One of the qualifications for elders is hospitality (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1), which means ‘welcoming strangers.’ While this is an absolute expectation of pastors, most of the qualifications describe the ordinary Christian life. We’re meant to be welcoming strangers, and we’re all meant to be doing it (Hebrews 13).
Yet, we’re terrible at it.
It’s natural and human to be better at welcoming people who are like you than people who aren’t. You have a better sense of what they would receive as a welcome, conversation flows more easily because you have more things in common, and though we are often uncomfortable with the fact of it we also prefer to welcome those like us. There’s something in all humans where like calls to like.
This can be a normal innocuous, human thing, or it can grow into the excesses of racism or other prejudices. We shouldn’t be overly dismayed if you notice that you find it easier to welcome people who are like you. Welcome requires walls, and the walls of your household are more likely to be comfortably shaped for those whose walls look similar. That’s life.
Christians are also compelled to step out of our worlds and welcome the stranger. This means the literal stranger, the person you haven’t met at all before—I am now used to meeting people for the first time in my kitchen, strange though that would sound to many people—but it also means the person who is different to you. Those differences can be small or large, sometimes we are trying to join hands over vast cultural gulfs. We are not commanded to be the best of friends (though you can be!) but to welcome.
It’s not easy to do the difficult thing and have people in your home who you think you’ll struggle to talk to or that you’ll struggle to feed (hot sauce for West African friends who think your food is dreadfully bland is a winner), but we should.
You don’t have to change for them, you’re welcoming people into your world, but we do usually have to bend. A Nigerian family we got to know when living in Nottingham were very helpful to us in this regard. They were open about talking about what they found culturally strange and would often have us in their home too. We found mealtimes with them confusing for all sorts of reasons: from the food to what was expected of you around the table. Which was eye-opening because that must exactly how they felt with us too.
I don’t change how I treat people in my home as a result of that, but I do hope that I’m more gracious to my guests when I consider what might be strange to them.
How do you start to welcome strangers?
Welcome someone. That’s how you start. Have someone in your home, or around your table, or whatever works if you don’t have a home or table to invite someone to. They don’t have to be different; it’s just about establishing patterns for yourself where you have people in your home in ways that don’t require you to put on a show.
Then welcome someone else. They can still be pretty much like you, but don’t just stick with the people you know well. Eventually pluck up the courage and invite someone from your church who is not like you, whether in terms of culture, nationality, class, life-stage, age, or whatever it may be. Some of it will be strange, they are strangers after all. They are finding it as strange as you. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone you invite over but we are supposed to welcome strangers. Do it by degrees, go a little further than before, but make your table a hub of life and hope to those who eat at it.
Why welcome the stranger?
Beyond the commands of scripture, we could talk about cultural benefits and statistics and do some delightful social science, but let’s not.
Instead, think of this. When you were far off, a rebel and exile from the presence of the living God, he decided to lay a table for you to come and eat at. You can read about it in Isaiah 55. You were a stranger to him, your way of life very different to the way of the kingdom. He didn’t change for you, but he did come to get you and direct you to the narrow way in. Then he showed us to a seat at the table and sat across from us ready to talk long into the hereafter.
The table was set with the most lavish fayre. You’re invited to eat from it every Sunday in bread and cup: it’s the Lord’s Supper. He laid the table with himself. God the host, God the dinner companion, God the meal, invites us to come and eat with him.
That’s why we welcome strangers, because we are welcomed strangers.
Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu on Unsplash
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