My house has a sizable patio, bordered by a row of Christmas palms. It’s truly lovely, but for years, I barely used it. I’d traipse across it to get to the built-in storage shed in the corner when my water pump needed maintenance. I’d do a quick pass to eradicate the grass poking through the cracks while pulling weeds. I’d collect fallen palm fronds and sweep up piles of inedible, nutlike fruits.
It wasn’t until my landlord gifted me her old patio set that I began to host occasional outdoor dinner guests. The company was always stellar and my penchant for trying new recipes usually paid off, but the ambience was lacking. The single bulb above the picture window that overlooks the patio was never sufficient to drive away the shadows. You could just make out dessert as your eyes adjusted to the dusk, but an after-dinner board game was out of the question.
In short, some glorified Christmas lights made me exponentially more hospitable.
Life in the Dominican Republic is a master class in hospitality. Any Dominican will welcome you into their home on a dime, pull out anything resembling a chair, brew some coffee, and talk … until you’re done talking. It doesn’t matter if the porch isn’t swept or tía so-and-so’s hair is in curlers. You’re not keeping your hosts from anything; it’s impossible to overstay your welcome. You are present; therefore, you are important.
In How the Light Shines Through, author Chad Lakies enlightens readers as to the etymology of the word hospitality—it’s a blending of the Latin for “host” and “hostile” (105). The fellow missionaries and miscellaneous visitors who grace my patio aren’t aggressive, and none of the pastors, seminarians, or deaconesses who regularly conduct community home visits are packing heat. And yet, the very idea of entertaining at the spur of the moment sounds harsh to Anglo ears. We need to dust and throw some refrigerated cookie dough in the oven before our iPhone calendars show any openings. Even then, we’ll be distracted getting dinner in the Instant Pot and will have exactly forty-three minutes before it’s time to leave for Pilates. Inserting an unexpected visitor doesn’t compute.
My host culture has taught me much about hosting. Latinos are naturally open and amicable. Instead of creating divisive cliques as North Americans are wont to do (see Lakies, 101), the very Spanish language is based on relationships. Jesus was no stranger to inclusivity either. Throughout His earthly ministry, He broke the mold in terms of interaction with society’s most repugnant: women, children, lepers, tax collectors. Beaten and bloodied to within an inch of His life, on the cross He promised eternal life to a hardened criminal who repented.
Jesus promises the same to us, and we thus follow His example. Lakies explains, “it is the very power of God in us that empowers our welcoming of strangers, just as we were first welcomed by Christ” (107). The very title of his book gets at the crux of the matter: We show hospitality by radiating the light of the light of the world. He claims, “the shape of God’s mission is always a form of going out” (106). Illumined by the Gospel, we escape our comfort zones to be “active in doing the things that Jesus is doing” (Lakies, 119). It was the addition of light to my patio that amplified my desire and willingness to invite guests to dinner. So, too, the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, and enlightens, working faith in the hearts of hearers and inviting them to an unrivaled banquet in a “city [that] has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23).
Scripture: ESV®.
Quotations of Rev. Dr. Lakies are from How the Light Shines Through © 2024 Chad Lakies, published by Concordia Publishing House. All rights reserved.