Radical Hospitality Must Open the Door to Membership

“Radical” is a tricky word for my generation of Christians, especially those of us raised Evangelical. It describes the call we received as teens and college kids to live a life that contrasted sharply with the world — to order our sexual mores, our finances, our hopes — according to the Gospel.

As a writer and a gardener, I actually love the word radical for its dual movement: down into the roots of something (radix in Latin means “root”) and the sense of “away from the status quo” that the word carries in modern usage.

But for those of us who took (and still take) the challenge to “radical” faith seriously, the word itself can feel stretched out, performative, or perhaps downright unrealistic. There are good reasons for this, but I haven’t really found a better alternative. I’ve found it useful to speak of “radical hospitality” to make it clear I’m not interested in the hotel industry, and to cast a vision for welcome that is deeply rooted in Scripture. But I’ve been circling around a precise definition for a long time, and I think I’m finally ready to land: radical hospitality welcomes the stranger and opens the door to membership.

The first half of that statement shouldn’t be surprising; the Bible offers many exhortations to care for those who are other, foreign, sojourner — in other words, people unlike you and yours (e.g. Leviticus 19:33-34).

But over the last few years, I’ve been pondering the long game of hospitality: what does it lead to?

In the ancient world generally, and in biblical narratives specifically, neither “guest” nor “host” are permanent roles; the whole idea of hospitality, in fact, depends on the reality that most people live through seasons of both power and need; settledness and wandering. “And you are to love those who are foreigners,” God tells His people, not because you are mighty benefactors or morally superior, but as a memorial to their own need and God’s rescue: “for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19). Across the grand story of redemption, the Triune God relates to mankind as both guest and host: He is the One who plants a garden in Eden and welcomes Adam, but also the Son of Man who has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).

But the big picture is more than just a game of taking turns at being the host and stranger. The tapestry we glimpse, from Eden to the New Jerusalem, is a garden-kingdom in which all creation is at home, together. When God selects the children of Abraham as a people set apart, he tells Abraham that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18), and the nature of this blessing becomes more and more clear across the biblical text: it is the blessing of the prodigal’s homecoming (Luke 15:20-24), Father and Son making their home with the one who loves them (John 14:23), the penitent thief’s welcome into paradise (Luke 23:43).

The Didache, a first-or-second-century collection of teachings, shows early generations of Christians putting this blessing into practice:

Welcome anyone coming in the name of the Lord. Receive everyone who comes in the name of the Lord, but then, test them and use your discretion. If he who comes is a transient, assist him as far as you are able; but he should not remain with you more than two or three days, if need be. If he wants to stay with you, and is a craftsman, let him work for his living. But if he has no trade, use your judgment in providing for him; for a Christian should not live idle in your midst. (12:1-4)

I first encountered this text in a translation exercise in my college Greek class nearly 20 years ago, and I’ve been pondering it ever since. It’s remarkable, first of all, that there is an expectation that “transients” (some translations use the gentler term “wayfarer”) would come to the community of believers in need of aid. It’s also striking that there is a clear recognition of the risk of welcoming: clearly, some of these wayfarers, even coming in the name of the Lord, were tempted to overstay their welcome, draining the local community of resources. Even so, there was a gateway open to permanence: not long-term dependence, but meaningful and productive participation. From the commentaries I have read on this text, it seems that if the stranger was already skilled in a trade, then the local church would help establish him with local markets and work so that he could sustain himself and his family as members of the local church. Even more striking, the church itself would often take responsibility for providing a stranger with a trade and livelihood if they didn’t already have one.

From the Didache it is clear that these early Christian churches still saw themselves as households, with a strong picture of what fruitful membership, participation, and care looked like. Our difficulty extending radical hospitality has a great deal to do with our lack of understanding about what membership in our own homes and churches actually means.

We know from the Scripture that from the earliest days of the church, members gathered daily for worship in the Temple, “breaking bread in their homes” (Acts 2:46); that they taught and proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus (Acts 5:42); that they pooled their possessions and resources (Acts 2:42); and that they developed organized ways of caring for widows in their community (Acts 6).

These practices gave a framework for membership — clear gateways for entering the community, as well as clear walls around what was necessary for the safety of the community. In this way, radical hospitality is our reenactment of the welcome we received, through Christ, into the family of God: “remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:12-13)

The stakes, in other words, are really high. As marriage offers a picture of Christ’s union with the church, so hospitality demonstrates the scandalous welcome that makes the church possible. Radical hospitality doesn’t allow guests to linger as consumers indefinitely, taking advantage of the host’s bounty. But neither does it allow hosts to keep guests at arm’s length, counting the hours until they can send them away with impunity. Rather, radical hospitality must always open a gateway to membership: offering even the most indigent guest a pathway to full belonging within the household.

In my next essay I’ll talk about how I’ve seen such hospitality in action, and how we can work towards the restoration of a robust and welcoming understanding of membership in our own homes and churches. I’m also very aware that in my nation’s current political moment, what I’ve written might seem like a comment on current events. Although I do have opinions and convictions about current events, I want to make it clear that in these pieces I’m focused on Christian households, i.e. homes and local churches. If you want to talk politics, let’s do it over dinner and not in the comments section. I welcome comments, however, about what “membership” looks like in your church tradition and practice.