Welcome to the Table

By Mark Van Steenwyk

I grew up in a household where the dining room table was simply used as storage. It was a place for mail, keys, and stuff that didn’t fit inside the “junk drawer.” We certainly didn’t sit around the table for dinner; we sat around the television instead.

That is why it has taken me years to understand the importance of the dining room table. Apart from the Table, the New Testament doesn’t make sense. After all, Paul saved some of his harshest critiques for those who abused the common table—saying that, because of their lack of love for one another, they ate at a “table of demons” instead of the Table of the Lord. And among other things, Jesus was condemned because of who he ate with. His adversaries couldn’t tolerate him sullying himself by eating with “sinners.” Likewise, the church was expected to practice hospitality to the stranger.

The posture of our way of life as the church is, in some ways, summarized by the Table. The Table is the place of mutuality and respect for our sisters and brothers (for example, 1 Corinthians 10-11). The Table is the place where we welcome the outsider (for example, Matthew 25:31-46). And the Table is the place where we leave the comfort of our own home to dine with “sinners” (for example, Luke 19).

Hospitality is at the heart of Christianity. And, by definition, it is practiced with strangers. Sharing food and shelter and all-good-things with friends and family is good, but it isn’t hospitality. The word “hospitality” comes from the Latin root hospes which means “stranger” or “guest.” It can also, in some instances, mean “host”. The Greek word for hospitality is philoxenos. This is, incidentally, the word for hospitality we find in the New Testament. “Philo” (the first part of the word) means “love” and “xenos” (the second part of the word) means “stranger”…but it can also mean “host.” And so, “philoxenos” can mean both “love for the stranger” and “love from the host”.

When you are hospitable, you are showing the hospitality of God who desires to include all people in the project of redeeming all of creation. Alternately, when you are hospitable, you are welcoming Christ. Paradoxically, in the act of hospitality God is both the benevolent host and the Stranger in our midst.

Living in South Minneapolis, the problem of homelessness is something which we at Missio Dei run into daily. We try to relieve this problem by offering homeless people a place to stay in one of our hospitality rooms. Between our community houses, there are homeless staying with us every week, however we do not just give them a place to stay and leave it at that. We interact with our guests and invite them into our daily life. We share prayers and meals with our guests and try to discern what they might need to help them get back on their feet in an unforgiving world.

“Gary” and “Vicky” were just such people: a young transient couple who, at first, just needed a place to stay. We soon learned that they were expecting their first child. Despite their attempts to find lodging at homeless shelters here in the Twin Cities, they found themselves either turned away because of liability issues related to the pregnancy, or were asked to separate into different shelters. We decided to let them stay with us until the baby was born and longer term housing was secured.

People need more than just shelter; they need a community of support. By practicing hospitality, we not only have an opportunity to meet tangible “needs,” but to offer safe places of healing, where folks who experience alienation can begin to experience wholeness. All of our churches can offer such healing to those in our communities who need to experience welcome in the midst of an inhospitable world.

Jesus not only challenged how we extend hospitality, but broke the social norms by being a guest to questionable hosts (like tax collectors). It was a big no-no to be a guest in the home of a disreputable person. This goes beyond the ancient notion of hospitality into something much more provocative. Jesus didn’t ask for the stranger or outcast to adopt the regular symbols and practices of covenantal faithfulness before including them in the Kingdom. Jesus went out into the world, to places of alienation, to houses of woundedness, and offered healing.

If we, the church are to be a people of hospitality—a people of welcome—we are also called to leave our places of safety to bring healing into the brokenness. This way of life is clearly seen in Jesus’ patterns of ministry.

If we extend hospitality with an open heart, eventually our guests and friends from the margins will become a part of our community. It is easy to minister to “them.” But it is hard to be like family to those whom we judge as “less” than us. Paul knew this reality all too well—he was constantly challenging the churches throughout the Empire to love one another like family. Nevertheless, the gentiles judged the Jews and the Jews judged the gentiles. And the wealthy disrespected the poor (though, strangely, we don’t hear about the poor disrespecting the wealthy).

At Missio Dei, we have meals often. But the two meals that I appreciate the most come on Sunday and Saturday. On Sunday, we structure our worship service around a common meal. We make no demands upon those who come share a meal with us—even though we considered it to be “communion.” Since Jesus made no demands upon those who were welcome at the Table, neither do we.

On Saturdays (during the warmer months), we load up our bike trailers and bring fresh ingredients and high quality portable cooking equipment to prepare a meal in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. A variety of people from all over the neighborhood come to our weekly feeding for good food and friendly conversation. Over the years, we believe a miracle has happened—on any given Saturday from noon to 4pm, you will find Somali refugees, local students, nomadic anarchists, local businesspeople, homeless folks, and Mennonites eating a meal together. In this way, we believe we are helping people to affirm one another just as they are.

The Table is a place without judgement. It is a place of acceptance and mutuality. It is a place where all of us come just as we are before God to experience God’s presence in and through one another.

Jesus’ way of hospitality goes way beyond welcome–it is transformative. The ultimate goal of hospitality is tearing down the walls of division. And that, I believe, includes economic walls. We must, as folks who depend upon the mercy of God, realize that those of us who have houses don’t “deserve” to be sheltered any more than those who don’t have homes. That the divisions between homeless and housed, rich and poor, powerful and meek, do not reflect the Kingdom of God.

This is why Paul had such strong words for the Corinthian church, essentially arguing that when we bring social divisions to our dining room table, we are eating judgement. The eucharist–the holy meal of the gathered saints–is a revolutionary sacrament. It isn’t magical–by eating bread and wine we don’t simply become like Jesus. Rather, it is a place where we can re-imagine our shared humanity in such a way that we can then go forth and infect the world with healing and liberation.

Around the common table, prejudices, judgements, and inequities are to become undone. Hospitality provides not only an opportunity to attend to basic needs, but also a chance at destroying the very inequities that render such attention necessary.

The question is, how do we embody God’s heart? Can we be a people who sit at table with strangers and let the walls of division fall? How do we take all of our things—our money and stuff and homes—and yield them to God’s dream for his people? How do we welcome the stranger as Christ and be a willing guest in uncomfortable places? We must give and receive revolutionary hospitality.

Revolutionary hospitality refused to accept the status quo. It moves beyond mere charity and, instead, creates space for enemies to live as family, strangers to live as friends.

In Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, anthropologist David Graeber writes:

…revolutionary action is any collective action which rejects, and therefore confronts, some form of power or domination and in doing so, reconstitutes social relations [even within the collective]…Revolutionary action doesn’t necessarily have to aim to topple governments…attempts to create autonomous communities in the face of power would, almost by definition, be revolutionary acts.

I believe this begins with hospitality–by inviting people into our common lives in such a way that they transform our most basic understanding of family and community. Hospitality becomes revolutionary when the line between the host and the guest, the owner and the dispossessed, the master and the slave, the privileged and the marginalized gets so blurred that we can begin to redefine our social relations in the way of Jesus Christ.

When we gather around the table, we can experience Jesus Christ through our friends, through strangers, and even through enemies. And we can begin to become the Body of Christ, showing God’s love to an inhospitable world.