In Christ’s parable about the sheep and goats (Mt. 25:31-46), the punchline may strike us as odd. The division between the saved and the damned hinges on who showed hospitality.
I had occasion to reflect on this parable recently when listening to a lecture from the late Christine D. Pohl. Presented at the Henry Center back in 2013, Pohl convincingly demonstrated that hospitality is an organizing motif throughout the redemptive-historical narrative, even forming a backdrop for the gospel. Moreover, she also discussed how the earliest theological disputes—the identity of the covenant community, the conflict with the Judaizers, even justification by faith—were all worked out within the context of hospitality.
Pohl shows that the practice of hospitality among the early Christians differed significantly from that of the surrounding culture. It wasn’t that the Christians practiced hospitality and unbelievers didn’t. Everyone agreed that hospitality was crucial. In fact, in the ancient world it was commonly accepted that hospitality is a pillar of morality on which the universe depends. (If that seems like overreach, we have to remember that in a world before inns and restaurants, travelers depended on hospitality for their very survival.) But what really distinguished the Christian approach is the love behind their hospitality practices.
Texts from the Greco-Roman world show that hospitality was usually rooted in ambition: one showed hospitality to get something in return, often as a way of reinforcing beneficial relationships. But Christian hospitality was different: it was extended to people who couldn’t repay—the most needy in society—as a way of reenacting God’s welcome to us. In the process, Christian hospitality broke down social barriers that had traditionally kept people apart.
Pohl, who did extensive research on this topic when writing her book Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, shows that hospitality remained a central practice of the Church for centuries. But after the first thousand years of Christian history, the community-building role of hospitality began to wither. During the late Middle Ages, hospitality became associated with lavish entertainment sponsored by the rich and powerful. Hospitality became less about welcoming and more about entertaining; less about loving the needy and more a status symbol. Instead of Christian hospitality being a means for transcending social boundaries, it ended up reinforcing social differences and power.
After the first thousand years of Christian history, the community-building role of hospitality began to wither. During the late middle ages, hospitality became associated with lavish entertaining sponsored by the rich and powerful. Hospitality became less about welcoming and more about entertaining; less about loving the needy and more a status symbol. Instead of Christian hospitality being a means for transcending social boundaries, it ended up reinforcing social differences, and even power.
Pohl describes how the earlier understanding of hospitality was partially recovered at the Protestant Reformation, though in compartmentalized ways that eventually contributed to hospitality being focused on entertaining family and friends. By the eighteenth-century, hospitality became lost as a significant practice for the church, with the remnants of the earlier understanding fragmented and scattered over different spheres. For example, welcoming of the poor and vulnerable was reshaped into social services, resulting in care becoming bureaucratized and impersonal. Furthermore, a hospitality industry sprang up with hotels, resorts, etc., that further depersonalized hospitality.
Where Christian hospitality has persisted on an interpersonal level, it is receded to simply having people over for dinner, often perpetuating the emphasis on entertaining rather than welcoming. This often reinforces the same misunderstanding of the Medieval period, where hospitality is more about the host than the guest, a paradigm shift leads to all sorts of unnecessary barriers (is my house clean? what will my guests think of my cooking? Is it ok to have people over if all I have to offer is snacks?).
Recovering Hospitality as Welcoming
In the Greco-Roman world, when Christians offered hospitality to the most needy in society, that often meant feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, especially in areas disrupted by wars or plagues. What might be the equivalent today?
I was thinking about that question when Light On Ascent sent me an article from Kenneth B. titled, “The Church Keeps Creating Programs; But People Are Still Lonely.” Kenneth B suggests that in our culture one crucial way we demonstrate hospitable love is simply through making ourselves available.
I had known to a certain extent over the years that it was my time spent sitting at coffee shops, whether the independent family coffee shop we previously owned, or simply sitting at a chain coffee shop in the community, that people tended to gravitate toward my table where I would be studying because I was present and available and they were longing for someone to connect with.
It wasn’t because I was anything special that people would seek me out, but simply because I was available.
In much of modern life people seem increasingly sealed away behind doors.
In both rural communities and urban neighborhoods, it is uncommon to see neighbors sitting together on porches.
Rarely do people wander across the street merely to visit.
Hospitality, once woven naturally into the fabric of everyday life, has become something unusual enough to merit comment.
What struck me here was the idea that people would seek out this gentleman simply because he was willing to be present with people. If we want to recover the Christian practice of hospitality as welcoming, maybe that’s a good place to begin: presence and attentiveness, especially attentive listening.
Hospitality Through Attentive Listening
In the 20th century, thinkers began rediscovering the healing power of listening. The psychologist Carl Rogers (1902–1987) found that when he was in doubt about how to help a client in an active way, he simply listened—not superficially but with deep attentiveness to the feelings and emotions behind the words, while reflecting the feelings back to the person. You don’t have to be a therapist to offer this type of hospitable listening. For thousands of years, the process we call “therapy” happened informally within community through people simply being available to each other, especially available to listen.
For thousands of years, the process we call “therapy” happened informally within community through people simply being available to each other, especially available to listen.
Listening is about more than merely conversation. It involves willingness to grieve together, to be confused together, to share each other’s joys and pains. It could even be a simple look or gesture conveying, “I know what you’re going through and I care.” Ultimately, it’s about being present. As the Orthodox author and professor Dr. Albert S. Rossi often reminds us, we act as a healing presence not through our skills or words, but simply through our presence.
In the days when one’s livelihood depended on the cohesion of small communities, my concern for you would have been inseparable from my survival. So, of course, I would sit and rejoice with you, grieve with you, worship with you, play with you, be present with you in pain, discomfort, or confusion. But today, modern economic, technological and political systems have isolated us from each other while fostering the illusion of independence, leading us to believe we can have community without truly listening, as if empathy and attentiveness can simply be outsourced to professionals. Though we have more communication aids than ever before, it can often feel that genuine listening is at an all-time low. How many of us may be physically stationary—sitting down on the couch, in the office, at the dinner table—while still embodying the mentality of distraction and inattention. Our minds are often too preoccupied even to give attention to someone else in the same room. We may even imagine we are giving someone our attention when we are only offering continuous partial attention.
If we want to recover hospitality as welcoming rather than entertaining, maybe listening is a good place to start. Open your homes for sure, but also open your heart. Not only sharing food, but sharing attention.
Just as you don’t need a clean house and a nice meal before opening your home, you also don’t need to to know how to speak into someone’s situation with the right words before you can offer hospitable listening. It starts by being willing to simply be present. In our age of distraction and individualism, we may find that hospitality is what saves the world, a point recently emphasized by Joshua Pauling and Dave Hanegraaff on the Commitment to Reality podcast. Pauling shared how, while waiting at the airport with hundreds people glued to their phones, a man reached out to him and offered to share a pizza. That is the type of hospitality we need to transform society and break the cyborg creep that is engulfing us all.
Further Reading