Hospitality has fallen into hard times these days. Worse yet, the commercial world has picked up the word and used it for its own ends—such as the phrase “hospitality industry,” which refers primarily to hotels and convention centers. There’s nothing wrong with commerce—that is, we need thriving businesses for our economic growth. But Christian hospitality goes a bit deeper than making money off of people you don’t know and never will see again. To me, this is an abomination of the word’s meaning, far too shallow to capture the ancient biblical vision. I would like Christians to reclaim the word for what we do in our homes and churches.
Just what is Christian hospitality? The hospitality I am talking about is always local and personal. This hospitality is something we do to and for one another, without expecting any returns. It is being willing to take a risk, not knowing how it will be received by the other person. It means extending ourselves, whether it is convenient or not.
01. What Christian Hospitality Demands
Christian hospitality can be demanding and arduous at times. When Eugene and I were first married and he was a young minister, we were called to found a new church in Bel Air, Maryland. This became truly a New Testament house church experience, as Maryland’s strict laws separating church and state even prohibited the use of school gyms for church basketball leagues. So our Presbyterian Board of National Missions instructed us to pick out a home for this new endeavor. We chose a house that had a large basement. While Eugene was busy transforming it into a sanctuary for worship, I prayed (as a young pastor’s wife with toddlers and babies hanging onto me) that I would be hospitable and that I would make strangers feel welcome in our home. For this is what we were called to do. That perspective—the sense that we were called—added a whole new dimension.
We liked the idea of having the church in our home. And once our new parishioners got used to going to someone’s home for church, they liked it too. We set up chairs and fixed the basement up. The children used the living room for a nursery. When you’re pressed up together in a bodily space I think you get a real sense of family. This also happens when you work together to make things happen.
We had our church in our home for two and a half years. Two children were born while we were in the house church, and we had a toddler of our own that we had brought with us when we moved from New York City. Later, when we were near the completion of our church building, some people expressed sadness because they had experienced family in our home church in a way they had never felt it before in a more traditional setting. Some were afraid that sense of family would disappear when we moved into our new building.
After we were worshipping in our new church, Eugene tried his best to develop a Christian community of caring people. But we were ministering in suburbia, and we found out that sometimes suburbanites don’t care about community. They’ve left the city to get away from people, noise and problems, and they just want to be left alone. So in spite of all our efforts, very little community happened during those earlier years.
02. Our Organist: Exercising Faith
Then we learned that our organist had developed cancer. Her disease was too advanced to treat successfully. During that time, her husband lost his job. After she died, her mother took their four school children to another state, where they were miserable. So we invited the children back to live with us, enlarging our own little family to nine.
When our congregation learned what we had done, our deacons immediately met and said, “We’ve got to help the Petersons with the food bill.” We began finding food at our door and checks in envelopes. We received fresh vegetables from one woman’s garden. Offers of babysitting came in regularly. The community we had tried so hard to create was coming into being! Then after several months the father found a job, rented a house, and reunited his family.
During those years, we had other displaced homemakers with small children temporarily staying with us. Friends of our own teenagers found sanctuary with us while escaping abusive situations at home. A runaway girl needed time apart from a difficult family situation. Our son’s friend moved in with us during his senior year of high school so he could graduate with his class after his father moved out of town. Hospitality became real for us, and, as a result, so did community.
03. Thou Hast Given Me Room
The psalmist said, “Thou hast given me room when I was in distress.”Paraphrase of Psalm 4:1. As the church, we aren’t just a collection of isolated individuals, each one following our own pathway of spiritual growth. We are the family of God. Ours is a personal faith, but not a private one. Our hospitality becomes our offering, our gift to God, reflecting on what Christ did for us.
Through these experiences, I learned that practicing the gift of hospitality means caring and providing for the other person—that it is not about changing people, but offering them space in which change can take place. I learned that our hospitality should not be a way of working God and our way into the lives of others, but creating an opportunity for others to find God and his way in their lives.
That’s what I call offering “holy space.”
04. What About Habits That Transform Us?
Hospitality is one of the ways God brings about a change in us through grace. It’s not about a sudden conversion of heart. Instead, when we welcome others into our hearts and our homes, grace grows. It comes in fits and starts. We hardly even notice the change that God is working in our lives.
I was shown this as a child, through my own mother and father and by the way they lived. They were always reaching out to other people, making space for them. And this is also my gift. One of the spiritual disciplines is reflection, discerning, figuring out what our gifts really are. And often it is a long time before we understand how a particular gift is part of our personhood. It took discernment and time for me to discover my gifts, as it will for you to discover yours.
Hospitality is really my gift. I can’t be Jan Peterson without expressing this gift of hospitality. Our gifts are ways we express the inner being—the being of a person. They are the ways that we are truly ourselves, as we were made by God.
You know the word “person” (in its origins) means “sounding through.”Etymology: Person Per”son, noun. [Old English persone, persoun, person, parson, Old French persone, French personne, Latin persona a mask (used by actors), a personage, part, a person, from personare to sound through; per + sonare to sound. See Per-, and compare to Parson.] (accessed via http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/person) The personhood we bring to others is a way of being and making space for God. The way we are, the way we live, is our precious gift to the world.
05. Inward and Outward Change
Over the years we came to know that we were not just practicing hospitality; we were also giving a good example to others. Our teaching was in the way we lived. And very often that was a surprise to other people. One couple that came to see us said, “I feel like we’ve been on a marriage retreat!” They needed time to be with each other, time to walk and talk. And we gave them space for that. We offered hospitality without pressure, we created holy space.
Some people expected that because Eugene and I had experienced the wide acceptance of The Message and the recognition that has brought, that we would change in some way and be different people—more exclusive, let’s say. Maybe we were changing. But the change was different from what others imagined or supposed. After we left our church in Maryland, Eugene and I went to Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he was teaching. And then we returned to our current home, Montana. We live in an out-of-the-way place, yet we want to make space—holy space—for others. And what a privilege it is to welcome others into our home. We haven’t changed in our desire and calling to express hospitality—only our location has changed.
Recently a young couple came to see us and we pretty much spent the whole weekend with them. They didn’t stay in our home, but in a bed and breakfast not far away. That was their choice. They were in need of rest and renewal, and their church sponsored the visit and the travel. Eugene and I had breakfast with them, and lunch, and then dinner. Sunday we took them to our church, and then drove them up to Glacier National Park and had them in for dinner in the evening. What surprised them was what they called our willingness to be, just to be with them.
06. Hospitality Is Not a One-Way Street
We know the blessing is not only our guest’s but ours. Hospitality is not a one-way street. The host is blessed as much as the guest is. Every time we extend hospitality, we receive blessing in return.
Once, a Korean-American pastor came to see us, just to talk. He was pastoring a smaller church and he wanted Eugene to reassure him that it’s good to have a smaller church where the pastor knows everyone’s name. And he was amazed to find us just at home, living and working day by day in mundane and humble ways, not operating on some untouchable and exalted plane.
We were glad to see him. The blessing was ours. The privilege was ours—to extend hospitality. To welcome the guest and make a holy space for him. To do that is to recognize one’s own gift, one’s own personhood sounding through, authentic in every way.
07. God Is the Third Dimension
In reflecting on this discipline of hospitality, this discipline that is also a gift, I notice grace in every dimension of the relationship. We extend ourselves to make space for the other person. The other person extends himself or herself to open up to God’s grace. There are two dimensions at work.
And then, there is a third dimension. Eugene and I are doing this for God. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when we looked at each other after somebody left and said, “Why did we do that?” We ourselves have been so expanded and so blessed. In this third dimension we find God—God’s presence in every aspect of our experience. When we welcome others, we are making space not only for them, not only for ourselves, but also for God himself.
08. Jan’s Prayer
Let us pray.
Our Father in heaven,
What a gift it is to serve you and to serve our fellow men and women.
Thank you for the gift of being able to give ourselves away, to embrace others in your name.
And help us to be more aware of this whole life of hospitality, so that the world can see you in a living way. Thank you in Jesus’s name.
Amen.
Editor’s note: Janice Peterson is the wife of Eugene H. Peterson, author of The Message and a number of other books on spirituality. They believe in the power of friendship, conversation, simplicity, and hospitality. And they practice these ancient disciplines by making space for others—holy space—in the middle of ordinary life. Those who have been in their home—and those who know them through the written word—know that they witness, not by what they say, but by the way they are.
Janice Peterson graduated with a BS degree from Towson State University and taught first grade before moving to New York where her husband, Eugene Peterson, become the Associate Minister of White Plains Presbyterian Church. After three years, he was called to be the organizing pastor of a new church in Bel Air, Maryland, where they were involved in ministry together for twenty-nine years. She compiled and edited a book of her husband’s writings, Living the Message. She enjoys speaking at women’s retreats, but more than that, she enjoys having houseguests and day guests at their home in north west Montana where she lives with her husband of almost fifty-four years.