A PASTORAL PERSPECTIVE: A season of hospitality

As I settle in to my favourite place to reflect and write this column as a village and region we sit on the cusp of our season of hospitality. Chase is a great place to visit any time of the year, the Shuswap is stunning twelve months of the year, but it is our summers that put us on the map, it is summer that allows us to play host to so many, from so many places.

Looking out my front window, up to the highway, I know that in a few days that road will suddenly swell with weekend traffic and everything in our village will get instantly busier.

This is our chance to be host, to offer hospitality to thousands of people from near and far.

But hospitality is hard, hospitality is costly. Hosting people means sacrifices. Hosting means that we might have to give up for others. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida reminds us that hospitality is an attitude of utter openness and a readiness to give. And so, as we welcome others, as we live out hospitality it might cost us, it might mean being willing to give up our usual table at the coffee shop, or our quiet roads and

by Tyler Harper

highways, or it might mean we give up our time to welcome people, to greet them and extend friendship, knowing that we might not receive anything in return.

Hospitality might mean helping with directions or it might mean opening our homes. But ultimately hospitality is opening ourselves to another and may be best symbolised by the outstretched arms of a hug.

Extending hospitality is a risk, it is stepping out without knowing if you’ll get anything in return.

But receiving hospitality also has a cost. Receiving hospitality isn’t free. When someone receives hospitality, it costs them the acknowledgement that they are in need. Receiving hospitality means owning up that we don’t have everything we need, or we don’t have it all together.

Sometimes we will encounter people who refuse our hospitality— whether it is the way they drive on the highway or the way they treat our homes— these attitudes of entitlement are rooted in an inability or unwillingness to accept hospitality, to own up to the fact that they don’t have all that they need.

But a rejection of hospitality doesn’t mean we should withhold hospitality.

Inability to perceive a need does not mean that need doesn’t exist.

As a Christian, hospitality is ultimately grounded in Jesus who engaged humanity in our deepest need. His arms out stretched on the cross, embracing humanity in our need for reconciliation, ready to give true life—life not as we know it, but life as we were created for— to all those who come to Him.

So whether you are hosting and providing hospitality this season or you are visiting our wonderful region, remember there is a cost to hospitality. Hospitality isn’t free for anyone. But extending and receiving hospitality makes our world a little more human, life a little more worth living.

So make the most of this season of hospitality.

Tyler Harper (tyler@ chasechurch.com) is the Pastor at Chase Evangelical Free Church

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