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Thesis 11<\/strong>– We must practice hospitality.<\/em><\/p>\n It is my habit, when I grow unduly discouraged with the church, to read through I Corinthians. Reading through the long list of serious problems that Paul had to address there, and suddenly the contemporary church shines by comparison. There is drunkenness at the Lord\u2019s Table, bitter divisions, theological squabbling and gross sexual immorality. Paul addresses that sexual immorality by suggesting that what is going on inside the Corinthian church is worse that anything the heathen would accept. Then he takes a parenthetical aside on the Christian\u2019s response to the sexual practices of those outside the kingdom, \u201cI wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people\u2014not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler\u201d (I Corinthians 5:9-11). As shocking as Paul\u2019s wisdom is here, it gets even more shocking. How, we might wonder, ought we to treat those who practice these sins, if they name the name of Christ? We are not to even eat with such a one, Paul tells us. Should they be shunned? Should they be stoned? Should they be turned over to the state? No. We should not eat with them.<\/p>\n As if this were not enough to show us of the importance of hospitality, it shows up again from the pen of Paul, in another unexpected place. He tells us that, as we might expect, elders in the church should be sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, not a drunkard, not a lover of money. But Paul also tells us that an elder should be hospitable. This ought not to surprise us because the concept of table fellowship is central to the Christian faith. When we come to the Lord\u2019s Table we are receiving God\u2019s assurance that we are at peace with Him. When we welcome others to our own tables, we are communicating much the same thing.<\/p>\n \u201cCommunity\u201d is one of those buzzwords that we know is critically important, but that is not only hard to define, but hard to find. People want to know what the secret is. The secret is that the secret is not a secret. The people of God are knit together in love at the table, both the table of the Lord, and the tables in their homes. <\/p>\n We have lost the blessings of hospitality because we\u2019re too busy pursuing the good life. We rush from one activity to another, gulping down our meals. We wave to our pew neighbor at church as we race out the door to get to our tee time. We try desperately to fill the emptiness of our lives, making faux friends over the internet, or sharing nothing more meaningful than a favorite football team. The good life is sharing the blessings of God with those whom we love. Hospitality, of course, is far broader than sharing a meal. But it is not less than this. Perhaps we should start with some baby steps. Stop reading, and go invite someone to dinner. They may think you\u2019re weird, which is your first clue that you\u2019re on the right track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thesis 11– We must practice hospitality. It is my habit, when I grow unduly discouraged with the church, to read through I Corinthians. Reading through the long list of serious problems that Paul had to address there, and suddenly the … Continue reading