Saved by hospitality
Photograph by RDNE Stock Project via Pexels
Brian Gorman
Christian discourse about immigration in the United States follows a predictable pattern. Conservatives typically decry so-called “illegal” immigration in the name of a God who endows governments with authority to make laws and punish lawbreakers — citing Romans 13 — and more broadly, a God who desires order in the world. Progressives cite the numerous admonitions in the Old Testament to welcome the stranger, such as Leviticus 19:34 and Deuteronomy 10:19.
What both approaches miss in their attempts to proof-text the other side into agreement is that hospitality is woven into the very fabric of the biblical narrative from Genesis to Revelation, and radical welcome is the very essence of God’s character. Everything in the Bible, from the giving of the law to admonitions about welcoming strangers, even — and especially — salvation itself, is a function of God’s hospitable nature. Moreover, the primary missional directive for those who have received God’s welcome is to extend it to others and make known the welcome of God.
All of this begins with the biblical assertion that God is both creator and owner of everything. The creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 initiate that claim, but it is repeated in the Psalms: “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it” (Psalm 24:1) and amplified in the Pentateuch: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants” (Leviticus 25:23).
In the wilderness, the Israelites are commanded to love the alien in their midst because they were once aliens in Egypt, living and working as slaves on land that did not belong to them. Yet even in their liberation, their salvation, the land still does not belong to them. If God owns the land, then all debts accrued because of land ultimately are owed to God, and thus God can forgive them in the Jubilee (Leviticus 25). Instead of being slaves or sharecroppers, Israel are now honored guests of the Creator, commanded to extend this hospitality to others. Salvation for Israel looks like the hospitality of God; to be saved is to be rescued from enslavement into the abundance of God and to extend this abundance to others. Salvation does not change one’s status as a guest. The exhortations throughout the Bible to practice the hospitality of God hint that a guest-host dynamic is the natural state of things for God’s people. We are perpetually guests even while called to act as hosts who extend God’s welcome.
The pinnacle expression of God’s essential hospitable nature is in covenants, of which the above verses from Leviticus are a part. Covenants were not merely ancient contracts or promises, obligating the involved parties to particular commitments. Covenants were fundamentally familial in nature. For ancient people, family came first, so if you wanted another group to go along with yours, the best way was to make them part of your family. The primary function of covenants in the Ancient Near East, therefore, was to extend the bonds and benefits of kinship. By initiating legal contracts between God and Israel, God was making a way “by which outsiders, non-kin, might be incorporated into the kinship group.”[i]
Everything in the Bible, from the giving of the law to admonitions about welcoming strangers, even — and especially — salvation itself, is a function of God’s hospitable nature. Moreover, the primary missional directive for those who have received God’s welcome is to extend it to others and make known the welcome of God.
But the mystery of this divine hospitality through covenant is that it comes to us in the person of Jesus, who over and over in the gospels takes on the role of guest, the one who himself needs hospitality. Whether at meals, the home of Zacchaeus, or the road to Emmaus (among many examples), Jesus relies on the hospitality of others as the means by which he extends God’s salvation and hospitality to the hosts. On the flip side, the crucifixion of Jesus was the ultimate symbol of rejecting the stranger — Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem when his people did not recognize the time of their visitation (Luke 19:41-44).
Much of the rest of the New Testament deals with the complex question of how the death and resurrection of Jesus makes a way for Gentiles to be included in this grand welcome.
For Christians living at this crucial moment in American history, it is therefore an act of prophetic witness to declare that the earth is the Lord’s. This land is not your land nor is it my land, despite Woody Guthrie’s catchy song lyrics, and the land is certainly not the property of the United States government. If salvation is an act of divine welcome, then hospitality for Christians is not so much a moral or personal choice but a reflection of their own salvation. We are not to ask if we should welcome the stranger or the immigrant but how. If the land is the Lord’s, how might those who live as guests upon it make the abundance of the Lord available to all?
It is vital to engage in discourse about immigration policy. If a democracy is meant to reflect the will of the people, then Christians should be calling for compassionate approaches to immigration. Unfortunately, the loudest Christians have been quick to applaud the most perverse public policies that dehumanize the very neighbors we are to welcome. The audacity of those who have been included in the covenant people because of God’s hospitality to now celebrate the brutal detainment and treatment of immigrants places them with the crowd on Good Friday who shout “Crucify him!” Every day Christ is crucified again by the state in collusion with religious authorities.
In our home, my family and I have committed to keeping a “Christ room” available for anyone in need of sanctuary and rest, and most often those guests have been immigrants and asylum seekers. Our small effort does not influence public policy, but has profoundly changed the way we engage with immigration issues. Until recently, our hospitality has felt important but not dangerous. As with Peter and John in Acts 5:29, we must obey and remain faithful to God, rather than human authorities. My prayer is that churches and Christians will find anew the conviction to extend the saving hospitality of God in a time where such acts are a threat to the powers and principalities.
Brian Gorman is co-founder of The Hiding Place, an urban farm, community gathering space, and house of hospitality in the Catholic Worker tradition. He holds an MA in theology from the Ecumenical Institute of Theology.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[i] Frank Moore Cross, “Kinship and Covenant in Ancient Israel,” From Epic to Canon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1998), 7.
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