The Love of Strangers

Scripture: Romans 12:9-21

⁹ Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; ¹⁰ love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹ Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. ¹² Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. ¹³ Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.

¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. ¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. ¹⁸ If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. ¹⁹ Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” ²⁰ Instead, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Questions

1. What does it mean to have a genuine love?
2. How are contributing to the needs of the saints and hospitality related in this passage?
3. Does hospitality have any relation to the appeal in verse 20 to help enemies?

Background

Related Scriptures: Genesis 18:1-33; Ezekiel 15:43-50; Matthew 25:31-46; Hebrews 13:1-3; 3 John 5

Φιλοξενία “hospitality” comes from the roots of love and stranger, and means exactly that to show love to the stranger. Hospitality is about taking someone from being a stranger to being a friend.

“The practice of hospitality does not simply mean that we should entertain those who come to us. It means also that we should go out and invite others to come in.”^[1] Origen

Early Christians like Clement saw hospitality as essential for acting like God and a demonstration of faith.

“For his faith and hospitality a son was given unto him in old age, and by obedience he offered him a sacrifice unto God on one of the mountains which He showed him.” 1 Clement 10:7 

“For his hospitality and godliness Lot was saved from Sodom” 1 Clement 11:1

“For her faith and hospitality Rahab the harlot was saved” 1 Clement 12:1

Hospitality is what overcomes the strangeness and tension of the foreign and brings the other person into the realm of friend.

It was common in the ancient world to equate hospitality with knowing God and being religious, hospitality was recognized as a divine good.

The best resource on the history of Christian hospitality is Christine Pohl Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition

Reflection

Hospitality was, and remains, a high cultural virtue in Eastern Mediterranean Jesus called home. Greeting guests, providing them with food and shelter was seen as a basic courtesy and a quality that would lead to divine favor. In that region people are taught to remember the harsh conditions that can be a reality for a traveler and to take care of those who are away from home. Showing hospitality makes sense from a practical perspective, since one would want to receive hospitality when away from home, it makes sense to show hospitality so that others would be inclined to give it to you. But hospitality was also seen as way of representing God, the one who provides, to a guest and was considered a virtue in the Bible. We, being so far removed from that culture, can miss it but the story of Abraham and Sodom (Genesis 18:1-19:29) is about how the righteous (Abraham) and the unrighteous (Sodom) treat guests. Abraham is blessed and Lot is spared because they are kind to guests, while Sodom is destroyed because these people want to abuse guests. Books like Ezekiel and 1 Clement make this explicit as they talk about how hospitality leads to blessings while rejecting the stranger leads to destruction. This story is also behind Hebrews admonition to show hospitality because we never know when we will be entertaining angels as Abraham did.

One of the more shocking things Jesus said, at least to ancient audiences, comes in Matthew 25:36, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me”. Jesus is saying to his followers in that passage, he is the outsider or foreigner and the people he is praising are the ones who made him part of the group. His true disciples are the ones who go out of their way to include those who by natural conditions of life are excluded from the group. While Jesus does not explicitly speak of hospitality in this passage, that is how his disciples understood him. For Christians the definition of hospitality changed from simply offering a guest food and lodging to making them feel at home in the group. Jesus’ ideas transformed how Christians approached guests. So much so that when Paul speaks in Romans, he connects caring for fellow believers (saints) and hospitality. Hospitality became a vital element for churches, demonstrating God’s love to the world around through welcoming those who were strangers.

Even in our world today, people are impressed when someone stops to help them on the side of the road, or offers to carry something heavy. These little acts of kindness often cause people to think they have experienced God’s providence in their lives. And I think it is fair to say that most people want to live in a society where such gestures of hospitality are commonplace. We desire a community where people are generally warm, friendly, welcoming, and helpful to people whether or not they know the other person. What keeps us from such a culture? I see two qualities that influence whether we have such a society or not, selfishness and fear. If we are afraid of the people we encounter and what they might do, we are not likely to help, and if we are selfish we are not likely to notice they are in need of help.  This is where our encounter with Jesus and our faith come in to play, if we have faith we can trust in God despite our fear, and if we have encountered Jesus we are likely to see others and see them as potential friends as Jesus does. Even little acts of hospitality are helpful to breakdown walls that separate us from others and help bring people into closer relationship.

Our hospitality provides room for the Holy Spirit to bring change in a person’s life, whether that is our life or the life of another. Simple acts of hospitality can help someone to feel safe or even blessed by God, while helping us to see people as neighbors and not strangers. But for the Christian these simple acts are just the beginning because what Jesus wants from us is a commitment to including people in the community, providing a place for others where they can experience God in such a way that they grow and develop in the Holy Spirit. Jesus wants our hospitality to lead us to create a community with those who started as strangers so that we can all experience the Spirit and become like God.

---

^[1] Gerald Bray, ed., Romans (Revised), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (