10.1.12 BLOG: HOSPITALITY AND THE SOJOURNERS NEXT DOOR

Forty-plus years ago a big news article in national magazines was the episode of five young missionaries who were killed in an attempt bring the Christian gospel to the unreached Auca Indian folk in the rain forests of Ecuador. This event became the cause celebre among a large company of missionary-minded Christian folk.

The late missionary leader, Horace Fenton, loved to tell the story of a couple of such concerned Christian folk, who about that same time received an invitation to a neighborhood cocktail party, and decided that they should accept though they weren’t part of the cocktail partying set. So they spent an interesting Saturday evening with their neighbors, and on the walk back home were reflecting on what they had experienced. They decided that there were some folk in their neighborhood who were as totally out of touch with the Christian message as the Auca Indians in Ecuador, and so began to pray seriously for a way to communicate the love of God to them.

The scriptures have a great deal to say about the stranger at your door, about the ministry of hospitality, and about the love of God to folk whose lives are broken, empty, captive to false ambitions, and the idols of the culture, … but could never articulate how dark it is on their insides.

We live in an interesting culture with all kinds of hidden desires for some kind of “spirituality” but at the same time we are a part of the post-Christian culture that can be almost hostile to the Christian faith and church (like: when the press identifies “evangelical Christians” with some right-wing political force with contempt).

Or a whole Facebook, social media culture that projects friendliness, but is in reality impersonal and superficial for the most part, and where lonely folk seek to communicate. We live in a setting where many folk have not the capacity to sit across a cup of coffee or a beer and have a good heart-to-heart talk with another. There are a whole lot of what one writer defines as sojourners, or “spiritually disoriented god-seekers.” Where is the point of contact with such folk?

Try beginning at home.

The scriptures make a whole lot about hospitality and about table-fellowship. I am proposing that every Christian home is the primary gospel outpost, and every home is to be a place of grace and peace that is open and inviting and caring for those next door and down the street. Our neighbors don’t want aggressive Christians, but they do want real genuine neighbors who love and care and share.

There aren’t many of these sojourners who have the slightest interest in an invitation to some church … but … they might well be responsive to an invitation into your home for a cup of coffee, or a meal, and conversation.

The fall is the season that most churches engage in a stewardship program. I want to ask the question: What kind of a steward are you of your home and neighborhood? Is your home a place where grace and peace are tangible to your neighbors?

Good question. I’m wrestling with it myself.

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