How Jesus Was With People (Hospitality III)

In Luke 24, we get a clear picture of Jesus’ posture with others. The context for the story is Resurrection Sunday. In the morning, Jesus was raised to life by the Father, and here he is in the afternoon, walking along the road, where he encounters two of his disciples: 

That same day two of Jesus’ followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. But God kept them from recognizing him. 

He asked them, “What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?” 

They stopped short, sadness written across their faces. Then one of them, Cleopas, replied, “You must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days.”

“What things?” Jesus asked.

Jesus plays dumb! He plays dumb in order to draw these disciples out, into conversation, into relationship, where he can hear them and be with them in their story. It’s almost like God asking “Adam and Eve, where are you?” in Genesis 3. God prioritizes entering into mutuality—into relationship, into questions—over already having all the answers. When Jesus “emptied himself,” he did it so that he could enter fully into self-disclosing relationship, prioritizing connection with others over knowing it all already.[1]God is ever and always emptying Himself into this sort of relationship with us.[2] 

“The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth.” They said, “He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people, but our leading priests and other religious people handed him over to be condemned to death and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah that had come to rescue Israel. This all happened just three days ago. 

“Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning, and they came back with an amazing report. They said his body was missing, and that they had seen angels who told them Jesus is alive! Some of our men ran out to see, and sure enough, his body was gone, just as the women had said.”

The men share their sorrow, their hope, and their confusion with Jesus. 

Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn’t it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?” Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Jesus gets their attention by calling them “foolish.” But then they get a private Bible lesson from Jesus himself, which must have been pretty rad. 

By this time they were nearing Emmaus and the end of their journey. Jesus acted as if he were going on, but they begged him, “Stay the night with us, since it is getting late.” So he went home with them. As they sat down to eat,he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them.Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared!

They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?” And within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem. There they found the eleven disciples and the others who had gathered with them, who said, “The Lord has really risen! He appeared to Peter.”[3]

There’s so much in this story. 

The disciples don’t recognize who Jesus is, but the Holy Spirit reveals it to them over a meal, after Jesus has asked them questions, after their story has been told. And the first thing the disciples say after encountering Jesus is that their hearts burned within them. They don’t say, “Oh, I never understood that Isaiah 53 was all about the suffering Messiah!” I’m sure Jesus’ Bible lesson and how he explained the work of God in history was mesmerizing, but it didn’t go first to their heads; it went to their hearts. 

Here, hearts burning is not indigestion but a sign that the Reign of God is being made manifest. Just as bodies were healed when Jesus was around, so were hearts made to burn. Emotions that had long lain dormant in hopelessness flamed back into life. There was clearly something in how Jesus was withpeople that made their hearts burn. Jesus didn’t just tell the good news, he was with people in a way that made the love of God present.

So how does Jesus do it? He cares for these men in simple and straight-forward ways: 

·     Jesus asks questions and listens to their story.

·     Jesus tells the story of God.

·     Jesus shares a meal.

The end result is that these men have a supernatural encounter and revelation. They recognize God in a new way. 

This pattern of asking questions, sharing stories, and sharing food is Jesus’ simple formula for hospitality. It is a posture we can not only study but also, by the Spirit of God, learn to embody in the world. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]See Philippians 2:7ff.

[2]And note that Jesus, as we will see below, is no longer bound by the dimensions in which he was held pre-Resurrection. (See verse 31.) We get a closer picture of the unbounded God who is ever and always and always still emptying himself for our sakes. 

[3]Luke 24:13-34. This is yet another story in Luke that is oriented around tables and hospitality. Compare the story of Zacchaeus above, and all Luke 10 which forms the basis for ‘Chapter 2: Ambassadorship and the People Jesus Gives Us to Love.’

What is a Christian? (Hospitality II)

Salvation is about fully entering into the reign of God, in both this world and in the world to come. This entry happens through knowing who God is. This is why Jesus says that salvation is knowingGod the Father and Jesus himself.[1]This knowledge is not conceptual, it’s actual; it’s a growing, whole-life experience. Our Greco-Roman tradition tend to philosophize knowledge, making it something theoretical that exists largely within our own heads. The Hebrew people, on the other hand, tended to make knowledge concrete. What is real is not theory, but what is actually experienced. If you want to know who a Greek person is, learn what they think; if you want to learn who a Hebrew person is, go and live with them for a week. This is the sort of concrete experience Jesus points to when he talks about “knowing God.”

Isaiah 58 (and the entire witness of Scripture) make clear that this God-knowledge only fully blooms as we follow Jesus and as we rearrange and reorder our life in obedience to his leading, learning to be forothers as God is for us. Being a Christian means being transformed by the love of God in such a way that we become confident—despite full awareness of our weaknesses—of our belovedness in God. From this confidence, empowered by the Spirit, we love others, making present the reign of God. 

But this is perhaps not how those around us think of “being a Christian.” We live in a world where the word “Christian” is heavily diluted or means many different things to different people. Recent studies of American youth reveal that their top connotations with Christianity are “hypocritical,” “judgmental,” and “anti-gay.”[2]There’s not much notion among millennials of Christians as those who make manifest new hope and life. 

What a tragedy. 

It’s a tragedy because Scripture makes it clear that redemption and reconciliation are meant to be mediated by those who follow Jesus. Romans 8 makes it clear: It’s through people who are fully aware of their adoption in Jesus that God plans to heal the world.[3]How then do we move into this posture of Jesus in the world? How do we embrace this posture that renews and makes hopepresentwhere, before, there was despair? How might we reclaim the word “Christian”?

We need to keep the image of Jesus ever before us, and also to prayerfully ask the Spirit of God to help us live into the same posture of Jesus. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]John 17:3.

[2]See unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity…and Why It Mattersby David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. Baker Books. Grand Rapids, MI. 2007.

[3]Romans 8:19-21: “For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.”

Making Present the Kingdom of God (Hospitality I)

Hospitality is the virtue that allows us to break through the narrowness of our own
fears and to open our houses to the stranger… Hospitality makes anxious disciples
into powerful witnesses. [1]
                                              -Henri Nouwen

We sang a song in Sunday School growing up, about a man whom Jesus confronted with love:

Zacchaeus was a wee, little man,
And a wee, little man was he
He climbed up in a sycamore tree,
For the Lord he wanted to see
And as the Savior came that way,
He looked up in the tree,
And he said, "Zacchaeus, you come down from there,"
For I'm going to your house today
For I'm going to your house today

It’s a cute song, but Zacchaeus’s contemporaries probably would not have found it so. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, meaning that in the eyes of his contemporaries—the orthodox of Israel—Zacchaeus was a traitor, a cur, a son of a faithless dog.[2]“His mother was a hamster, and his father smelled of elderberries!”[3]Imagine how the French felt about Vichy agents, their countrymen who collaborated and went in cahoots with the Nazis; that’s about how his fellow compatriots would have seen Zacchaeus. So when Jesus encounters Zacchaeus, he subverts social expectations by sayingto Zacchaeus, “Let’s have a meal together. I’m coming to your house today.”Jesus confrontsZacchaeus, but he confronts him by inviting himself over. We may find that rude, but the message in Jesus’ context was clear: I’m accepting you. 

This would have been stunning for Zacchaeus. A meal in his culture represented respect, care, even affection. To share hospitality meant acknowledging not only the humanity, but also the worthinessof the person in front of you—in other words, dining with someone was a recognition that they were “in.” Religious Jews did not have meals with Gentiles at all, because it could put their own ritual cleanliness at risk, so having a meal was a big deal. In inviting himself over, Jesus is doing what he always does: accepting and loving before there are signs of repentance or change in behavior. With Jesus, the “I don’t condemn you” always comes beforethe “go and sin no more.”[4]It’s this radical acceptance that transforms Zacchaeus, that gives him a sense of how God sees him. And that gives him hope: the Reign of God comes even for tax collectors and sinners like him. And likeus. 

Through his posture of hospitality and welcome, Jesus radically interrupts the strictures of his culture to reveal the heart of God. In doing so, he makes manifest the reign of God which he proclaims. Indeed, this was Jesus’ work: not only to proclaim but also to make presentthe kingdom of God. As N.T. Wright observes, this Kingdom is “God’s sovereign, saving rule coming on earth as in heaven.”[5]The Kingdom is the place where what God wants is done. It’s life manifesting, even in the midst of death. Any time that Jesus healed someone, for example, there was life. His miracles always made manifest the reign of God. No one who saw a formerly-blind man seeing or a formerly-lame man walking would doubt that something divine had happened; they would be pointed to the reality that the heart of God is life itself. But Jesus also made manifest the reign of God in ways that, if more subtle—like sharing a meal—were just as profound. As followers of Jesus, our invitation is to walk in his way and to make manifest the Reign of God with and for others, just as he did.[6]

This is what The Slow Life is all about: unhurriedness and silence and Sabbath create space to hear and be transformed by the whisper of God’s Spirit so that we can fully receive our adoption in God. It is only by this adoption that we are empowered to love others as Jesus does, as ambassadors of his Kingdom. As we become aware of who God is, as we meditate on and experience Him, we will naturally become more like Him, empathy and compassion growing within us. It is through receiving that we are able to give. And, following the principle of Isaiah 58, we can practicereceiving by training ourselves to give, assuming a posture of hospitality. We may not invite ourselves over to someone’s else home (although hey, why not?), but we can practice Jesus’ posture of hospitality whenever we are able. And while the table is often crucial for the practice of hospitality, we’ll find that hospitality is also bigger than a table. It’s about how we are withpeople in a way that makes hope present and palpable, wherever we are. It’s an orientation to life in God by which the Reign of God is made manifest around us.

Ultimately, hospitality is the litmus test of The Slow Life. Do we have time to be withpeople, or are we too far ahead of ourselves and out of the present moment? When we see a neighbor, do we have enough margin to stop and be present with and also forthem? Jesus, grounded in the love of God, was present with those God gave him to love. By his grace, we can learn the same posture.

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1]Nouwen, Henri. The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. Image Doubleday. New York, NY. 2010. Page 95.

[2]Luke 19:1-10.

[3]Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Film, directed by T. Gilliam and T. Jones. National Film Trustee Co. United Kingdom. 1975. 

[4]See John 8:1-11. At least, that’s the pattern with those caught in hedonism, like Zacchaeus.

[5]See N.T. Wright on the Book of Acts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHtJ94951Jg&list=PL455179C7B06EBCB8 [May 15, 2017]

[6]Cf. John 14:12.