But hospitality in theory and hospitality in practice can often be very different. Preparing a bed, readying a meal – those things don’t just happen by themselves. And if you’ve ever had houseguests, you know that sometimes the phrase “make yourself at home” can be taken a little too literally. Hospitality is a nice idea, but it sometimes means inconvenience – it means work.
Félix-Henri Giacomotti, Abraham Washing the Feet of His Three Visitors (c. 1854)
In today’s readings, we hear two accounts of hospitality. In the first reading from the Book of Genesis, Abraham goes to great lengths to be hospitable to three men journeying through the desert. Notice how he insists upon waiting on them – he considers it a personal favor to be able to wash their feet and serve them a fine meal. The standard of hospitality in ancient times was higher than it is today, but still we are meant to be impressed by Abraham’s graciousness. In the reading from Luke’s Gospel, Martha famously plays hostess as Jesus comes to visit. Jesus would have been traveling with his disciples, and so it wasn’t just he who was coming to dinner, but at least twelve of his friends as well. We oven oversimplify the meaning of this Gospel, but it’s easy to see that Martha has a point: serving others can be hard work.
These readings share the obvious connection of hospitality, but they are linked together for another reason as well: there is a surprise about the identity of the guest. Abraham does not know that the three travelers who visit him are anything more than ordinary men, but as we can see by the end of the story, they are at least angelic figures, and maybe more than that. Christian tradition since at least the time of St. Augustine has considered whether perhaps these three men are the three Divine Persons, the Holy Trinity appearing in human form to affirm the covenant God has made with Abraham.
In the Gospel, Martha has her friend Jesus as a houseguest, but it is not clear at this point that she has arrived at the same realization about him that her sister Mary has: that this Jesus is not just a wise preacher, but God himself who has come into the world to save it. It is only later, after the death of her brother Lazarus, that Martha will say to Jesus: “I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The story of today’s Gospel marks perhaps the beginnings of Martha’s deepened awareness of just who Jesus is, and that faith in him is the “only one thing” that’s truly needed.
Hospitality certainly has its costs; but the point of the readings today is that it has its rewards as well, especially when the one whom we are accommodating is the Lord. The hospitality of Abraham is rewarded by being gifted with the promise of a child, the one through whom God will fulfill his promise of making Abraham “the father of many nations.” And while Martha might have preferred that Jesus make her sister get up to help her, Jesus repays her kindness with something far better – a revelation of himself, his true identity, and an invitation into a deepened faith.
To open our homes to accommodate someone else takes effort, and it means we will be inconvenienced. When we open ourselves to God, that’s true all the more; but it can also mean that we ourselves are opened, extended beyond ourselves – by being inconvenienced, we are made able to receive something, a grace, that perhaps we had been closed off to before. God is never outdone in generosity, and so when we make space for what he wills, he always reciprocates. He helps us to grow in exactly the way we need so that we “fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, on behalf of his body, which is the Church.”
The Light of the World [detail] (c. 1853) by William Holman Hunt
But here’s the thing: this rarely happens in the abstract. Our readings today show that God usually comes knocking in practical, real-world situations, though often in unexpected guise. He might take the form of the foreigner, the migrant, the outcast, the outlaw – even the enemy – to test whether our hearts are really open to being changed in the manner we need. True, it can be inconvenient to be hospitable to such as these – we might think up all kinds of reasons why we’d prefer not to welcome those who offend our notions of fairness or decorum. But if we close our hearts to the one who by Providence appears at our doorstep, we might just be shutting the door on the Divine Guest, who if welcomed has far greater gifts to offer.
Friends, consider today how God might be inviting you to practice a deeper and richer hospitality, not just in theory but in practice. It may not be on the welcome mat of your home that a guest is waiting – it might be your heart you are being invited to open, not your door, and your wellbeing that you are being invited to share, not your home. Welcome the stranger into your life, especially if it is hard, because the one who knocks softly at the door of your heart might just be the Divine Guest, who invites you to “choose the better part” and then receive all that he desires to give you.
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