The Hospitable

I.        Vows of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God”

madlyinlovewithlife via Flickr

4. I will live, speak and act with courtesy, respect, and honesty toward friend and enemy, neighbor and stranger.

There is a growing set of true stories sharing surprising outcomes to encounters with a violent enemy. One goes like this: A couple is asleep in their bed-and-breakfast home. As a man with a knife crawled in the open window, the wife awakens to see him approaching through the dark. As he nears she speaks out, “You can kill us, but first let me make you a cup of coffee.” The startled intruder gradually accepts the offer and over a hot cup decides against his original violent plans.  

A young lady in a similar story, Angie O’Gorman, interrupts her armed intruder’s advance with a curious question, “What time is it?” and sets off a disarming conversation continued until Angie and the trespasser were no longer pure strangers. Finding out the man had no home to return to that night, Angie offers the entrant a couch to sleep on for the night and breakfast in the morning. Her firm hospitality and respect had disarmed the man.

These encounters with enemies are quite out of the ordinary: An intruder pushes into your home gun in hand. A drunken assailant grabs you on a dark corner. Guerilla soldiers invade your neighborhood.  While it’s helpful to prepare yourself to respond as a peacemaker in such adversities, critical encounters with enemies, strangers, neighbors and friends are far more commonplace than these extremes! 

Stephan Geyer via Flickr

We get cut off on the way to work and are prompt to gesture back at the guilty driver. We interact coldly with the costumer who is notoriously delinquent in his payments. We lace our remarks about a rigid fellow church participant with barbed disdain. We stereotype or distrust the darker-skinned shoppers in the next aisle over. We snap at our kids and cold shoulder our spouses.

Today’s vow may be one of the more difficult ones in its sheer commonness and frequency of applicability:  “I will live, speak and act with courtesy, respect, and honesty toward friend and enemy, neighbor and stranger.” Though mundane, our patient words, genuinely warm non-verbal communication and hospitable actions are a crucial daily practice of Christian peacemaking.

For Reflection and Action:

• Read Proverbs 15:1-4. What of your responses today were harsh? Which were gentle, respectful, honest, wise? Who else have you seen exemplify a hospitable response?
• Read aloud Elisha’s surprising response to an enemy army in 2 Kings 6:8-23. Who are the strangers or enemies in your life to whom you can offer words and actions of hospitality today? How will you do the same for your neighbors and friends?

Prayer Focus

God of hospitable words,

we confess our lips do not always respect the other.

Give us wise and gentle words today.

May our actions be so also,

for friend and enemy, neighbor and stranger alike. Amen.

[For Further Reflection:]

When it comes to the extreme, out of the ordinary encounters, there are some incredible short testimonies of Christian hospitality in the face of fatal violence. For further reflection, check out Section 3 of What Would You Do?, edited by John Howard Yoder (see especially chapters, “Welcoming the Enemy,” “It Was Like a Spring Thaw,” “Neither Violent nor Victim,” and “The Art of Reconciliation”).