I definitely could've written a lot more in my previous post. I decided to spare you all and write more in a separate post, so that my ideas could kind of build off of one another and so you could try to follow my line of thinking.
So I go on and on about this posture of learning, not because I've got it all down and place myself in this posture all the time, but because realizing this helps me understand myself better, where I have fallen and what I hope for my relationship with others - all in the context of the picture God gives for us in our relationship with him, with others, and the world so that we can try to put the puzzle pieces together.
And I think having a posture of learning also ties in with hospitality.
In his book, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Henri Nouwen says:
Old and New Testament stories not only show how serious our obligation is to welcome the stranger in our home, but they also tell us that guests are carrying precious gifts with them, which they are eager to reveal to a receptive host.
As we are all learning to be good hosts in God's topsy-turvy kingdom, we need to clothe ourselves with humility, recognizing that though we expect our guests to have nothing, they actually have something to offer.
When hostility is converted into hospitality then fearful strangers can becomes guests revealing to their hosts the promise they are carrying with them. Then, in fact, the distinction between host and guest proves to be artificial and evaporates in the recognition of the new found unity.
With hospitality, though, it's easy to get caught up in how our society views it today. In Christine D. Pohl's book, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, she says:
Today when we think of hospitality, we don't think first of welcoming strangers. We picture having family and friends over for a pleasant meal. Or we think of the "hospitality industry," of hotels and restaurants which are open to strangers as long as they have the money or credit cards. Perhaps large churches come to mind, with their "hospitality committees" that coordinate the coffee hour, greet visitors, or help with the parking. In any case, today most understandings of hospitality have a minimal moral coponent - hospitality is a nice extra if we have the time or the resources, but we rarely view it as a spiritual obligation or as a dynamic expression of vibrant Chrisitianity.
So true, right? To be honest, that's what I've always thought (and sometimes still get caught up in) hospitality was all about. Pohl points out, though, that:
Whereas in ancient times all strangers depended on someone else's hospitality, today, it is those without resources who depend most on the free provision of food, shelter, and protection that characterizes hospitality.
Look at Luke 10 when Jesus sends out the seventy-two. He tells them not to carry anything with them, and to bring peace to the house they enter, with the risk that they'll be rejected. He sent them as "lambs among wolves" - vulnerable, needy people in the midst of a hostile world. We need to learn to be good guests before we can learn to be good hosts.
Then in Luke 10 Jesus helps a man, an "expert," understand who really was his neighbor - the Samaritan who showed mercy. With the amount of hostility Jews viewed Samaritans with, I bet no one expected the Samaritan to have anything to offer to the man on the road. I wonder what the "expert" thought or did when Jesus told him to "go and do likewise" of the Samaritan. The Samaritan was a neighbor - a guest - that no one expected to learn anything from.
And so the learning posture made me wonder if it tied with hospitality because it made me think of Mary and Martha. Both of them were hosts to Jesus. Maybe Martha got caught up in trying to meet the physical needs of her guest that she had forgotten her guest had something to offer.
And maybe that's why Jesus said Mary had chosen "the good portion/what is better." Mary was a host, too, and yet she had placed herself below her guest, in a learning posture, because she expected to receive something wonderful and valuable from Jesus.
The term hospitality, therefore, should not be limited to its literal sense of receiving a stranger in our house - although it is important never to neglect that! - but as a fundamental attitude toward our fellow human being, which can be expressed in a great variety of ways. -- Henri Nouwen
Within acts of hospitality, needs are met, but hospitality is truncated if it does not go beyond physical needs. Part of hospitality includes recognizing and valuing the stranger or guest. --Christine D. Pohl
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