On Using Hospitality
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· 27 viewsUsing hospitality to reach the lost
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Introduction
Introduction
Today I want to talk about the using of hospitality, and not just using, or the practice of hospitality, but doing so without grumbling.
A young couple invited their elderly pastor over for Sunday dinner. While they were in the kitchen preparing the meal, the minister asked their son what they were having.
“Goat,” the little boy replied.
“Goat?” replied the startled man of the cloth, “Are you sure about that?”
“Yep,” said the youngster. “This morning I heard Dad say to Mom, ‘Today is just as good as any to have the old goat for dinner.'”
What do you think of when you think of hospitality? We might think of hospitality as the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with some amount of goodwill and attempts to make the guest feel at ease and at home.
Hospitality is a word commonly used in the hotel industry; in fact, the hotel industry is sometimes called the hospitality industry. The job of a hotel is to make you feel a little more comfortable when you are traveling in a strange place. Often if a company is having a meeting at that hotel, they will be given a hospitality suite to better accommodate their guests.
Deservedly or not, the southern United States has a reputation of being hospitable, of catering to guests and seeing to their comfort.
Notice that the word hospital is found in hospitality, that serves to indicate a level of care, but you might not find much actual hospitality in the hospital.
When I was a kid, being hospitable to your guests was a really big deal. I remember one weekend when our family was just about to leave the house for some special treat. And to tell you the truth, I can’t remember what it was, perhaps going to the movies, or going out for ice cream. In any case, it was for something we did not do very often.
Just as we were about to leave, we had a whole carload of relatives show up at our house unannounced. That was something that was somewhat common in those days, people coming by unexpectedly.
When I saw them drive up, I knew our special trip was not to be. I started to make a complaint and I got that look from my dad. You know the one, the look that said, “If you grumble about this, I will knock you into the middle of next week.”
When we had guests, their needs and their comfort came before any of ours. It meant our family was served last, I might not get a deviled egg, they might all be gone. It meant I might have to give up my bed and sleep on a palate on the floor. That’s hospitality.
9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
Your translation might say without grudging. It is a word that means murmuring or complaining. γογγυσμός, gongysmós, gong-goos- mos'; from G1111; a grumbling:—grudging, murmuring.
14 Do all things without grumbling or disputing,
Isn’t it interesting that Peter is preaching here to show hospitality? Peter who was recruited from the ranks of the fishermen, fishermen who had a reputation of being physical and course in their behavior. Peter who was sometimes quick to act but slow to think as he cut off a soldier’s ear in the Garden of Gethsemane at Jesus’ arrest.
Do you suppose that Peter had ever been treated without hospitality by some of the people he was preaching to?
In Romans Paul gives instructions
Romans 12:13 (ESV)
13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
And when Paul in giving instructions regarding the selection of church leaders, hospitality figures very prominently in the conversation.
2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
And again, in the book of Titus:
8 but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.
Note the precise terminology of our first text in 1 Peter:
9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
It does not simply read: “Be hospitable,” though that, of course, is patently involved in the exhortation. It says: “Show hospitality or your translations might say Use hospitality.” It conveys not just an attitude but a course of action.
Another aspect of using hospitality goes toward our motivations for doing so. In Jesus’ Parable of the Great Banquet in Luke Chapter 14: 12-14, He says:
12 ...“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. 13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”
There are also other errors we can make in the showing of hospitality. For example, we might invite people to our home not for their sakes but for our own. We might want to show off our brand new wide screen TV with surround sound and fancy reclining theatre chairs. Or our goal might be to serve them an elegant meal that is designed to impress them with our social graces or our culinary competence.
If we were absolutely honest, we might have to admit that sometimes our motives are pretty mixed. Hospitality may, however, be used for higher ends. It may be used for God’s glory and for human good, with only incidental benefit to ourselves.
So what are some of the advantages when we use hospitality:
1. It encourage us to reach beyond our own home
1. It encourage us to reach beyond our own home
In these times of the 24 hour news cycle with its never ending stream of violence and cruelty, it is easy for us to retreat into our homes with the attitude of protecting our little family unit and let the rest of the world be hanged.
But a love for strangers is one of the most Christlike of qualities. The Greeks had a word for it, philoxenia, philo for love and xenia for guests or strangers. Perhaps you have heard the term xenia phobia, a word you might recognize that means fear of strangers. Stranger: Xenos say-nos
There is a town in Ohio named Xenia. Xenia is famous for hosting the country’s largest “ham-fest.” If you have never been to a ham-fest then your life is not complete. It has nothing to do with pork by the way. It is a big conference and swap meet where thousands of amateur radio geeks from across the country come to visit each other, trade their radio junk for other people’s radio junk, and talk about radios. Xenia is named after that Greek word for stranger or guest. Fittingly, their motto is The City of Hospitality.
We don’t normally spend a lot of time talking about hospitality, but it is used in scripture in quite a few places.
The writer of Hebrews in chapter 13 says:
2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
32 (the sojourner has not lodged in the street; I have opened my doors to the traveler),
Famed father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, considered hospitality to be of central importance to the growth and health of the Body of Christ and its members.
Luther is the one who sparked the Protestant Reformation in 1517 by challenging the practices of the Roman Catholic Church and the authority of the pope.
He and his wife, Katie, were legendary for their open door hospitality and often entertained guests in his own home. Luther historians state “For the great house was always full to the brim.”
Many of the conversations held in his home and around his table were recorded in a book by Luther known as Table Talk. Many of Luther's books were ordered by the church to be burned as a result of Luther's objections to the corrupt leadership of the church of his day. Although many of Luther’s books were destroyed, a copy of Table Talk was found preserved under the foundations of a German citizen's home in 1626.
The book contained a series of informal conversations Luther shared with his students and colleagues in his home. The topics of these conversations range from religious doctrine and history to instructions regarding government, church, and the academic university.
Martin Luther proved that the table is a splendid pulpit from which to teach God’s truths and disciple God’s people. If you want new Christians to grow in faith and knowledge, open your home and share your love and knowledge with them. Showing this kind of hospitality can be the best tool you have to enhance the Christian community.
How else may hospitality be used:
2. As a means to give practical expression to the love we have for others.
2. As a means to give practical expression to the love we have for others.
One of the most searching and challenging texts in the New Testament is this of the apostle John:
18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
There is a tremendous amount of loving in word and talk in the church today, not so much in deed and truth. We love to talk about how much we love but when we look closely, sometimes we don’t see much evidence to support it. A lot of pious patter, but very little benevolent action. To wish people well in word and do nothing practical to improve their lot is sheer hypocrisy.
A guest of the Marriott hotel discovered that her sister had just died. She was upset and share her sadness with a hotel employee. The employee, named Charles, took a sympathy card to the staff, and had them all sign it. He gave it to her with a piece of hot apple pie.
The guest wrote a letter of thanks to the President of the hotel chain. She wrote, "Mr. Marriott, I'll never meet you. And I don't need to meet you. Because I met Charles. I know what you stand for. I want to assure you that as long as I live, I will stay at your hotels."
Christian hospitality is more than a passing kindness. It's an incarnation of God's love.
16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
And finally, we may use hospitality:
3. To win others to Christ.
3. To win others to Christ.
35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
There was an article printed in Crossway magazine a few years ago entitled “How Radically Ordinary Hospitality Changed Rosaria Butterfield’s Life,”
The point is that hospitality is an opportunity to serve others. It isn’t about getting “repaid” but about serving someone who otherwise might not experience a feast or friendship. Rosaria Butterfield is an example of the potential for discipleship that can come from practicing hospitality.
Rosaria Butterfield was a professor at Syracuse University and an unbeliever. She wrote an editorial criticizing Christians, and she received a letter from a local pastor inviting her to dinner. Her experience, including ongoing and regular meals with the pastor, not only changed her but saved her, and she became professing Christian.
As she explains, “The way that they were practicing hospitality became a living, breathing, example of the theology that they were teaching. They didn’t see me as a project. They saw me as a neighbor. … Hospitality takes strangers and makes them neighbors and takes neighbors and makes them the family of God.
Conclusion
Conclusion
I hope that in the future when you think of hospitality, when you think about reaching out to someone who is in need of a friend, remember you are not only doing what is right, you are doing an act of ministry. The guests gathered around your table are just as important as those guests who were gathered around Martin Luther’s table some 500 years ago.
I pray that you realize that you have a much more important role than I do. I stand up here and preach, I preach things you already know, I remind you of what you should be doing, but I’m literally preaching to the choir.
When you preach through that hospitality offered to some one who is without a relationship with the Lord, you have a greater opportunity to reach lost souls than I ever will have standing before this congregation.
People generally don’t come to the Lord from hearing a preacher, they come to the Lord because someone reached out to them, someone showed them they mattered, someone showed them hospitality. Someone developed a relationship with them and through that showed them what it means to have a higher purpose in this life, what it means to have a relationship with the Savior of mankind, Jesus Christ.