Dear friends,
One of the daily devotionals in Lectio365 a few days ago caught our attention. In it, Jill Weber invited us to reflect on the opening words of Hebrews chapter 13: – ‘Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’ (Hebrews 13:1-2)
Commenting on the importance of hospitality, Jill asked the question, ‘What differentiates the Biblical practice of hospitality from simply entertaining friends and family?’ and she observed that ‘Christine Pohl, in her book Making Room, writes:
One of the key Greek words for hospitality, philoxenia, combines the general word for love or affection for people who are connected by kinship or faith (phileo), and the word for stranger (xenos).’ *
We are far more familiar with the use of the word ‘xenos’ in a solely negative manner, as a root of the word ‘xenophobia’, meaning the fear or dislike of anything perceived as foreign or strange – and so often used to describe the sort of nationalism or racism that lies behind so many wars and so much hate crime.
How refreshing it was to read of it being used in a positive way – philoxenia, the love of the stranger. The use of the word for love or affection for people connected by kinship or faith (phileo) means that this composite word literally means that, in God’s eyes, the stranger is our brother or our sister. To put it another way, in the words of a recent sermon, it means showing love and hospitality to ‘people, like us’ – i.e. friends and strangers alike – rather than just to those friends and family who we might think of as ‘people like us’.
It won’t always be easy (after all, it isn’t always easy getting on with friends and family, let alone strangers). It means embracing those who don’t share the same background or life experiences as us, and who may think differently on a hundred subjects. But the promise of Hebrews 13:2 is that, in offering hospitality to the stranger – as we so often find ourselves doing – our lives will be enriched as they bring some message or blessing from God with them, which after all is the role of an angel.
Let’s keep this call to exercise philoxenia uppermost in our minds, as we encounter those from all walks of life in the course of our daily lives and ministry.
With our love and prayers
Matthew and Pauline
* Lectio365, Wednesday 25th September