A commitment to hospitality is needed today

An excerpt from the President’s Undergraduate Commencement charge to the Class of 2024 delivered May 11, 2024:

I recall our first meeting in 2020 when your lovely smiles were covered by face masks at the annual New Student Picnic. You were the incoming class who had your high school senior year disrupted by COVID. I appreciate the perseverance you exhibited when managing a pandemic had a negative impact on many traditional aspects of campus life.

Hospitality has been woven into my life and the fabric of the Messiah community. In her book “Soul Feast,” Rev. Marjorie Thompson defines hospitality as “providing for the need, comfort and delight of the other with all the openness, respect, freedom, tenderness and joy that love itself embodies.” Hospitality is not mere tolerance or resignation, and it serves no one well if it’s borne only of obligation.

My maternal grandmother a German immigrant who in 1921 bravely set sail alone to build a life in NYC was my earliest example of hospitality. She was not an educated woman nor was she a person of faith, but she knew how to truly see people. She always had coffee and cake at the ready for neighbors and relatives who stopped by for unannounced visits.

Hospitality is not mere tolerance or resignation, and it serves no one well if it’s borne only of obligation.

As a Christ follower, I have developed a more robust understanding of the role of biblical hospitality in genuinely welcoming people. Luke 24 recounts how Jesus served as both host and guest in this example of hospitality. Two friends were walking from Jerusalem to a nearby village and talking about the confusing events of recent days most notably the death and resurrection of Jesus. Their faces were “downcast.” When the resurrected Jesus began to walk with them, the text says, “they were kept from recognizing him,” which means Jesus is a stranger to them. The two men were astounded that he did not know about the recent events. As the two friends approached their destination, they invited Jesus to their home. As their guest, Jesus joined them at their table, broke bread and gave thanks for it. In that moment of hospitality, their eyes are opened; they recognize Jesus just as he disappears from their sight! These two friends invite the “stranger” they have been conversing with to stay at their home they “urged him strongly.” They weren’t simply being polite…the practice of hospitality helped them to truly see Jesus as he was!

Class of 2024, a commitment to hospitality will have a significant impact on who you invite to be your conversation partners and the shared humility with which you lament brokenness as you journey toward reconciliation. Our world is divided and polarized; it can be filled with anger and enmity; with loneliness and isolation. My fervent prayer is that you will truly see others; and in doing so you will truly see Jesus.

Kim S. Phipps, President

Sources: Lin, Bonnie E., “At-homeness, placemaking, and holy anticipation: Christian hospitality in educational practice,” International Academy of Practical Theology, 2023, pp. 64–66.

Thompson, Marjorie, J., “Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life,” Westminster John Knox Press, 1995.