21. The Gift of Hospitality

The end of all things is at hand, therefore keep sane and sober for your prayers.  Above all, hold unfailing your love for one another since love covers a multitude of sins.  Practice hospitality ungrudging to one another as each has received a gift, employ it for one another as good stewards of God's varied grace.
	1 Peter 4:7-10

The storm was absolutely terrific.  The snowfall, which was coming down faster and faster every hour, was matched only by the velocity of the wind which took the snow that had already fallen on the ground, put it back in the air again until you couldn't see anything.  It was a textbook blizzard by almost any definition.  And since I was in junior high, I thought that was a fantastic gift that I had received, because it meant (obviously) no school.  You couldn't even find the school.  But there was a kind of tense concern in our home because my dad was on the road.  He was traveling at those points, selling wholesale auto supplies and we knew he was in a big enough truck that it was very unlikely that it would get stuck if it stayed on the road, but we had no guarantee, with the weather the way it was, that he even knew where the road was.  He had called several hours earlier saying it was as far as York, Nebraska.  That's 22 miles from home.  How long does it take to go 22 miles, even in a snowstorm?  But when six hours had passed and there's still no sign of my father, we began to really be concerned.  And then, at last, in the night we saw the big dim glow of the headlights of that truck as it swung into the driveway at the house.  And I remember I, in spite of my mother's protests, went charging out into the blizzard to welcome my dad home.  Without my coat and without my overshoes.

It had taken him 8 1/2 hours to cover 22 miles.  We found out later why it took him so long.  Every time he encountered what looked like it could be a car buried under the snow, he would stop and get out and wade his way over and clear off the window and knock on the window and try to open the door and see if there was anyone in there.  We found that out because, when dad got out of the cab, four people got out of the cab with him.  And then he walked around to the back of the truck and opened the doors and eleven people and two dogs came out of the back.  And so we had fifteen guests and two dogs for two and a half days.  In a Nebraska blizzard in a house that wasn't really prepared for a blizzard for our family of six.  My mother ordered people right and left, she put on her sergeant stripes and she ran a tight ship and all of the rest of that - people slept on the floors and couches and on tables and under tables and dogs and cats - oh it was a zoo.  And my mother had a ball.  She just enjoyed that so much, she vibrated when she thought about it.  And that is probably a demonstration of a rather bizarre evidence of the gift of Hospitality.  Even the local hotel, on occasions, when some natural calamity (like flood or fire or snowstorm) would fill its rooms, would call my mom or my dad and say, "We're full and we've got a family here.  Do you suppose you have any room?"  In a little town, you can be known that way.  And I used to think that was great, although I thought it was kind of dumb that they never collected whatever they would have had to pay at the hotel.  You see, I was always out for the bucks.

Hospitality is not listed in Paul's major listing of the gifts either in 1 Corinthians 12 nor Romans 12, nor is it listed in Ephesians 4 in the briefer list, nor does Peter list it in some of his references.  However, I do believe I need to remind you that my interpretation of the biblical listing of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not exhaustive - they are indicative lists.  If they were exhaustive and definitive lists - if these are the gifts of the Spirit and there are no more - then you've got a problem, because you have to say that the church at Rome had a different set of gifts of the Holy Spirit than the church at Corinth, because there are some gifts that are mentioned in one and not mentioned in the other.  But I beleive that both lists of those major gifts lists are merely indicative of the creative power of the Holy Spirit, and of the fact that His gifts are varied - they just cover the map.  Whatever the needs, He is capable of giving gifts.  And we must guard against the kind of thing that Christ warned Nicodemus against, when in John 3, He talks about the Holy Spirit is like the wind.  You sense and feel it and know that it's there, but you cannot control it.  Don't let us try to put the Holy Spirit in some little box created out of our narrow theology.  Let's know that He is indeed God the Spirit and He can do as He wills.

So I believe that when Peter writes in 1 Peter 4 that we are to practice hospitality without being grudging and then in verse 10, the very next verse, moves right on saying we must exercise whatever gifts we have been given as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.  There is a very clear connection and link in Peter's mind between the exercise of gifts and the one that he has just mentioned.  That is, hospitality.  Now, if you have problems with that, I'll discuss biblical interpretation and hermenuetics with you at another time.  But indulge me for right now, will you.  Because I believe I can demonstrate from the clear teaching of scripture that hospitality is a useful gift in the body of Christ and desperately needed.

Now, the word "hospitality" is very close to the word "hospital".  It comes from the Latin word "hospice" which means "guests".  And the early hospices were really havens for travelers.  These hospices were established by religious groups and by religious persons.  The reasons that they established them is number one, there were no Travel Lodges or Hiltons or Roadway Inns in those days, and beside that what inns did exist were little nothing more than brothels.  And so a person was not really safe physically or morally or financially in those places.  And so religious groups and religious individuals established hospices - havens - usually it was just an extra room in their little village house that they allowed people to come and stay in.  Preferably Christians.  If they would find a fellow believer, they would gladly open the door of their home and extend hospitality.  "Hospice" was the word "guests".  In the 15th century, however, the secular world began to see this as a market and they moved into it for economic reasons.  And when the secular world moved into it on a broad establish, cleaned up its act, so to speak and began to establish these places.  Then the word "hospice", while still in use, began to refer primarily to those that the secular business man was not interested in having - that is, the sick, the infirm, and the handicapped.  And so the word "hospice" began to adapt itself to the modern term, "hospital", which means the place for people to go whose needs are critical - whose needs are genuine - whose needs are physical and who are not going to be cared for in the average inn.

Now it is that kind of root meaning in the word that forms the background of the whole word "hospitality".  And so, hospitality is not to be determined on the basis of the ability of someone to pay.  That is not hospitality.  You know, you check into a motel.  They want 85 bucks for a night and the guy says, "Your host is glad to welcome you".  Well, now I don't need any hosts like that!  If he's really my host, he ought to give me the key for nothing.  If he is a businessman, renting me the room, fine.  But don't play games with the word "host".  He is the owner.

Now, it's obvious to any student of the New Testament that God made great use of hospitality in building the early church.  It was used of God to facilitate the church's growth.  Paul describes the church at Corinth this way, "Consider your calling brethren.  Not many wise, according to the flesh.  Not many mighty.  Not many noble."  Kind of a low class breed of people became believers.  Oh, there were exceptions to the rule, but the majority of people were just common ordinary people.  The early Christians would hardly be entertained in the civic leaders' homes.  They were not the kind of people that got the red carpet treatment when they arrived in town.  They were usually kind of ignored.  Certainly this is true of some of the poor and the itinerant.  Remember also that the early Christians in their travel were frequently fugitives from persecution.  So there was an enormous need for hospitality.  They would not be safe in the road houses of the day; they would not be entertained in the civic's leader's homes; and they were barely out of jail.  So hospitality was needed.

Now we're talking here primarily about the supernatural gift - that is, the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Remember our definitions always pretty well start the same: "The gift of hospitality is that supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit given to some members of the body of Christ" and then we go on, "to open their hearts and their homes to those in need of their love, their food, or their shelter.  It's a simple definition.  To open their hearts and their home to those in need of their love, their food, and their shelter.  In the New Testament church, growth relied on the faithful exercise of this gift.  And the modern day church, the body of Christ must also rely upon this gift.  For the healthy reproductive maturity of the body of Christ, we must not come to a building in isolation, worship in isolation, go home in isolation.  We are called as members of one body.  There must be an inter-relatedness that is far beyond a simple theological assent.  We must practice what it means to be a part of the body life.  We are called to body life, not isolation.

Look at the Bible for some illustrations concerning this.  If you look in Luke 10, you are reminded of the fact that Jesus very often received hospitality from one particular home on the outskirts of Jerusalem.  It was the home of those three single young adults: Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  And single young adults - I'm going to get to you in a couple weeks: I believe there is a special gift of the Holy Spirit that enables a person to live single with joy.  I don't want to talk about that now - we want to get on to hospitality - but significantly, it was a home of single young adults where Christ felt some of the greatest continuing warmth of hospitality.  It is recorded that almost every time He went to Jerusalem, that's where He stayed - with His disciples.  What a household!

Now, it's interesting, if you look at Luke 10, because it tells that account of where Jesus shows up with His disciples (it's at the feast of the Tabernacles) when all of the cooking and so forth traditionally was done in leafy bowers or booths, constructed outside the home as kind of reminders of the wilderness wanderings.  That meant that the housework was really magnified and made more difficult.  Jesus arrives with His disciples and Mary is sitting at His feet, and Martha is running like crazy.  And her hair's down in her eyes and she's perspiring something terrible and her bread is burning up in that outdoor oven and the bower is starting to lean to one side and Mary sits there.  And Martha finally comes up and says, "Master, can't You say something to my sister so she'll help?"

And Jesus said, "Martha, Martha, you're distracted about so many things.  Mary has kind of zeroed-in on what's really important."  Now, let me use those two girls as an illustration of a distinction.  Martha wanted to entertain Christ.  Mary wanted to be hospitable to Christ.  I think that's a distinction I want to say a little bit more about later on.

Peter, as one of the early New Testament itinerant preachers of Good News obviously needed the support system.  I mean, he had given up his fishing business.  He had no visible means of support.  He traveled all over Israel, primarily, and he made some trips into the Gentile country as well, and he needed the support group.  If you look at Acts 9, there's only one reference among many, it tells about Peter arriving in Joppa (that's the story where Dorcas was raised from the dead - a lot of new converts came as a result of Peter's ministry there) but there's a little statement we almost throw away.  We don't really notice it much, in Acts 9:43, "And it came that he stayed there in Joppa many days with a certain Tanner by the name of Simon."  Simon's ministry is exercising the gift of Hospitality.  He freed the apostle Peter for the kind of ministry that was so staggeringly successful, even the dead were raised.  Don't ever say that Simon Peter's gifts and his ministry was not enabled by the gifts and ministries of Simon the certain Tanner.

Another illustration: Paul, the itinerant preacher par excellence who traveled the whole world of his day, in Acts 16 it records two times when hospitality was exercised on his behalf.  One of them Pastor Steve read, beginning with I think it was verse 11.  It's about Lydia.  Lydia, by the way, apparently was a single woman.  Lydia also was a professional person.  If she had been working in modern-day society in America, she probably would have had a shop - a boutique - or something down on Rodeo Drive.  She, you know, handled nothing but Gucci.  She was a seller of purple.  And if you understand anything of the Biblical culture, you know that she was really in the carriage trade business.  She was a very successful, prosperous, business woman.  She is also a woman who made a commitment to Christ, who had devoted herself to prayer.  She was at the prayer meeting down at the riverside.  And then it says in verse 15 (Paul and Silas are talking) "and she urged us, saying, 'If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.'  And she prevailed upon them."  And then you read the account and they're there and they stay with Lydia until the next place that they stay is jail.  Because Paul and Silas are then used by God to heal the little girl who was possessed by a spirit, striking the vested interests of those who were exploiting her problem, and the result is they're thrown in jail.  That's interesting too, because after the earthquake and the chains fall off and the doors open, and the conversion of the jailer, what is the first Christian act of the jailer?  Look at that, verse 34, "and he brought them into his house and he set food before them and he rejoiced greatly at having believed in God with his whole household."  Hospitality was the first act of this babe in Christ.  It was a natural kind of a thing: the opening of his home, the opening of his larder, for the needs of those who there.

I want to refer to just one more - there are so many in scripture - but in the Old Testament, there's a very interesting story that's told about a man by the name of Elisha who, most of you know, was the successor to Elijah - the one who called down fire from heaven.  Elisha was an itinerant prophet just like Elijah, and one of the places he frequently went was to the city of Schunam.  And it says in 2 Kings 4:8, "Now there came a day when Elisha passed over to Shunam where there was a prominent woman, and she persuaded him to eat food and so it was that as often as he passed by, he turned in there to eat.  And she said to her husband, 'Behold now, I perceive that this is a holy man of God passing by us continually.  Please, let us make a little walled upper chamber and let us set a bed for him there and a table and a chair and a lamp-stand.  And it shall be that when he comes, he can turn in there.'"  That is a wonderful illustration of the exercise of the gift of hospitality.  By the way, those of us who live in homes far bigger than our real needs - have you ever considered the fact that God has so gifted you and so privileged you for the purpose that you might have a tool for ministry that you hadn't really considered?  I don't mean sitting around waiting for a chance to have Billy Graham stay overnight.  I mean using the gifts that God has given to you for those who are in need.  Particularly, it says "do good to all men, but especially to those of the household of faith."

Alright, what are some characteristics to this gift?  Very quickly: first of all, those who have the gift of hospitality enjoy it's exercise.  In the account that it tells about Lydia, it says that "she urged and prevailed upon us".  She wasn't paying some sort of social obligation or a theological debt.  She really wanted Paul and Silas to come and stay.  Hospitality for the gifted person is a joy.  It is not the fulfillment of a social obligation.  It is not a nuisance.  It is not a grudgingly accepted duty - it is a life enriching enjoyment.

Second, those with the gift practice hospitality as opposed to entertaining.  Entertaining is soft glowing candles reflected in the sheen of polished silver.  Entertaining means you not only straighten the living room, you scrub the living room, you straighten the attic.  Hospitality means "come in".  And there's a difference.  A difference that is noted by the one exercising that gift or entertaining, and the difference noted by the guest as well.  I look with kind of sad bemusement at that commercial that comes on television advertising some sort of dish washing product.  You know, there's a house full of guests and everybody is all excited and it's just a great delight.  And the hostess is in the kitchen and she's very excited and she says, "All I need to do is get out the crystal".  And then a well-meaning friend (usually a mother or sister or something) takes out the crystal and *gasp* it's got water spots on it!  And the whole thing's going to come unglued because of those awful water spots!  And then in comes this product, which saves the day.  Just saves the day.  Well, if you are troubled by water spots then you're not talking about hospitality.  Water spots on crystal is a good reason to use the jelly glasses, with the person that is exercising the gift of hospitality.  Because it really is not a matter of what it's held in - it's a matter of a cup of cold water given in Jesus' name.  Now that's the difference.  When you are being hospitable, you're not being fussy and both the guest and the host are at ease.  How many times did my mom get a call from my dad's store, "Esther, you'd better water the gravy and put more bread in the meatloaf because there's a family down here - their car broke down, they don't have any money - we're going to have to have them here overnight, okay?"

"Okay." And they'd hang up, and mom would water the gravy and she'd put bread in the meatloaf and it really made it taste weird, but it reached.  And we would have another family for the other evening.  And sometimes I kind of resented that whole thing.  I always got pushed out of my bed onto the floor, you know.  Sometimes, if they didn't have much clothes, then what little clothes we had went to them too.  But my mom and dad just enjoyed that.  Now, mom did not run around the house, cleaning the house because people were coming home.  She was too busy watering the gravy.  And she always figured if they looked in the corner and saw that dust, they shouldn't be looking in the corner!

Sunday drop-in visitors used to happen all the time in rural Nebraska.  You'd hear a car door slam and mom would peek out the drapes, dad's sleeping on the couch, we kids had the funnies all over the floor, and mom would say, "Oh, so-and-so's here!"  She'd wake dad, she'd grab the newspapers and she'd dump them behind the couch.  And then she'd open the door, "Oh, we're so glad you came over!  We weren't ready - you'll have to excuse the place.  In fact I had to throw the papers behind the couch."  She'd say that!  I always felt, "Why throw them behind the couch if you're going to tell them you threw them behind the couch?"

You see, my mom (among her other gifts - and my mom was not perfect and is not perfect) really did have the gift of hospitality.  And it was a joy to her to have people that she could give of herself to in the house on a regular basis.  And sometimes I was a little embarrassed, because the house wasn't just, you know... Emily Post would have been just appalled over the whole thing, but it really didn't bother her.

I am not inferring that hospitality is sloppy or untidy.  I am saying that there are things of more primary importance than sparkling windows and glowing silver.  Leslie Flynn puts it better than I ever could: "It is not the magnitude of menu nor the excellence of entertainment that matters, but rather the warmth of wantedness."

Third, those with the gift know how to minister to their guests' needs.  I spent one summer traveling with a team from North Park.  My wife did the same thing a couple of years later.  I stayed in over 60 homes in one summer (that's where I met my wife - I stayed in her home - so it's to be recommended.  By the way, 23 years ago today my wife and I were married, and I am just absolutely delighted that North Park sent me on that trip so many years ago).  I can recall being entertained in about 58 of those homes.  Hospitality was exercised in two of them.  I was there for public relations for the school.  I was supposed to smile. I was supposed to behave.  I was supposed to brush my teeth.  Everything had to be a good image for the school.  I was so tired of smiling, so tired of being gracious so tired of answering stupid questions, so tired of relating to false accusations, that I could have bagged the whole thing.  Except, every so often, God would give me the joy of being in a home where the people had the gift of hospitality.  And boy, I could just feel the difference.  It was one of those kinds of places where you just felt so much at ease.  Not because they were close to your age.  In fact, one of the homes that stays out in my mind was a home in Bradford Pennsylvania - a little home and it was a little old man and a little old lady in greatly advanced age who could hardly hear, and his false teeth just kept dropping.  I couldn't understand him because every time he'd go to say a vowel, his teeth would drop and get in the way.  And it just broke me up.  And his wife and I had more fun laughing about that.  You know, this little old lady and me, we had so much fun laughing about his teeth and talking about how he ought to get them fastened up.  Silliness!  But I felt so much at home - they were just like kind of family and I felt like family.  And I was in some homes that were just spectacular in their beauty, and such neat wonderful people, but they were entertaining me, and that was uncomfortable.

A person with the gift of hospitality knows when the guest needs to be engaged in conversation and knows when the guest needs to be able to just sit there alone.  I remember one time that Dr. Albrecht Olsen, president of North Park College and Theological Seminary was a guest in our home.  On that occasion, my mother was entertaining.  And she was in the kitchen fussing with a great big ham and pineapple rings and crab apple rings and peas and corn and peas and - it looked like something she'd seen in a magazine.  Whenever mom would have the magazines out, she was entertaining.  Now I was supposed to be entertaining the guests also, but I was in junior high or early high school and this man was a man of age and dignity and bearing, and he was the president of a school and I wasn't really too much interested in it.  So I volunteered to help mom in the kitchen - dad wasn't home from work yet.  My little brother, however, was around.  And my little brother was tearing around the house (he was about this big) and I can remember hearing from the kitchen about the same time mom did, my little brother banging on his tin drum (and those things are awful things) and shouting "March man, march!"  My mother and I ran to the door and looked into the living room.  There's my little brother with his tin drum and my sister's band hat on, and there's Dr. Albrecht Olson, president of North Park College and Theological Seminary standing there in his three-piece suit with the chains across his tummy and all his dignity, with my sister's baton in his hand, following my little brother around the table to his hollering "March man, march!"  And I remember thinking, "Oh mom's going to kill that kid".  You know what my mother said?  I said, "Mom, you want me to go in and break that up?"  And mom said, "Leave them alone, I think Dr. Olson needs to march."

Do you understand what I'm trying to say?  I believe that the person with the gift of hospitality understands the needs - doesn't assume needs, but understands the needs - and responds eagerly and joyously to those needs.  And so a person with the gift does know these things.

The fourth thing: a person with the gift of hospitality exercises their gift as part of their ministry.  That is, they do it to the Lord.  And they do it with joy.  And they do it with eagerness.  But, mind you this: they are not ignorant, and they do not allow their gift to be abused by others.  And here is a warning that is given in 2 John 10: It says, "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching," (the teaching is clearly described in the first nine verses) "do not receive him into your house and do not give him greeting."  There are limits to Christian hospitality.  That does not mean that unbelievers are not to be recipients of your hospitality.  Indeed, they must be.  But it does mean that those who are teaching, and who are adamant in their opposition to the things of God, are not logical and described guests in your home.

Fifth: those with the gift of hospitality are not caught up with concern over reciprocity.  Do you have one of those little books some place in your house?  "August 24th, were entertained at supper at so-and-so's house."  And then you starred the calendar so that before six months have passed, you have reciprocated and had them over?  Because if you don't, oh my goodness, it's a social breach?  Now you're talking about entertaining, and that may be nice.  But those with the gift of hospitality, realize that whether they have socially paid someone back or not, or whether someone over socially repays them, is really irrelevant to the living of the Christian life.  If you're keeping score, brother or sister, you've got a problem.  Jesus, in Luke 14, even suggests that we should exercise hospitality on people who have nothing with which to repay us.  And that avoids that.

There's no way in which my wife and I and my family could possibly reciprocate to you as a congregation for all the love that you've shown for us in these thirteen-plus years.  Frankly, we're not really trying.  We're just trying to love you well.  There are some of you who have been in our home several times.  Some of you have never been in our home and if you want to come to our home and we've never had you, please have enough sense and honesty to say "Boy we'd sure like to come over to your home."  We won't entertain you.  We will be hospitable toward you.  We'll even play some dumb games.

Alright, the forth major thing I want to say is that you may not have the gift of hospitality, but brother or sister in Christ, you have the role to be hospitable.  That is part of what it means to be a Christian.  Church, we are commanded to practice hospitality.  In Romans 12, we have a great chapter about the gifts of the Spirit, but also in Romans 12 is a description of the Christian's role as a Christian.  Verse 13 instructs us that we are to give generously even if we don't have the gift of giving, and we are to practice hospitality.  Hebrews 13:1-2 says, "Let love of the brethren continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers."  Paul instructs Titus, that young pastor, in Titus 1:8 that one of the characteristics that should mark the leadership of that local church Titus was serving, was that they "are given to hospitality."  It doesn't say "gifted", it says "given to".  Jesus in John 13:20 says "Truly, truly I say to you, he who receives whomever I send, receives me.  And he who receives Me receives Him Who sent me."

There are enormous needs in the body of Christ to sustain and practice hospitality on behalf of touring groups, for instance, who couldn't pay the hotel and buffet bills and still carry on their ministry.  There's a need for the traveling itinerant preacher and evangelist and other people who are traveling in the service of Christ.  But believe me, people, there's also a need for longer range hospitality.  There is need right now for an Iranian student to have a place to live for the whole year.  What a wonderful opportunity to exercise your gift of hospitality on the behalf of Jesus Christ and the cause of His Kingdom.  Not because you've got zeroed-in on the guy's spiritual scalp and to bring him to Christ - God knows that ought to be a motivation - but it is primarily obedience operating in conjunction with your gift.  Hospitals: people come from out of town to the major hospitals in our area and relatives have to be here and how often we, as a congregation, have been enormously blessed because our people in the congregation have opened our homes to these strangers from out of town while their loved ones are in need.

But listen church, our congregation's greatest need is the lonely believer in our midst, whose heart is hungry for fellowship in spite of their appearances of having it all together.  There are men and women in our congregation who are longing for hospitality.  They don't want to be entertained.  They don't want to be amused.  They don't want to be diverted.  They don't want to sit with sixteen pieces of silver by their plate.  They would be happy with watered gravy and bread in the meatloaf if somebody would care.  And I say that with a certain degree of firmness and impact because there are people who have been in our congregation who are no longer in our congregation.  And they have left us, not because they haven't sensed the warmth of our worship, not because they have not been fed in every way necessary, except they have left because they came lonely, they were here lonely, and they went away lonely.  And that is disobedience to God on our part.

Now I know that when we make up our guest list for a party or for some kind of fun time, it's really neat to have those people that we have spent enough time with so that we don't have to worry about whether we're going to offend or do anything dumb.  But have you ever thought of the possibility of one of the most meaningful ministries you and your home can have to others is the simple cup of cold water the peanut butter and jelly sandwich or the chicken from Albertson's that says "come on over and share our home"?  That is a ministry that we need to have.  And the only qualification for hospitality is need.  We've got a lot of single young adults in this congregation that are lonely.  We've got a lot of widows and widowers that are lonely.  We've got a lot of families that are lonely.

I chose to preach on hospitality this morning because we have a chance to receive the hospitality of Jesus Christ as we gather about His table.  Christ is the Host.  It's His invitation.  We are not to be entertained, we are not to be amused.  We are to come and to express our gratitude for His invitation to come and share.  All those that humbly put their trust in Christ and desire His help that they may lead a holy life - all those that are truly penitent for their sins and would be delivered from them - all those who walk in love with Christ and their neighbors and desire to live a new life following the commandments of God - all those, but only those, are invited to draw near with faith and to share this holy sacrament.