Good Morning,
I know she will be embarrassed by this but I want to tell a little story about my youngest daughter. She’s currently stationed at Twentynine Palms, California for duty school. As a parent and as a minister we were talking when we knew she would end up there about where she would attend worship while in town. Knowing obviously that there weren’t any ARP (or NAPARC) congregations in a reasonable distance I started asking around. Turns out a friend of a friend is an officer in the Marines and had just left that base. He put me on to the church they had attended, gave me some contact information and next thing I knew not only had my daughter been fed with the word of God, but she was experiencing next level hospitality from brothers and sisters in Christ who were strangers in the flesh to us not even seventy-two hours before. It got me thinking about how Christian Hospitality is one of those aspects which grow out of the good news of Jesus Christ that we don’t probably spend as much time contemplating and pursuing in our desire for spiritual maturity as we should. For today’s prayer and worship help I want to expand a little on this subject and also talk about the reasons why we neglect so great a gift.
To go back a second to what my daughter experienced it wasn’t just the food and worship and the car ride to and from that impressed her or me the most. That was certainly a plus and neither of us want to look that mercy in the mouth. The tone and manner of the hospitality is what was particularly noticeable to her. Not only was it fun, but she could tell that it wasn’t outside the normal mode of operations. She was a part of the family, not a visitor. The difference between those two concepts are further apart than we may realize. They also can be imperceptible to ourselves, but those receiving can tell quite clearly. The first part of that is men and women can read people’s intentions. Their heart is truly on the sleeve. If it feels like an imposition, it most likely is. A way my daughter felt this truth is the way her host family brought her into the normal rhythms of life. She sat with them as one of their own in the midst of family worship. They weren’t putting on a show, but were living out their faith in a natural, normal way. Like I was noting in the sermon Sunday from 2 Corinthians 8 there are parts of how we receive the gospel that are a natural outgrowth of the change of heart that happens when the Holy Spirit redeems us from death unto eternal life in Christ. Prayer, worship, etc . . . are things we just do in keeping with the First Table of the law. We do them in many ways imperfectly, as is to be expected from sinners, but we do them with grace and, as 2 Cor. 8 noted, with sincerity of heart.
When it comes to the Second Table the same is true. Our desire to love our neighbors as our own person is born from the same grace that enables us to walk by faith in having no other gods before the one true, and living God. This love of neighbor of course begins in the household of Christ. We love the Christian more than our own flesh and blood, for we are both adopted into a new spiritual family. Remember what Jesus said? Who are His mother, brothers, sisters in that scene in the gospels? Those who do the will of Him who sent Him. The joy and thanksgiving which comes from the opportunity to live out the keeping of the Second Table is its own reward.
In closing, when we think about the type of hospitality my daughter received sight unseen and at her first ever visit to a church says something more than words can illustrate. It not only speaks well of the work of Christ in that particular congregation, but it also witnesses to us the kind of thing Paul also describes in the 2 Cor. 8 passage. Loving one another is not so much a command as it is an example of what it means to love Jesus. When we receive it we know it. And any local body of believers should not have to fake it. It is born of the Spirit, it is born from above in the love of God.
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church
