Learning to be a Community of Hospitality (2)

Learning to be a Community of Hospitality (2)

“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

--Matthew 25:35

I. Required readings

Christians remember that Jesus and his family fled danger in their homeland and lived as refugees in Egypt. (Depiction of the holy family’s flight to Egypt by an Egyptian artist.)

Christian Biography for the Day: Dorothy Day

Leonard J. Vander Zee, “Making Room: The Practice of Hospitality”
(Copyrighted sermon through Canvas;
log-in to C&C site and then click on "Files" tab and then "Copyrighted Material".)

Thomas E. Reynolds, "The Cult of Normalcy"

"I am Musa"

II. Quotation for the day

“There He was, homeless. Would a church take Him in today—feed Him, clothe Him, offer Him a bed? I hope I ask myself that question on the last day of my life. I once prayed to God that He never, ever let me forget to ask that question.”

"What we do is very little, but it’s like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes. Christ took that little and increased it. He will do the rest."

--Dorothy Day

III. Journal prompts

1. If hospitality is about welcoming and loving the strangers in our midst, who would you say are the “strangers” in our society? In other words, who are the people we make (or try to make) invisible because they are different from us? Or to use Pohl’s language, who are the people who are “overlooked and undervalued”?

2. We often think of Christian hospitality from the perspective of the host, that is, from the perspective of the one serving those in need. In what sense does genuine Christian hospitality also require the host to be willing to receive from the stranger as well? In what ways might strangers enrich our lives? What experiences can you recall from your own life of receiving from strangers?

3. In what ways do our fears inhibit us from offering and receiving hospitality? What might some of the most vulnerable people around us (such as the "differently-abled" like Musa above) teach us (the “temporarily-abled”) about ourselves and our relationship with God?

IV. Links of possible interest

Naomi Schaefer Riley, “Welcoming the Stranger: Faith-Based Groups Say It’s Time to Reform Immigration.” There are already a number of prominent voices in our society calling for immigration reform and the closing of American borders. Might “faith-based” understandings of hospitality inform this debate? This article from The Wall Street Journal makes reference to a number of religious traditions that believe it should. (Copyrighted article through Canvas; log-in to C&C site and then click on "Files" tab and then "Copyrighted Material".) And here's another articles that raises some of the same questions: Alex Mikulich, "Biblical Hospitality, Immigration, and the Boundary of Whiteness."