Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says that in order to inherit eternal life, the wealthy lawyer need to love his neighbor. But who is my neighbor? Jesus continues with the story of the Good Samaritan. A perceived enemy of the Jewish people, it was the Samaritan who stopped to help the man who’d been left for dead. The implication is clear. You need to love your neighbor, even the neighbor you perceive as the enemy.
This teaching from Hebrews is in the similar vein and in some ways, even more expansive. Not only are we to love our neighbors, we are to show hospitality to strangers. In the biblical sense, to love someone isn’t an emotion or a sentimentality. It’s an active verb requiring empathy and action. And still, it’s sometimes easier to think about loving your neighbor in a figurative way.
I’ve heard people explain that their love for the enemy neighbor exhibits itself in weekly prayer for political leaders with whom they vehemently disagree. I’m quite sure that’s not what Jesus meant, with the story of the Samaritan. And still, we all do it. We try to show some empathy for the addict, or the convicted. But empathy alone doesn’t show love. It’s necessary but not sufficient. To love our neighbor, we frequently stop short of person-to-person contact.
But to show hospitality? That requires contact. We need to invite, host, share. Being hospitable forces us to connect, at least momentarily. Hospitality is sort of a bite-sized version of love.
To truly love our neighbor, we need to both empathize and pray for them, as well as take actions for their benefit. Frequently, it seems to me, we try to empathize or pray, and stop short of acting. Or we think our thoughts will form and inspire our actions. This, I fear, is the problem with all of the thoughts and prayers about violence. We pray and hold vigils, and then don’t act. We let ourselves off the hook with our good intentions.
What if we turned that around? What if before true empathy and prayers, we acted? What if we showed hospitality to the stranger first? If I share a meal with my less-desirable neighbors, how much easier would it be to empathize, and to truly love them afterwards?
This morning, I’m thinking about how to show hospitality to strangers, so that I might move to the active side of love. With Memorial Day coming up, I have the chance to show hospitality to strangers. What about you?
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