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.)

 

            Leviticus 19:33-34

            Psalm 146

            Matthew 25:31-46

Romans 12:9-13; 15:7
 

 

Christian Biography for the Day: Jean Vanier
 

  

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

 

Jean Vainer, “A Wound Deep in Our Hearts” (147-57)

            (Copyrighted article through Angel;
log-in to C&C site and then click on "Resources" tab and then "Copyrighted readings".)

 

 

II. Quotation for the day

 

“Can we reasonably have a dream, like Martin Luther King, of a world where people, whatever their race, religion, culture, abilities, or disabilities, whatever their education or economic situation, whatever their age or gender, can find a place and reveal their gifts?  Can we hope for a society whose metaphor is not a pyramid but a body, and where each of us is a vital part in the harmony and function of the whole?  I believe we can, because I believe that the aspiration for peace, communion, and universal love is greater and deeper in people than the need to win in the competition of life.”

                                                                                         --Jean Vanier

 

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?  How does Vanier’s article illuminate the relationships among fear, vulnerability and love?  What might some of the most vulnerable people around us (such as the severely disabled) 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 Angel; log-in to C&C site and then click on "Resources" tab and then "Copyrighted readings".)

 

 

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