The Most Untapped Tool to Reach Your Friends for Christ
What do all of these people have in common?
- The 26 million refugees worldwide.
- The 1 million immigrants arriving in the US each year.
- The more than 100 thousand kids in the US foster care system.
- The 3 in 5 Americans who now report feeling lonely.
- The 50 thousand people moving to North Texas every year.
- The 20 thousand plus students living on-campus at North Texas universities.
- The 4,500 people in North Texas currently experiencing homelessness.
…They all need a home…They need a place to belong….They need friends, a family, and a community that will invite them in.
Hospitality is likely the simplest and yet overlooked and underutilized resource we have to expand the Kingdom of Jesus in our neighborhoods and networks of relationships. It’s also a major theme in the Biblical narrative that gets passed over too often.
At Citizen House, we want to have a reputation for being radically hospitable people. We say it this way in our Creed:
Hospitality: We invite others into our homes and lives.
God is a Host
So what exactly is Biblical hospitality? The Greek word used in the New Testament for hospitality is philoxenia, which is a combination of two words — phileo, meaning brotherly love and xenos, meaning stranger or foreigner. Hospitality is literally “love of the stranger”. It’s the opposite of the more common word, xenophobia, which is fear of the stranger or foreigner.
When you read the entirety of the Bible, one of the major themes in the storyline is God creating a home and inviting those who have been alienated or exiled in. God is giving people a place in which to belong. You could view the Biblical story in 3 acts: placement, displacement, and replacement.
Placement
Starting in Genesis, we see God create the cosmos in chapter 1. Then in chapter 2, the author focuses on the creation of a specific neighborhood or home for his people — Eden.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)
It’s interesting, the word “put” in Genesis 2:15 is a different Hebrew word than the “put” in verse 8. It might more literally read, “…rested him in the garden”. It carries the idea of a place of comfort and security. It also says that in Eden, in this home, Adam had a job to do — to cultivate the land.
God has always intended home to be a place of both rest and mission.
The perfect home is the place where God and his people rest and work together.
Displacement
The problem was that Adam and Eve didn’t realize that they were guests in God’s house. They wanted to set the house rules themselves. And as a result, were exiled from the perfect home.
therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. (Genesis 3:23)
From this point to the end of the Old Testament, God’s people are trying to find their way back home.
God promised to give Abraham’s descendants a new home, a promised land, but they find themselves in Egypt, wandering deserts, and fail to properly clean their house of idol worship. God eventually gives them a king, land, and great wealth, but they continue to disobey and are exiled to Assyria, Babylon, and conquered by the Romans.
The Old Testament is a story of displaced peoples.
This is why the New Testament brings such good news. It shows us how God is going to bring his people back home.
Replacement
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God…. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–2; 14)
The Word is a person, it’s Jesus. The word “dwelt” in verse 14 is more literally “tabernacled” (tabernacle being a house of God). So God’s solution to bring displaced people home was to send Jesus to make His home with us. I love how Eugene Peterson paraphrases this verse in the Message.
The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.
Jesus also teaches his disciples that God remaking a home for us.
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. (John 14:1–3)
Jesus made his home with us, so that those who would believe in him, could live eternally in a new and better home with Him — in a new Eden.
God has placed in all of us a longing for home — a place to belong. And the only way to enter into the home he’s preparing for you is to place your faith in him.
Is God calling you home? It’s time to surrender to Him.
Why We Should Be Hospitable
If God is the ultimate host who invites us in, there are implications for how we live our own lives as his followers.
Hospitality as Worship
Inviting others, particularly folks who have been disenfranchised by the larger society, into our homes is a sacred act.
God is a homemaker and he’s created us in his image. That means when you clean your house, cook a meal, do the dishes, remodel a room for someone who needs a home to move into, you’re participating in the work of the Father. It’s a spiritual act of worship.
Hospitality as Obedience
God commands his people to be hospitable.
He also commanded the Israelites in the law to “treat the foreigner as a native”. He also instructed them not to harvest the outside layer of their crops. That way, foreigners passing through could pick it and eat it. He’s telling his people to have enough food on hand so they can not only feed their own family but feed those who don’t have a home. This is an example of what loving the stranger or foreigner looks like.
The New Testament is also riddled with commands to be hospitable.
Romans 12 — “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality”
Hebrews 13 — “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
I Timothy 3 — “An overseer must be…hospitable”
I Peter 4 — “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”
When we open our homes, we’re obeying Jesus and reflecting the character of God.
Hospitality as Mission
Inviting people into our homes and lives advances the Kingdom of Jesus.
Eugene Peterson makes an amazing observation with this question:
Is it significant that Luke, who has more references in the Gospel to “save” and “salvation”…also has the most references to Jesus at meals or telling stories of meals? I think so.
Additionally, some of the most notable miracles of Jesus include extending the life of a party by turning water into wine and on two different occasions, multiplying food to feed thousands of people.
How great is this!
We get to continue the ministry and mission of Jesus by throwing parties and having people over for dinner!
It’s in these spaces that relationships are built, people see what our lives look like as Christ-followers, and dialogue can open about the good life that Jesus offers.
In her book, The Gospel Come with a House Key, Rosaria Butterfield has a mantra that our homes are hospitals and incubators. They’re places where we help one another heal and we help ideas take root. They’re places of rest AND mission. I’ll leave you with what she says on page 95 of that book:
“We live in a post-Christian world that is sick and tired of hearing from Christians. But who could argue with mercy-driven hospitality? What a potential witness Christians have, untapped and right here at our fingertips.”
