The inspiration for this podcast is from Rosaria Butterfield’s book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key. In it, she argues that a purposefully hospitable lifestyle is the missing link between Christians and the watching world. Butterfield experienced this kind of hospitality in the home and the lives of Ken and Floy Smith. Weekly meals with other Christians in their home quite literally changed her life. After a few years of doing life together, she would leave her career, her lesbian partner, literally everything about her old life, to trust and follow Jesus.
From Butterfield’s book:
Radically ordinary hospitality—those who live it see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God. They recoil at reducing a person to a category or a label. They see God’s image reflected in the eyes of every human being on earth. They know they are like meth addicts and sex-trade workers. They take their own sin seriously—including the sin of selfishness and pride. They take God’s holiness and goodness seriously. They use the Bible as a lifeline, with no exceptions.
Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom. They open doors; they seek out the underprivileged. They know that the gospel comes with a house key. They take biblical theology seriously, as well as Christian creeds and confessions and traditions.
Offering radically ordinary hospitality is an everyday thing at our house. It starts early, with minestrone soup simmering on one burner and a pot of steamed rice warming on another. It ends late, with Kent making beds on the couches and blowing up air mattresses for a traveling, stranded family. A truly hospitable heart anticipates everyday, Christ-centered table fellowship and guests who are genuinely in need. Such a heart seeks opportunities to serve. Radically ordinary hospitality doesn’t keep fussy lists or make a big deal about invitations. Invitations are open.
Radically ordinary hospitality is reflected in Christian homes that resemble those of the first century. Such homes are communal. They are deep and wide in Christian tradition and practice. As Christians we are a set-apart people, and we do things differently. We don’t worry about what the unbelieving neighbors think, because the unbelieving neighbors are right here sharing our table, and they are more than happy to tell us what they think.
Practicing radically ordinary hospitality necessitates building margin time into the day, time where regular routines can be disrupted but not destroyed. This margin stays open for the Lord to fill—to take an older neighbor to the doctor, to babysit on the fly, to make room for a family displaced by a flood or a worldwide refugee crisis.
Living out radically ordinary hospitality leaves us with plenty to share, because we intentionally live below our means.
In radically ordinary hospitality, host and guest are interchangeable. If you come to my house for dinner and notice that I am still teaching a math lesson to a child, and my laundry remains on the dining room table unfolded, you roll up your sleeves and fold my laundry. Or set the table. Or load the dishwasher. Or feed the dogs. Radically ordinary hospitality means that hosts are not embarrassed to receive help, and guests know that their help is needed. A family of God gathering daily together needs each and every person. Host and guest are permeable roles.
Radically ordinary hospitality lived out in the family of God gathers daily, prays constantly, and needs no invitation to do so. And those who don’t yet know the Lord are summoned for food and fellowship. Earthly good is shown as good, and the solitary may choose to be alone but need not be chronically lonely.
Radically ordinary hospitality is accompanied suffering. Radically ordinary hospitality characterizes those who don’t fuss over different worldviews represented at the dinner table. The truly hospitable aren’t embarrassed to keep friendships with people who are different. They don’t buy the world’s bunk about this. They know that there is a difference between acceptance and approval, and they courageously accept and respect people who think differently from them. They don’t worry that others will misinterpret their friendship. Jesus dined with sinners, but he didn’t sin with sinners. Jesus lived in the world, but he didn’t live like the world. This is the Jesus paradox. And it defines those who are willing to suffer with others for the sake of gospel sharing and gospel living, those who care more for integrity than appearances.
Engaging in radically ordinary hospitality means we provide the time necessary to build strong relationships with people who think differently than we do as well as build strong relationships from within the family of God. It means we know that only hypocrites and cowards let their words be stronger than their relationships, making sneaky raids into culture on social media or behaving like moralizing social prigs in the neighborhood.
Radically ordinary hospitality shows this skeptical, post-Christian world what authentic Christianity looks like. Radically ordinary hospitality gives evidence of faith in Jesus’s power to save. It doesn’t get dug in over politics or culture or where someone stands on current events. It knows what conversion means, what identity in Christ does, and what repentance creates. It knows that sin is deceptive. To be deceived means to be taken captive by an evil force to do its bidding. It knows that people need to be rescued from their sin, not to be given pep talks about good choice making. It remembers that Jesus rescues people from their sin. Jesus rescued us. Jesus lives and reigns.
In an interview with Focus on the Family’s Jim Daly, Rosaria said, “I think the spiritual warfare that we experience is disarming to us, and it’s unusual. And instead, my invitation is for Christians to just – just relax and step into the conflict.
But I think that we want it to be nice. We want to have a nice dinner. We want the table settings to match. We don’t want the cat to have a hairball (Laughter) as soon as the guests come in. You know, we want – and we certainly don’t want our guests to be potentially offended. We don’t want our guests to offend us. We have lots of anxiety. And this is spiritual warfare.
And instead, I think what we need to do is what Ken and Floy Smith did. They said, “You know what? If we’re going to be agents of grace, then we need to get close enough to this stranger to put the hand of the stranger into the hand of the Savior. And you know what? Somebody here is going to get hurt.”
Have you experienced intentional, generous hospitality in your lives? What was it like? How did it affect you?
At the end of Romans 13, Paul is talking about what love in action looks like. He writes, “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves… Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.” Can you describe what radically ordinary hospitality has been like as you’ve practiced it through the years?
Why did you begin to practice this kind of hospitality?
How do you offer hospitality without being pushy or obnoxious or making people feel like they are a project?
Having an open home, regular meals, building relationships, good manners/respecting others
Is this kind of hospitality for every Christian in every season of life? Why or why not? (Note the difference between what is inconvenient and what is unwise or impossible.)
What are hindrances to being hospitable?
Lack of margin, viewing hospitality as performance, fear of others, fear of not measuring up, creating an “us vs them” mentality on social media, selfishness.
How can we love our neighbors without leading them to think we approve everything they do?
Butterfield notes, “Christians have a theology and a worldview for calling strangers to the table, and then sitting there long enough to be both earthly and spiritual good. Christians have a theology of difference and diversity.”
Butterfield says that hospitality is spiritual warfare. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Closing Thoughts
John Piper notes that the God-centered motivation for hospitality begins in the Old Testament. Perhaps the clearest text is Leviticus 19:33-34, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Our values are to mirror God’s values. And God values hospitality.
The ultimate act of hospitality was when Jesus died for sinners. All of us were aliens, strangers, outside salvation, without God and having no hope in the world. But God created “in himself one new man in place of two (Israel and Gentiles), so making peace, and [to] reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end… So then you [Gentiles] are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Ephesians 2:15-16, 19. God destined us for love because of his glorious grace.
Check out this short podcast by Amy Joy: