Missions: Welcome
Part 5 | Return to Missions
We continue to meditate on God's missional pattern to reconcile and restore all of creation, and how we are invited to participate with Jesus in crossing cultural barriers.
Sharing the gospel
What comes to your mind when you think about sharing the gospel with the world? Perhaps a pastor giving a sermon, or having thoughtful answers to our neighbors’ worthwhile questions. But is it possible to share the gospel with those who have no interest in listening to a sermon, or let alone stepping through the doors of a Christian context?
But what if the sharing of the gospel looked more like eating a meal with a friend, or being a compassionate listening ear to a peer?
Eating as the kingdom of God
All throughout human history, meals have either brought people together or kept people apart. Whether it’s socioeconomic or cultural, the act of eating together can draw boundaries in communities. For example, it’s common in the US for Thanksgiving or Christmas meals to occur primarily within who you consider family. Though this is true for all societies, it was especially true in Jesus’ time–eating a meal together meant even more than they do for us. New Testament scholar Tim Chester writes in A Meal with Jesus:
“It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of table fellowship for the cultures of our Mediterranean basin in the first century of our era. Mealtimes were far more than occasions for individuals to consume nourishment. Being welcomed at a table for the purpose of eating food with another person had become a ceremony richly symbolic of friendship, intimacy and unity. Thus betrayal or unfaithfulness toward anyone with whom one had shared the table was viewed as particularly reprehensible. On the other hand, when persons were estranged, a meal invitation opened the way to reconciliation.”
In other words, sharing a meal meant sharing life. Throughout the gospels, Jesus is always eating with the lost. In fact, He was always eating with the wrong people. For Jesus, meals were not a boundary marker, but a sign of God’s great welcome into the kingdom of God: not a way to keep people out, but to invite people in.
In Luke 19, Jesus is discovered to be eating with Zacchaeus, a tax collector, who would have been at the bottom of the moral ladder. In fact, Luke records others’ response as “All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” (Luke 19:7) We may not feel this way toward tax collectors, but think for a moment and ask yourself: in your view of the world, who is at the bottom of the moral hierarchy? Imagine Jesus going to eat with them.
Throughout His teachings, Jesus often talks about life in the Kingdom of God as a banquet, or a feast.
It seems that eating a meal together with Jesus isn’t a sign of the Kingdom of God – it is the Kingdom.
Practicing hospitality
Jesus was called “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” because of his hospitality. As followers of Jesus, we have all been invited to the Lord’s table – no matter our backgrounds, worldview, political leaning, wounds, cultures, or offenses. This is what the bible calls hospitality, which in Greek (philoxenian) is a compound word of love and stranger. Notice that Jesus did not have a home, fancy silverware, or an agenda to entertain, and yet He was the most hospitable human that ever walked this earth.
Hospitality is expressing the welcome of God the Father to all through tangible acts of love. In the words of Henri Nouwen, hospitality means:
“the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.”
One could say that this is how the gospel spread. Jesus constantly goes to people where they are and meets them where they are at–even entering into their places of pain. In our context, perhaps one of the greatest and most common points of pain is the loneliness that many feel. Despite being surrounded by people, it is too common for people to feel as though no one knows them well. Could sharing the gospel look less like a sales strategy for Jesus, but more like hospitable love? Who are those on our campus who are a stranger to you, and what might it look like if we joined in what Jesus started and welcomed the stranger as Jesus has welcomed us? Consider what radically ordinary hospitality might look like at Yale–how might we be able to steward our lives as God’s gift to welcome the stranger?
Reflection questions
Describe a person that modeled or an experience where you received radical hospitality. What did that feel like?
What do you think it takes to practice hospitality in this context?
What makes good listening difficult?
Invite the Holy Spirit to give shape to your imagination. Ask Him to bring a name or face of someone to mind who does not know God that you can share a meal with in the coming week(s).
Part 5 | Return to Missions