Faith Full
Week seven - Radical Hospitality
Ephesians 2:11-13 and 1 Peter 4:8-9; also Luke’s Gospel
Practices of faith - stopping, fasting, reading scripture, praying, community, sabbath
- These practices come from the way Jesus lived his life - we’re learning to actually follow Jesus
Hospitality
In Luke’s gospel Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. —Robert Karris
The way of Jesus - lots and lots of eating, i.e.
Luke tells the story of Jesus geographically, but also meal-by-meal:
(outline from Tim Chester, a UK pastor)
Luke 5 - Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners at the home of Levi
Luke 7 - Jesus is anointed at the home of Simon the Pharisee during a meal
Luke 9 - Jesus feeds the five thousand
Luke 10 - Jesus eats at the home of Mary and Martha
Luke 11 - Jesus condemns the Pharisees and teachers of the law at a meal
Luke 14 - Jesus is at a meal when he urges people to invite the poor to their meals rather than their friends
Luke 19 - Jesus invites himself to dinner with Zaccheaeus
Luke 22 - Jesus shares the Last Summer with his disciples
Luke 24 - the risen Christ has a meal with the two disciples in Emmaus, and then later eats fish with the disciples in Jerusalem
Jesus is breaking down barriers and boundaries one meal at a time. He’s confronting our expectations and
Greek word for hospitality is philoxenia
Philo - “friend” from the verb phileo which means to love in the non-romantic sense
Xenia - “foreigner”
- In our world we fear what and who we perceive to be “other,” and hospitality is the call to
We love this way because it’s how God loved us. In the story of redemption, we are the other
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. —Ephesians 2:11-13
- Jesus invites us to His table, and He also asks us to set our own tables.
8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. —1 Peter 4:8
We have to “one another” one another. —Andy Stanley
If every Christian family in the world simply offered good conversational hospitality around a table once a week to neighbors, we would eat our way into the kingdom of God. —Alan Hirsch