Perfect Hospitality

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Hospitality is huge in building congregations and individual Christians. It is the theory of Christianity put into practice. After all, Jesus said that the world would recognize us by our love/hospitality for each other. Sometimes Christians can fool themselves into thinking they are hospitable when in fact they are self-serving by only being hospitable to those who are hospitable in kind. That is a type of hospitality but not the “type” or level that is characteristic of a faithfully mature Christian. If you want to really please God be hospitable to widows, to the socially inept, to the mentally unsound, to the people that you have the least in common with and who the world has little care for. If you do that, God will hug you when you enter Heaven and tearfully say “thank-you for helping my people.”