The Thursday Review: Hospitality, the Future and the God of Abraham

First posted March 16, 2009

A number of years back I encouraged one of my students to read Homer's Odyssey for fun. Part way through I asked how she was enjoying it. "It's great" she said, "But why is it every time Odysseus comes to a new country they give him gifts?" I tried to explain what I understood about the code of hospitality in the ancient world: how generous hospitality was a reflection of the host's wealth and dignity in a shame/honour culture-- how inhospitality was not just bad manners, it was moral failure-- how hospitality has lost its place in the ethical code of modern western culture.

I recalled this little "teachable-moment" a few weeks ago as I was reading Hans Boersma's Violence, Hospitality and the Cross. Boersma uses the ancient concept of hospitality as an interpretive lens for understanding the meaning of election, the cross, the church and the Second Coming. Election is God's act of preferential hospitality for the poor, the alien and the outcast; the cross is God's act of hospitality toward estranged humanity; the church is God's chosen "community of hospitality" in the world; the Second Coming is God's promised future of "absolute (unconditional) hospitality." And so on.

Boersma is right that the Bible uses the very rich concept of "hospitality" to describe God's gracious dealings with humanity; but what's interesting is how it uses the same concept to describe humanity's right response to God. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts the church to be hospitable, because "some have entertained angels unawares"; in Revelation, Jesus stands at the door and knocks, urging the Laodicean church to open that he might come in and eat with them; in Luke Jesus criticizes the Pharisee for his stingy hospitality towards him; and in Matthew he promises to commend the righteous sheep on the last day, because they welcomed him when he was a stranger.

We are called to receive the hospitable God of the universe with unconditional hospitality.

Probably the most compelling example of this is Genesis 18: Abraham, sitting at the door of his tent, looks up into the glare and heat of the day to see three mysterious strangers standing before him. The Lord, the text insists with no further explanation, had appeared to him.

Abraham receives this divine visitation with gregarious, and, by the standards of the the ancient world, impeccable hospitality. "My Lords, do not pass by. ... Let a little water be brought and wash your feet. ... Rest here in the shade." He rushes to Sarah: "Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it. Make cakes." He runs to the herd, prepares a tender calf. They eat.

But what strikes me here is that by welcoming this "stranger-God" with gracious hospitality, Abraham is actually welcoming his own future in God. Because after these three strangers have refreshed themselves in Abraham's shade and eaten at Abraham's humble table, the Lord says: "I will return.. your wife Sarah will have a son." Abraham embraces the stranger with impeccable hospitality, only to discover in his arms no stranger, but a laughing baby boy whose future seed will bless all the nations of the earth.

As I struggle these days with my own questions about the future, I take challenge and comfort from Abraham's hospitality that hot day by the oaks of Mamre. God still comes to us, a stranger, mysterious, and bearing a strange but laughing future. And we don't need to "get it", or to "make it happen", or even necessarily to recognize it.

We need only to embrace it with impeccable hospitality.

The Halloween Files (Part VIII): On Trick-or-Treating

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As regular readers of this blog will know, the last few weeks at terra incognita have been devoted to theologically decoding the themes of Halloween.  Halloween came on faster than I could write, so there are a few "Halloween Files" that will have to wait until next year, but one of the big issues we didn't tackle in this series is the supposed pagan origins of the festival.  As it turns out, the "Is Halloween pagan?" question is more complicated than a 500-word blog post could adequately cover anyway.  For those who want some further reading to help them settle the issue, let me recommend the following.

Here's an article about Halloween's Christian (yes, Christian) connections.

And here's my old friend Richard Beck with a psychological defense of Halloween (again I need to credit Beck with having inspired this series here at terra incognita).

And here's Steve Bell on "keeping Christ in Halloween."

I'll keep the jury sequestered on this one and let you make up your own mind.  But since your door will be ringing with cries for treats and threats of tricks in only a few hours, let me try to decode one last Halloween tradition here:  the "trick-or-treater."

Because when you strip away the pillow-cases full of candy, the symbolic narrative of trick-or-treating is as potent as it is old:  a spirit-being (who may in fact be a neighbour in disguise, but there's no way of knowing for certain) comes to your door begging hospitality and threatening mischief if it's withheld.  That is, after all, what's echoing (albeit faintly) under that mask-muffled cry:  Show hospitality (treat), or suffer the consequences (trick).

As a symbolic narrative, this story is old enough to be archetypal: a spirit-being-in-disguise came calling for hospitality, and finding none, exacted reprisal.   Just read the prologue to Beauty and the Beast, or the myth of Baucis and Philemon (in Ovid's Metamorphosis), or the story of Abraham and the destruction of Sodom (in Genesis 18-19).

What these stories all point out is that, in the ancient world at least, there was a spiritual dimension to hospitality.  It's why Abraham was so quick to welcome his guests under the Oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18), and why Lot's house, alone, was spared when the Lord went looking for ten righteous men in Sodom (Genesis 19).  Because graciously and generously welcoming the stranger was once a moral act, and poor hospitality was once a deep spiritual failing.

Trick-or-treating may or may not have descended from old Celtic rituals designed to appease the spirit-beings on the night when the veil between "their world" and "ours" was at its thinnest.  The jury's still out.  But where ever it came from, it is a vestige from a time gone by when we recognized hospitality as a profoundly spiritual act.  As such, it serves as a playful reminder to our world, where we have (for all intents and purposes) closed our minds to the possibility of spirit-beings, and are increasingly closing our doors to strangers:  there is something spiritual going on when we practice genuine hospitality.

And if you're still with me, then let me point you in two equal and opposite directions for reflection this Halloween night.

On the one hand, notice that the "symbolic logic" of trick-or-treating is based on the threat of retribution and the hope of appeasement: appease the spirit world or suffer its vengeance.  In this, its "inner symbolism" is decidedly pagan, whether it came from ancient Ireland or not.  It's based on the idea that "the gods" (or in this case, their cleverly-costumed representatives) threaten terrible tricks unless they are dully treated.  And in pointing that out, I hope you'll understand what I mean when I say that through the Cross, Jesus has actually unmasked the "trick-or-treating god" for us.  In biblical language:  the divine wrath is satisfied, once for all in Jesus, who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

And if that seems like a bit of a theological leap (from trick-or-treating to the atonement), then let me give you the other hand.  Hospitality is still a spiritual act.  As a Christian and a pastor, I believe that the church is called to extend God's hospitality to the stranger and the outsider in our midst.  In material and spiritual ways, we're called to share with others the hospitality that we've experienced in Jesus Christ, when God invited us to his table, spiritually homeless sinners though we were. 

And  if you'll listen for it, you may hear that call echoing in the background tonight, when those masked gremlins and other assorted strangers stand outside your door, crying out for a treat.  If you'll listen for it, you may hear God say what he said in Hebrews 13:2, all over again:  "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it."

Happy Halloween, everybody!

The Convert or the Outsider, an Inter-faith Dialogue

I probably would have let it go, but I was reading Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace at the time, a book that bills itself as a "Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation," so my sonar was perhaps more finely-tuned than usual to such "theological pings."

And what a poignant "ping" it was.  Here's the back story:  a few weeks earlier I happened to make a friend of a friend who happened to be a practicing Orthodox Jew.  We had a very rich and illuminating conversation about the parallels and differences between my work as a Christian pastor and his work in the local synagogue.  It was, I think, an example of inter-faith dialogue in the best sense of the term, and as I was leaving he said, "If you ever want to get the Jewish perspective on something, feel free to give me a call."

Flash forward a few weeks later and I'm working away on this sermon on Deuteronomy 24:17-22, which is all about our mandate as the people of God to "leave something" for the voiceless and the vulnerable. In a particular, Deuteronomy 24:17 says: "Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge" (NIV) or " You shall not pervert the justice due an alien or an orphan, nor take a widow’s garment in pledge" (NASB) or "Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow's raiment to pledge" (good ol' KJV).

My Jewish friend's invitation was still ringing a bit in my ear, and, curious about his take on the passage in question, I sent him an email to take him up on his offer.  He replied very kindly with a number of interpretations from the Talmud sharing various Rabbinical reflections and applications of the text, illuminating the passage in ways I'd not yet considered.

But all the typical Christian translations of this passage use some word or other that means "the outsider" (alien, foreigner, stranger, etc.) to describe that first of the three groups of vulnerable people that deserve special consideration (so the NIV: the foreigner, the fatherless, the widow; or NASB: the alien, the widow, the orphan).  The specific Hebrew word is ger.  It's connected to a verb that means something like "to sojourn." It's used, for instance, to describe Abram when he was a sojourner (a foreigner, a "resident alien") in the land God told him to journey to, and it's used to describe Israel when they were captives in Egypt.  Hence Christians translate it as foreigner, alien, or stranger in Deuteronomy 24:17.

And here's the ping. In his response to my email, my Jewish friend included the standard Jewish translation of the verse.  In his translation, ger is translated, not as "the alien" generally but as "the convert" specifically (i.e. the non-Jew who has converted to Yahwehism).

We exchanged a few more emails about why this might be different, and he suggested that if an "outsider" was meant specifically, the term goy would have been used; and out of curiosity, I looked up the ancient Greek translation of the same verse, and they used a word that means "convert" as well; and, to be sure, the only biblical example we have of this passage being put into practice is the Book of Ruth, and there, Ruth the Moabitess is very clearly a convert to Yahwehism, besides being simply a foreigner.  So I'm not saying "convert" is necessarily a mis-translation of ger.

But the reason I'm still reflecting on this months later is because it seems to me there are profound ethical and theological implications for what we do with the ger in Deuteronomy 24. The question, as I see it, boils down to this: does God call us to take care of "the other" because they are "other" and regardless of whether or not they have made a profession of commitment to our community of Faith, or is conversion a necessary requisite for inclusion (and the hospitable helping that inclusion entails)?

Without the elaborate exposition that a careful handling of all these issues would require, let me at least suggest here that a radical inclusion-- one that translates ger as generously as possible-- is one of the themes of Jesus' preaching, who taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and to discover our sonship in the kingdom by living out its radical peace-making mission in tangible and concrete ways.  In this regard, radical inclusion of the other is one of the harmony notes to the melody of the Gospel.

Hospitality, the Future, and the God of Abraham

A number of years back I encouraged one of my students to read Homer's Odyssey for fun. Part way through I asked how she was enjoying it. "It's great" she said, "But why is it every time Odysseus comes to a new country they give him gifts?" I tried to explain what I understood about the code of hospitality in the ancient world: how generous hospitality was a reflection of the host's wealth and dignity in a shame/honour culture-- how inhospitality was not just bad manners, it was moral failure-- how hospitality has lost its place in the ethical code of modern western culture.

I recalled this little "teachable-moment" a few weeks ago as I was reading Hans Boersma's Violence, Hospitality and the Cross. Boersma uses the ancient concept of hospitality as an interpretive lens for understanding the meaning of election, the cross, the church and the Second Coming. Election is God's act of preferential hospitality for the poor, the alien and the outcast; the cross is God's act of hospitality toward estranged humanity; the church is God's chosen "community of hospitality" in the world; the Second Coming is God's promised future of "absolute (unconditional) hospitality." And so on.

Boersma is right that the Bible uses the very rich concept of "hospitality" to describe God's gracious dealings with humanity; but what's interesting is how it uses the same concept to describe humanity's right response to God. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts the church to be hospitable, because "some have entertained angels unawares"; in Revelation, Jesus stands at the door and knocks, urging the Laodicean church to open that he might come in and eat with them; in Luke Jesus criticizes the Pharisee for his stingy hospitality towards him; and in Matthew he promises to commend the righteous sheep on the last day, because they welcomed him when he was a stranger.

We are called to receive the hospitable God of the universe with unconditional hospitality.

Probably the most compelling example of this is Genesis 18: Abraham, sitting at the door of his tent, looks up into the glare and heat of the day to see three mysterious strangers standing before him. The Lord, the text insists with no further explanation, had appeared to him.

Abraham receives this divine visitation with gregarious, and, by the standards of the the ancient world, impeccable hospitality. "My Lords, do not pass by. ... Let a little water be brought and wash your feet. ... Rest here in the shade." He rushes to Sarah: "Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it. Make cakes." He runs to the herd, prepares a tender calf. They eat.

But what strikes me here is that by welcoming this "stranger-God" with gracious hospitality, Abraham is actually welcoming his own future in God. Because after these three strangers have refreshed themselves in Abraham's shade and eaten at Abraham's humble table, the Lord says: "I will return.. your wife Sarah will have a son." Abraham embraces the stranger with impeccable hospitality, only to discover in his arms no stranger, but a laughing baby boy whose future seed will bless all the nations of the earth.

As I struggle these days with my own questions about the future, I take challenge and comfort from Abraham's hospitality that hot day by the oaks of Mamre. God still comes to us, a stranger, mysterious, and bearing a strange but laughing future. And we don't need to "get it", or to "make it happen", or even necessarily to recognize it.

We need only to embrace it with impeccable hospitality.