Loving the Stranger

When we think about hospitality, we often think about inviting friends and families into our homes to share food and drink, enjoying one another’s company. A good host offers a comfortable, clean home, is quick to take the guest’s jacket and offers snacks and a drink. There are also certain unsaid expectations of the guest: don’t arrive empty-handed, take off your shoes, don’t put your feet on the couch, etc.

Most of us have come to believe that hospitality is good for some people, provided they have the means: an ideal location, a big house, etc. But if we don’t have the space, the money, or the gift of hospitality, then we probably don’t need to.

Yet, the Bible seems to be clear that hospitality is extremely important to the Christian faith. We can be reminded of the strong exhortations to the early church to pursue hospitality in the New Testament: Rom. 12:13, Heb. 13:2, 1 Pet.4:9. Additionally, the key word for “hospitality” in the New Testament conveys a stronger image than we typically think of today.

Philoxenia combines two other Greek words, phileo and xenos. Phileo is a general word for love and affection for those connected through faith and kinship, i.e. family and friends. Xenos is the word for stranger.¹ Hospitality in the Middle Ages became a means for extending power. But the biblical idea of hospitality was without expectation.²  This idea of hospitality is not simply entertaining friends and family, but extending that same familial affection to the stranger, to those in need.

The idea of welcoming strangers into one’s house or personal space may be unsettling for many of us. Scripture repeatedly calls God’s people to remember their own experience of being strangers. “You shall love the stranger,” God tells Israel, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19).

I pray that as followers of Jesus, we will be encouraged to think about how we extend hospitality to others, to strangers, and particularly to those in need. I am thankful for Ottawa Innercity Ministries, providing a safe place for people to come for food, supplies, and community. I pray that these “strangers” experience a warm embrace of God’s love through His Church.

Jordan Levesque ~ Youth Program Coordinator

¹ Christine D. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1999, 32-3. 

² Pohl, Making Room, 34.