Sara, a good friend from my college days in Alberta, always had extra people in her childhood home. Whenever I visited, the house was bustling with noise and busyness. The house itself was nothing special; not big or fancy or especially neat and tidy. But people came. And people stayed. Out-of-town family members, international students, church members in need. Sara’s father is a pastor, so their home was always the place where people felt they could go to have their needs met, their concerns listened to, their problems solved.
To me, who grew up in a home that hosted very few overnight guests and everything was done decently and in good order (and we weren’t even Presbyterian!), the sometimes crazy, messy, loud home life that Sara was used to was odd and even uncomfortable. At that point I had little knowledge or understanding of the Bible’s teachings on hospitality. It never crossed my mind that opening your home to a friend (or stranger!) in need is something we might all do well to consider.
For my seven-year-old daughter, this kind of hospitality is a no-brainer. On a particularly freezing winter night last year, I mentioned that we should think of the people who don’t have a home. Her response? “Well why don’t they just knock on someone’s door and they can let them in?”
Hmmm… “For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat,” begins the infamous lesson in Matthew 25:35, “I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me in.”
You invited me in. Is it as simple as that?
Rev. Joel Sherbino and his wife Rebecca (a couple I’ve mentioned before!) make hospitality a conscious choice in their life and ministry.
Joel is the minister at Paris Presbyterian, though he, Rebecca and their three kids are currently in Malawi for a year (they were there as missionaries for three years not quite a decade ago).
“There were always people living with us,” Joel told me of their previous stint in Africa. “People knew they could just show up at our house.”
The Sherbinos say it was in Malawi that they realized they loved to host, and where they started to dream about how they could continue this ministry once they returned to Canada.
“We bought a house based on the fact that it would be good for hosting,” said Joel. “We see the house as part of the ministry we’re involved in. It’s an opportunity.”
People can drop in for coffee, or stay over for many nights.
“It’s about leveraging what you have for the benefits of others,” said Joel.
In Romans 12, it is said that one of the marks of a true Christian is “extending hospitality to strangers.” The idea is certainly something we should think about, especially given the current refugee crisis.
Imagine packing up a few basic belongings and stealing off in the night, headed for who-knows-where, as long as it’s safer than your home. Your home. Imagine the feeling of your home not being a safe place. Imagine leaving that place for a strange land; often making a perilous journey to reach it. Now imagine reaching your destination and then being turned away. Borders closed. Doors shut. The prospect of respite and safety an unrealized dream.
The idea of hospitality is something Shane Claiborne speaks about a lot in his books. In The Irresistible Revolution, he tells a story of walking by a prostitute in his neighbourhood and asking her to come to his home to share a meal. And she does. And it seems almost normal to do such a thing.
In Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals, Claiborne says that as Christians, we need to expand our ideas of family—even across geographical lines.
“Fabricated boundaries and walls are removed for the Christian,” Claiborne writes. “One’s neighbour is not only from Chicago but also from Baghdad. One’s brother or sister in the church could be from Iran or California—no difference! Our family is transnational and borderless; we are in Iraq, and we are in Palestine. And if we are indeed to become born again, we will have to begin talking like it, changing the meaning of we, us, my, and our.”
When we stop talking about “us and them” and instead only of “we,” we are left with no choice but to open our doors to others.
