What comes to mind when you hear the word “hospitality”? Maybe you think of hosting dinner parties, or Martha Stewart. Maybe hospitality means always having home-baked cookies and fresh-squeezed lemonade on standby in case someone drops by. Or, maybe you’ve been thinking about hospitality in the church context. 

In that case, you might think hospitality means cheerful door greeters and clear signage, or keeping our facilities clean, safe, and secure. These sorts of things can be part of hospitality, but they aren’t really the heart of hospitality.

“Hospitality” is a word that I plan to use a lot in this Sunday’s sermon, so I better make sure I define it well. The Greek word for hospitality is philoxenia, which is a compound word made of two parts. The first part (the “philo”) means love, and the second part (the “xenia”) refers to strangers. So there you go. Hospitality means being a xenophile—it means loving strangers.

At its heart, then, hospitality is simply a matter of doing for others as Christ has done for us. We were not only strangers but enemies of God, yet Christ died to reconcile us to God. Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, we are invited to sit at God’s table. We were enemies, but Christ has made us His friends.

So, dinner parties and chocolate chip cookies can be helpful in showing hospitality. But those things aren’t necessary. Hospitality is not just sharing your home, but sharing your life. Likewise, greeters and signage can help us to care for guests as a church. However, if we have the best signage and security and guest follow-up procedures in the world, yet newcomers are seldom able to form relationships in the church, we aren’t doing very well at hospitality! Hospitality is not just being friendly, but becoming a friend.

This is the kind of hospitality we’ll see in this Sunday’s sermon from 3 John.