E-book in Progress
I hereby invite all interested readers of this blog to comment on and discuss and contribute to my writing project, in which I explore the missiological potentials of the metaphor of guesting. It is a follow up to my article "A Missiology of Listening".
Are you aware of books or articles on guesting relevant for this project? What do you think of exploring the metaphor of "guesting" for missiology? Constructive and critical contributions are welcome.
Mission as Hospitality - and Guesting?
I hereby invite all interested readers of this blog to comment on and discuss and contribute to my writing project, in which I explore the missiological potentials of the metaphor of guesting. It is a follow up to my article "A Missiology of Listening".
Are you aware of books or articles on guesting relevant for this project? What do you think of exploring the metaphor of "guesting" for missiology? Constructive and critical contributions are welcome.
Mission as Hospitality - and Guesting?
Hosting/welcoming and guesting/visiting belong
together. Without guests no hosts, and vice versa. Hospitality and guesting are part of our daily life
and are also described in much detail in both Old and New Testament. As Tobias
Brandner has stated, “The dialectic of hosting and visiting is a central thread
throughout the biblical tradition and offers a key to reading the whole story
of the Bible” (Brandner 2013:94)
Hospitality has – in particular in recent years –
become a very important metaphor or even paradigm of mission, God’s mission and
the participation of the church in God’s mission. Much more so than has been
the case with guesting.
God is our host
and we are his guests. The Danish theologian and hymn writer N. F. S. Grundtvig
calls the church a “guest chamber”.[1]
God’s hospitality – God being the host – motivates and inspires us to participate in a mission of hospitality where we in the church welcome people and extend God’s hospitality to them. Together with them we are all guests of our Lord, seated at the same table.
[Amos Yong, Martimer Arias, Gathogo - to be expanded]
……
……
Most recently the
centrality for mission of hospitality has been emphasised the new WCC mission
document, in which it reads that
To the
extent that the church practises radical hospitality to the estranged in
society, it demonstrates commitment to embodying the values of the reign of God
(Isaiah 58:6). …. God’s hospitality calls us to move beyond binary notions of
culturally dominant groups as hosts, and migrant and minority peoples as
guests. Instead, in God’s hospitality, God is host and we are all invited by
the Spirit to participate with humility and mutuality in God’s mission.[3]
There are,
however, some critical problems concerning the use of hospitality a metaphor
for mission today - at least in societies where the church traditionally has
been powerful and dominant.[to be exanded]
…
The host/hospitality
metaphor reveals many important aspects of the mission of God and the mission
of the church, but I n this chapter, however, I intend to approach the
host-guest relationship from another angle and pursue “guesting” or “being a
guest” as a metaphor for mission in the hope that this metaphor may reveal
other missional aspects of mission that might be pertinent to the our
postmodern Danish context: God as guest, Jesus as guest, mission as guesting.
God as Host - and
Guest?
God is the
creator, and we are all his creatures. God the creator is our host and all is
creatures are invited to his table as guests. But are we justified in
conceiving God also as the guest, as the guest of his own creatures?
When the
salvation history takes off through the calling of Abraham, through whom ”all
the peoples on earth will be blessed” (Gen 12,3), God appears in the process to
Abraham in the persons of three guests. "The Lord appeared to Abraham near
the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in
the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing
nearby"(Gen 18,1-2).
Abraham welcomed
them as any good host would do and treated them as his guests. He had their
feet washed and offered them the best food he had. In the context of being a
guest of Abraham ”the Lord said, ”I will surely return to you about this time
next year, and Sara your wife will have a son” (Gen18,10).[4]
As it will be
shown later in this article when God incarnated himself in Jesus from Nazareth
one of the most fitting descriptions of the role of Jesus among people would be
that of a guest who is the exemplary recipient of hospitiality, while he at the
same time gave expression to the hospitality of God.
The Holy Spirit,
the third person of the Trinity, may be seen as “the divine guest resident in
the hearts and lives of the people of God, upon whom she has been poured out”.
At the same time “the Spriti empowers from within the body of Christ (the
anointed ones) to bear witness to the hosptialbkle God to the ends of the earth
(Acts 1,8) (Yong 2008:104).
It is noteworthy
that the biblical idea of God as our guest has found a strong resonance in The
Danish Hymnbook ("Den Danske Salmebog" DS, 2009). In about 30 of the
792 hymns, God (in most hymns the references are to Jesus, but in a few the
reference is to the Holy Spirit) is referred to in guest-terminology. The
incarnation is described in terms of guesting. Thomas Kingo states that God has
broken out of his heavenly abode to become the guest of the world (DS 124,1).
And N. F. S. Grundtvig says that Jesus has come to us as guest for the sake of
our salvation (DS 81,4). B.S. Ingemann in his Christmas hymns sings about the
joy brought about by the creator visiting his creation.
Joy is
our guest on earth this day,
the little King of creation!
Come, sparrow and dove, fly down and stay
to join in our celebration.
Dance on your mohter’s lap, dear child!
a wondrous day has arisen:
today He is born, our Saviour mild –
the pathway to Paradise given.[5]
the little King of creation!
Come, sparrow and dove, fly down and stay
to join in our celebration.
Dance on your mohter’s lap, dear child!
a wondrous day has arisen:
today He is born, our Saviour mild –
the pathway to Paradise given.[5]
Kingo refers to Jesus being a guest at the wedding of Canaan as a
reminder that Jesus also wants to be the guest and bless marriages today (DS
144). Grundtvig calls the Holy Spirit our counsellor or adviser who is the
honourable guest of our heart (DS 305,2).
The People of God
as Guests
When St. Stephen in his speech in Acts 7 recapitulates the story of the
forefathers of Israel we get the impression that their mode of living was that
of sojourners, aliens, guests, depending on the hospitality of other people.
Abraham was told to leave his home country and his home to go to a land that
God would show him. Joseph was sold to Egypt and Moses was adopted into the
household of Pharoah, and later in his life lived as a resident alien in the
land of Midian (Yong 2008:108f).
Abraham – and through him the people of God – was called to participate
in the mission of God. The first “great commission” given by God to Abraham (Gen 13,2-3), which
points forward the second “great commission” given by Jesus to his disciples
(Matt 28,18-20), followed God’s command to Abraham turn himself into a guest,
depending on the hospitality of others “Leave your country, your people and
your father’s household and go to the land I will show you” (Gen 12.1). In the
period prior to their settlement I Canaan, the people of God was portrayed as
sojourners, guests, who in carrying out their ministry were called to be
dependent on the hospitality of others, and to receive God’s blessings from
their hosts.
Jesus as Guest
When God’s promise about blessing to all people through his descendants
was fulfilled and a saviour was born in the family of Mary and Joseph, the
encounter of the Son of God with the world was – as a guest in a stable in
Bethlehem. Shortly afterwards the holy family realised that king Herod did not
welcome them in his kingdom so they had to flee to Egypt and stay there for
some time as refugees and guests.
Although Jesus was the Son of God, and could have approached his
creation and creatures as their creator and lord, he did not impose himself on
people but offered himself as a guest, someone they could receive and
welcome or freely reject him. The evangelist John reflects on this when he
writes that "He
was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not
recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive
him. Yet to all who received him …" (John 1,10-12).
Everything and everybody belongs to God, so the Son of God “came to that
which was his own”, and could as a king have commanded obedience from his
subjects, but in stead he approached humanity as a powerless and vulnerable
guest, whom they could freely receive and welcome – or reject.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus ministered to people from the position of
a guest. When somebody came to him and said that he wanted to follow him
wherever he would go, Jesus pointed to his way of life: ”Foxes have holes and
birds of the air have nest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”
(Matt 8,20). Apparently, Jesus was always the guest in someone’s house. We know
that he often was the guest in the house of the siblings Mary, Martha and
Lazarus (Luke 10,38ff), and we hear about him visiting many other houses. He
seems to consciously be placing himself in a position of dependence on the
hospitality of others.
When Jesus encounters the woman at the well in Samaria, he approaches
her as her guest and asks her, ”Will you give me a drink?” and thereby
treating her as if she was him host. As a guest he shows her respect although
she is a Samaritan and he belongs to the Jewish people who would normally
consider themselves to be superior to the Samaritans. It seems that by making
her his host he succeeded in initiating a very open conversation with her about
sensitive issues of her personal life and of faith in God.
At the beginning of the history of salvation, the Lord appeared to
Abraham as a guest, and at the climax of the history of salvation, the
resurrected Lord appeared to two of his discouraged disciples on their way from
Jerusalem to Emmaus as a stranger whom they ask to be their guest at a meal. As
a guest he does not impose himself on them but listens to them and asks them
questions – and then shares his insight with them. During the meal when
Jesus breaks the bread and gives thanks, however, they realise that their guest
was the resurrected Lord (Luke 24,13-32).
Jesus met the disciples on the way to Emmaus as a stranger and a guest,
but he ended up acting as their host when he broke the bread. This reflects a
key event in the ministry of Jesus where he also acted as the host, namely the
Lord’s Supper where Jesus is truly the host and his disciples are his guests.
As Abraham washed the feet of his three guests in Mamre and gave them a meal,
in the same way Jesus washes the feet of his disciples/guests and shares a meal
with them (John 13).
The Lord is of course our creator and as creatures we are the guests in
his world. The Lord is our Saviour who in his grace invites us to be his guests
at his table. But a closer reading of the Old and in particular the New
Testament reveals that God as our guest is a very significant theme in the
salvation history.
In Jesus parable about judgment day Jesus identifies himself with the stranger who needs to be welcomed as a guest. Jesus says: “… I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in” (Matt 25,35f). And in the Book of Revelation Jesus is reported to have said to the Church in Laodicea, and it also may summarise his guest-approach to ministry in general: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev 3,20).
At the end of his earthly ministry Jesus said to his disciples: “Peace
be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20,21). The
sending of Jesus by his father implied a ministry of guesting. The question is,
if guesting is also a key component of the ministry and mission of the church?
The Disciples Sent
to Be Guests
As it was shown
in the previous chapter, in his sending by his father to the world he saw
himself as a guest of those to whom he was sent to minister. Thereby he set an
example for his disciples who had followed him and participated in his
“guesting”. When Jesus sent out the 12 and the 72 they were sent with his
authority to preach the kingdom and to heal the sick. What is often overlooked,
however, is the way he sends them. They are not sent out as a well-equipped army,
but they are sent out empty handed. “Take nothing for the journey – no staff,
no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic” (Luke 9,2). The explanation is that
they are sent as – guests, which means that they would be depending not on
their own resources but on their hosts to whom they were sent to minister. And
they were supposed to behave like good guests: When they entered a house they
should convey “Peace to this house“. And they should “Stay in that house,
eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages”.
The disciples of Jesus were to carry out their missionary ministry of preaching
the kingdom of god and of healing the sick as the guests of those they were
ministering to.
[to be expanded]
[to be expanded]
The Ministry of Guesting in the Early Church
There are many
examples of a continuation of the ministry of guesting among the disciples
after the ascension of Jesus.
[…] the spirit drives them into the world, even to the ends of the earth (Acts
1:8), to interact with and receive the hospitality, kindness, and gifts of
strangers of all sorts, even Samaritans, public and governmental officials,
and “barbarians” (Yong 2008:107)
[…] the spirit drives them into the world, even to the ends of the earth (Acts
1:8), to interact with and receive the hospitality, kindness, and gifts of
strangers of all sorts, even Samaritans, public and governmental officials,
and “barbarians” (Yong 2008:107)
In Acts of the
Apostles we read about Peter who is the guest of Simon the tanner in Joppa,
when (Acts 9:43 & 10:6), when the Roman centurion Cornelius invites
him to stay in his house in Caesarea. The surprising aspect of Peter’s acceptance
of the hospitality of Cornelius is that he is Roman soldier, who is not a Jew.
What convinced Peter to do so was the vision God gave him while he was still a
guest in the house of Simon the tanner, a vision that helped him re realize
that he “should not call any man unclean or impure” (Acts 10,28). His
acceptance of the hospitality of this gentile bridges the gap between Jews and
gentiles and becomes the vehicle for the evangelisation of gentiles: as the
guest in Cornelius’ house he shares the gospel with Cornelius and the others in
the house and the Holy Spirit falls upon them and they are baptised (Arterbury
2007).
As an itinerant
preacher Paul was completely dependent on the hospitality of those to whom (and
with whom) he ministered. Paul and his colleagues stayed in the home of Lydia,
a new convert (Acts 16,15, and in the house of the Philippian jailer (Acts
16,31ff), and after having survived a shipwreck Paul was the guest of the
Maltese islanders and the chief official. While guesting these people Paul
preached the gospel to his hosts.
The Missionary Commission
In his book
”Transforming Mission” (1992) David Bosch has identified six historical
paradigms of mission and in each period ”there was a tendency to take one
specific biblical verse as the missionary text” (Bosch 1992:339). E.g,
in the patristic understanding (the Eastern Church) it was John 3,16, in the
medieval Roman Catholic missionary period it was Luke 14,23 and in the
Protestant Reformation focused on Rom 1,16f. Mission in the wake of
Enlightenment – i.e., in the modern missionary period – the text that was most
often referred to is the so-called ”Great Commission” of Matt 28,18-20.
”All authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of
all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And
surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age”.
This text has no
doubt inspired and mobilised many for genuine mission, but interpreted in the
light of the dominant thinking in the Enlightenment period and the colonial
situation this missionary this text was often understood in a way that
confirmed a Western/Christian feeling of superiority. It was tempting to focus
on the aspect of authority and obedience and on a one-way communication
(”teaching them to obey”).
In the last part
of the book ”Toward a Relevant Missiology”, Bosch discusses ”Elements of an
Emerging Ecumenical Missionary Paradigm” and here he highlights many aspects
that have to be taken into consideration when developing not the postmodern
ecumenical missionary paradigm, but – I think – the variety of mission
paradigms we need for today.
In a
post-Christendom and increasing multi-religious society – such as the Danish
society and most other Western societies – the Church is loosing power and
Christianity is becoming one among many religious options. The Church is not
longer at the centre of society and its attraction is diminishing. Fewer and
fewer people respond when the church bells call people to church on Sundays.
The context in which we live sometimes blind us to certain texts in the bible
and help us to see the relevance of others. Maybe it is the increasing
marginalisation of church and Christianity that has helped some to see the
exemplary relevance of stories in Old as well as New Testament about God who
approaches our world as a guest – and to see texts such as Luke 9,1-9 (parr.
Matt 10,5-15, Mark 67-13) and 10,1-16 as challenging missionary texts for
today.
….
In many missiological books and articles the
missiological significance of hospitality has been explored and analysed. What
is needed, however, is to reflect more deeply about the missiological
significance of guesting.
Qualities of
Guesting as Mission
....
Practical
Implications of a Missiology of Guesting
....
Guesting and
Hosting
....
Literature
Arias, Mortimer
2008 “Centripetal Mission, or Evangelization by Hospitality,” in The Study of
Evangelism. Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church , ed. Paul W.
Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, pp.
424–426
2008 “Centripetal Mission, or Evangelization by Hospitality,” in The Study of
Evangelism. Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church , ed. Paul W.
Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, pp.
424–426
Arterbury,
Andrew
2007 ”Entertaining Angels: Hospitality in Luke and Acts”. Christian Reflection:
A Series in Faith and Ethics. Waco, TX: Baylor University.
2007 ”Entertaining Angels: Hospitality in Luke and Acts”. Christian Reflection:
A Series in Faith and Ethics. Waco, TX: Baylor University.
Brandner,
Tobias,
2013 ”Hosts and Guests: Hospitality as
an Emerging Paradigm in Mission”
International Review of Mission. Volume 102, Issue 1, pp. 94-102
International Review of Mission. Volume 102, Issue 1, pp. 94-102
Derrida, Jacques
2000 Of
Hospitality. Trans. by Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Press.
Gathogo, Julius
2011 "African Hospitality form a Missiogical Perspective: Aiding Church and
Societal Growth"
2011 "African Hospitality form a Missiogical Perspective: Aiding Church and
Societal Growth"
Karris, Robert J.
2006 Eating Your Way Through Luke’s Gospel.
Collegeville: Minnesota.
Yong, Amos
2008 Hospitality
and the Other. Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighor.
Maryknoll: New York
Maryknoll: New York
[1] In the hymn from
1825, revised in 1853, ”Tør nogen ihukomme”.
”Huset med de høje sale
tømres kun af skaberhånd,
må fra Himmelen neddale
som til støvet Herrens Ånd;
vi af bløde bøgestammer,
under nattergalesang,
bygge kun et gæstekammer
til en himmelsk altergang.”
[3] Together towards life: mission and evangelism in
changing landscapes. Proposal for a new WCC Affirmation on Mission and
Evangelism. Submitted by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME)
(September 2012). Accessed at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/mission-and-evangelism/together-towards-life-mission-and-evangelism-in-changing-landscapes.html .
[4] God appeared as a guest (or rather three guests) when
announcing a message of salvation (the promise of son) to Abraham, and God
similarly seems to have appeared as a guest (or rather two guests) when announcing
judgment (upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah) to Lot (Gen19,1-21).
[5] Verse 2 of ”Julen har bragt velsignet bud” translated by
Edward Broadbridge into English in Hymns in English. A Selection of Hymns
from The Danish Hymnbook (2009), p. 28).
