Recently I was asked to speak at the national conference for the Association for Christians in Student Development (ACSD). The organizers asked me to give a theological account for the work of student development and to show how the themes of the conference connected to the good work of student life. Here is the fifth installment of the six talks I gave on June 10-13.
Session 5 The Good Work of Hospitality
Good morning! I
hope you have been encouraged as we have been reflecting upon the good work
that you do and seeing how it is connected to the ongoing work of Jesus!
This morning I
want to talk about the good work of hospitality. I want anchor our discussion
on hospitality in what will at first seem like a really strange passage, Romans
16.1-16. Bear with me for a moment. Trust me, this text will preach!
As I read Romans
16.1-16, I want to ask you to listen for hospitality language (welcome), to pay
attention to family language, and to make note of the additional information
that Paul gives about all the people that he mentions in the passage.
Most
people skim over Romans 16 as if it were merely an insignificant list of “shout outs” or saludos. But here in this
short passage we see not only the problem that Paul is addressing in his
letter, but also the core of all that he has been trying to say for fifteen
chapters!
He
begins by asking the Roman church to “welcome” (cf. Rom 15.7) Phoebe, who was
most likely the one who was in charge of delivering and explaining the letter
to the congregations in Rome. It is illuminating that Paul sends a gentile
convert woman to read and interpret this letter to the Roman Christians. And it
is easy to miss the explosive and deeply theological claim that Paul makes when
he addresses Phoebe as “sister” (16.1). This gets to the heart of Paul’s
message to the Romans (and to us).
In
Christ, because of Christ, we have a new status; we are family members, who
belong to one another. In the Roman world, families were marked by loyalty,
honor, love, harmony, forgiveness, and goodwill towards one another. In the
culture of the day, more than our own, one’s identity was collective, and
derived from one’s family. Paul, with this short reference, unpacks all that he
has developed in Romans 1-11: Phoebe belongs to the family—to your family. And
you belong to Phoebe.
The
charge in the opening lines of Romans 16 is that the church in Rome would “welcome”
Phoebe, receive and treat her as family, in a way that is worthy of her status. As I
mentioned yesterday, this exhortation to “welcome one another” in the way that
Christ has welcomed us is central to what it looks like to join in the ongoing
work of Jesus Christ. This is what Christ is doing, making a new family.
This
charge is followed by a list of house churches that Paul addresses, perhaps
five or six, scholars debate this (Rom 16.3-16). Names tell us a lot about a
person in the ancient world. They can tell us whether they were slaves or free,
whether they were Roman, Greek, or Jewish; they give us indications of their
likely first languages (Greek, Aramaic, Latin); and they tell us where a person
is from, both geographically and socially.
What is striking about these names is that they tell us that the church
in Rome is made up of people from all kinds of backgrounds and ethnicities.
Prisca and Aquila where Jewish tentmakers who met Paul in Corinth (see Acts
18.1-3; perhaps Jewish freedmen as the names are common for slaves and former
slaves). That the woman’s name, Prisca, is first likely indicates that she had
a higher social status. Epaenetus is a gentile man who was Paul’s first convert
in Asia Minor. Mary was most likely a Jewish woman involved in gospel work.
Andronicus is a Greek name given to slaves or former slaves; and Junia is a
woman’s name in Latin, also usually reserved for slaves. Ampliatus, Urbanus,
and Stachys were likely gentile slaves, perhaps of Latin origin. Herodion was a
Jewish man. Other names like Olympas, Nereus, Philologus, and Julia perhaps
indicate people from the elite class in the Greco-Roman world, and that they
probably spoke Greek as their first language.
I’d
like to put forth a dynamic equivalent list of names to grasp the rhetorical
effect of what Paul is doing here, to appreciate how the first hearers would have
perceived what Paul was doing with this “saludo” or greeting:
Greet Mary Kay and Bubba, my fellow
workers in Christ; greet also the church that meets with Thurston and Jennifer,
our siblings in the Lord; Greet our siblings Shaneequa and LaShon, who together
with Deandre and Tamika serve in the Lord; greet also my beloved in Christ,
Carlos and Paulina, along with, Juan Pablo and Marisol. And greet those who are
from the family of Hyun and Chin Sun.
At
one level, this list shows that the gospel reached to all kinds of people, Jew,
Gentiles, slave, free, elite, and commoner, male and female alike. But this
also shows that the church in Rome was segregated; that people tended to meet
together according to their ethnic backgrounds, their first language, and their
socio-economic status. If we had the time to study Romans 14-15 we would see
that it is likely that these house churches gathered in isolation from one
another, and even had animosity towards one another (judging and despising one
another). Historically, we know that churches made up of Jews and churches made
up of predominantly gentiles often struggled to get along. They saw the other
as second class, as not fully belonging to the people of God. They often did
not see themselves as being joined together in one family.
But
Paul’s letter to the Romans seeks to address this problem, because he sees this
segregation as an afront to the core of the message of the gospel, a
contradiction to the work of Jesus Christ. So he summarizes all that he has
said in Romans with a strange but profound statement: “greet one another with all holy kiss” (Rom
16.16). In Roman culture, you only kissed family members (Jewett, 972-73). When
Paul exhorts the church in Rome, with all its diversity and division, to greet
one another with a kiss, he is expressing a deeply theological vision for them.
He is summarizing all that he has said in Romans 1-11, namely that through
Jesus, who embodies the promise of Abraham (Romans 4), God has made one
universal family that transcends national and ethnic identities while at the
same time affirming those identities. The point that Paul is making with Romans
is that we are to be defined primarily in terms of our baptism (Romans 6) and
not in the terms and categories that have been given to us by our culture. We
are brothers and sisters, and a such we are to welcome one another
accordingly—in contradiction to all that we have been conditioned to do by our
cultural norms.
This is why in the following verse, which we didn’t read, that he addressed them as “brothers and sisters”
(Rom 16.17), and why through this section he identifies people with the
qualifier “in Christ” or “in the Lord” (16.2,
3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12).
This
is one of the radical extensions of the gospel in the development of early
Christianity. As Christians pay attention to the work of Jesus Christ, the
began to see themselves as belonging to a new family; the work of Jesus entails
a new social understanding. For Paul, obedience to the gospel (1.5; 15.18;
16.18, 26) is expressed in the way we do life together; and it redefines who
“we” is. The gospel commands us to no longer define “we” in terms of ethnicity
or socio-economic status. The gospel reconfigures our social imagination. For
Paul obedience to the gospel means that we welcome one another as brothers and
sisters, just as Christ has welcomed us.
Discipleship,
participating in the ongoing work of Jesus Christ, is all about hospitality. It
is all about recognizing that Christ is gathering all kinds of people into his
one family, people who have gifts and resources that are meant to enrich the
family and bear witness to God’s beauty.
The
good work of helping students from different backgrounds is integral to
orienting our labor around the work of Jesus Christ. What Paul is calling for
in the book of Romans is as much a posture as it is a practice: open yourselves
up to those who are not like you and receive them as family. Share your
resources and value the contributions of your brothers and sisters who come
from backgrounds different than your own.
But
there is a danger in talking about the good work of hospitality. It is not hard
to twist hospitality into something it is not. Talk of hospitality can entice
us into thinking that where we have the balance of power; I am the host—you are
the guest. You need what I have. This is true in one sense. But it is only true
in the sense that we are all guests. Christ
is the host, who has given us gifts and assets to share with his body. Christian
hospitality recognizes that we are all called as guests who are made hosts
because of his work in us, through us, before us, and around us. As such, we
are all called to open ourselves up as guest-hosts of the good gifts that
Christ has given us, as well as guests who come to receive the hospitality of
others.
Discussion/reflection
questions:
This
morning Dr Taryn Ozuna Allen will be sharing with us how validation theory can help
us to become better at hospitality on our campuses, and how we can become both
hosts and guests who welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. In
preparation for this, I ask you to reflect/discuss the following:
1 What
are the ways in which we are enticed to think of ourselves as the hosts (with
no needs) who hold all the resources and power? How does recognizing Jesus as
the host change that perspective?
2.
What
are the ways in which we are enticed to think that we are guests that have
nothing to offer but our need?
3.
What is
one way that you can become a better guest this coming academic year?
Prayer:
Father, we thank you that in Christ you have made us guests of your generous
hospitality, and we thank you for the gifts that you have given each of us.
Equip us to share those gifts with others; and open us up to the gifts that you
have for us through the hospitality of others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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