refuge, a haven of fellowship, and as a living testament of God’s most important commandments:

35 One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” - Matthew 22:35-40 NLT