Sermon Title: hospitality with a mission
Scripture: Hebrews 13:1-2; 1 Peter 4:8-9

xenophilia- translated as hospitality consists of 2 root words: stranger and friendship.

A formula for hospitality: an environment of welcome + the conversion of an identity = biblical hospitality.

“God’s hospitality is extended to his lost, broken, needy and often stigmatized people. This divine hospitality comes to us in the person of Jesus, the divine host who extends God’s hospitality to sinners, outcasts and strangers and thereby draws them and us into friendship with God. God’s embrace of humanity into friendship with Him is the ultimate form of welcoming the stranger.” ”Saved by faith and hospitality” - Joshua Jipp

“Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear, intrude and do harm. But still that is our vocation: to convert the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.” “Reaching Out” - Henri Nouwen

Our homes are to be hospitals; refuges of healing radiating the light of heaven. And our dinner tables are to be operating tables, the place where broken souls are made whole again. In our churches people should find rest from their battle for acceptance and release from the lie that they are nothing more than the goods that they posses. When we lower our defenses, when we remove our facades and our peepholes and we begin to be truly present with one another- then the healing power of the gospel can begin its work. “The Divine Commodity” - Skye Jethani