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Today’s reading from Exodus offers a concrete example of how we are to love our neighbor as ourselves - by welcoming the stranger, the vulnerable, into our midst and caring for their well-being. This is the sacred call to hospitality.
Marjorie Thompson, in her book Soul Feast, reminds us, "Hospitality is an essential expression of love…Because we have a supremely hospitable God, in whose image and likeness we are made, we are capable of reflecting hospitality back to God, to others, to the earth and even to ourselves.”
While I find Marjorie Thompson’s words a good reminder of the source of hospitality, it is Henri Nouwen’s reflection on that virtue that touches me most deeply. In fact, I had a friend to write his words in calligraphy so I could frame them and hang them in the entry of my home: "Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own song, speak their own languages, dance their own dances, free also to love and follow their own vocations.”
May the grace of hospitality flow through us, the followers of the Host who welcomes us each week, each day, each moment of our lives.