Forward to the Fight,
Andy Miller III
Love
must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above
yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep
your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be
joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice
hospitality. —Romans 12:9–13
I wanted to leave, and no one would have blamed
me. I could see nothing but an ocean of gold and
dark
blue. There had to be
40,000 people looking down at
me, and not one was glad to see me.
I was at the bottom of the section, and our tickets were marked NN,
so our seats were far past the Z section, at
least 40 rows away. As I
looked up, my legs tightened for the climb ahead.
My parents,
who were then
serving a Salvation Army corps in St. Louis,
had gotten us the tickets to see our
team, the Chicago Bears, play the high–flying,
“greatest show on turf,” St. Louis Rams. But it was a Sunday game, and
there was no way we were getting out
of
church early. So we arrived at the game in the middle of the second quarter. The
fans were all in their
seats as my family walked
in.
My brother and I, with our Bears jerseys and other fan gear on, tried to balance our food as we
walked up the seemingly endless staircase. You can imagine the interesting and
colorful
language that was flying in our direction. Talk about feeling out of place! We wanted to
leave, but we “hung in there” even in the face of defeat. I have never felt as unwelcomed by so many people as I did that day. People did not want to make room for us in their
stadium.
Have you ever felt unwelcome? Your experience might not be as dramatic as being outnumbered by thousands at a football game. Maybe
you moved to a new town or stepped into a new school. Maybe you were sent in to replace someone else on a job, or you had to give someone an assignment you knew they didn’t want. Sometimes when people are forced to make room, they are not very welcoming.
Or have there been times when it
was you who didn’t
want to make room? I grew up in a family with four kids
(I was the oldest), so private space did not exist in our
house. As most Salvationists know, the Army owns the houses
of
officers. On one
occasion, we moved from a five–bedroom house to a three–bedroom one. Well,
I did not want to give up my space and
“make room” for my brother.
Sacrificing your
space is hard. But “making room” is more than a physical reality. Maybe you
don’t want to make room in your world for people you don’t like. Making room stinks. Why? Because you have to give up; you have to give in; and you have to share.
Reading Romans 12:9–13, it’s easy to
jump past some of the commands Paul gives. The text seems like a typical list of “do’s” and
don’ts.” In just
the first few verses we read: “Be devoted
… honor
one
another
… never lack in zeal … keep
your spiritual fervor … be joyful in hope …
be patient …
be faithful in prayer …
share
… ” (vv.
9-13). The list is much like what my wife, Abby,
and I said to our son, Andy IV,
as he went off to pre–school. Suddenly we felt the need to summarize everything we had taught him in three years of life: “Ask for help,
say please, eat your food, tell your teachers when you have to go
… ” (Then we cried because we saw the inevitability of our son’s growing up.)
After Paul’s list of admonitions, he writes one
command in a sentence that takes two words: “Practice
hospitality.”
The force in the original language is hard to communicate. In Greek, it is as if Paul
underlined this word and made the font
extra large, extra bold, with italics: “You must practice hospitality.” Or it could be
translated, “Pursue
hospitality.” The word here for pursue was often used to describe a hunt or a vigorous chase.
The backstory of this letter is that Paul was writing to Christians in Rome whom he had
not met. The church there was
not a big
group that came together in a large cathedral. Instead, there were small churches that met in homes. What was distinct
about this Christian population was that
some
were Christianized Jews and
others were Gentile Christians. In 49 A.D., the Jews in Rome had been exiled, and
this letter was likely written as they were returning from that exile. The two groups had to learn how to love each other and exist as “the church” in Rome. You can imagine that they might not have wanted to get along. Paul was giving them this command to practice hospitality because it was something that they lacked. He needed to say, “Be devoted to one another in love” (12:10), and “Share with
the Lord’s people who are in need” (12:13). Maybe these Christians needed to be
challenged to make room for each other.
We live in a very inhospitable time. As a society, we don’t want to make room for
anything. We don’t want to make room for others, especially
strangers. Even though I
meet
strangers who
are looking for help every day right here in my office, it is easy for me to say to myself, Don’t they realize that
I am behind on a hundred emails, and our
Angel
Tree application process doesn’t start for two weeks? Can’t they read the sign on the
door? In our increasingly
isolated world, it is also easy for
us to stick with the friends we have on
Facebook, the contacts in our email list, or the people we see on a regular basis. We don’t have time for new
people—for strangers.
But the heart of the word hospitality is strangers.
In Greek, the word for hospitality is an invented word, kind of like “shop–ortunity” or “fan–demonium.” It
combines the word for brotherly love, phileos (as in Philadelphia), and
the word for
stranger, xenos. The essence of the word hospitality, then, is “love of stranger.”
Today, the word hospitality has come to be associated
with the hospitality industry or conversation over coffee at someone’s house. But until the last 300 years, the word was specifically understood as a Christian practice. So the root of the word, hosp, is found in the words hospital, hostel,
and hospice. The idea was that Christians had a duty to make room for strangers.
Our inhospitable world,
in which “it’s all about me,” shuts people out. That is why most
Salvation Army shelters have a waiting list.
It is why people are starving; it is why children are left alone; it is why people are sold into slavery; it is why
there are wars.
Our lack of a welcoming attitude is more than, “We don’t want to make room … We don’t want to practice hospitality.” The scary thought to me is that we often say to ourselves: “We don’t have to make room …
We don’t have to practice hospitality
… We don’t have to love the stranger.”
God didn’t have to make room either. These problems in our world are not His fault. Sin is not His fault. God created our world for us, but our corporate sin
in
Adam has brought us to a place of rejecting all that God has given us. Our sin separates us from God;
our
selfishness keeps us from looking at anyone
beyond ourselves; and
those things that
we know have moved against God’s direction in our lives give God every right to say, “I don’t have to make room.”
But thanks be to God that
in Jesus Christ, God made room for us. We don’t deserve the mercy of God as He
stepped out in time in the person of Jesus Christ to welcome us. When our world is blind and looking for its way, Jesus steps
in
as the Savior for all of humanity to offer us salvation—to save us from our sin, and
to offer us a new way of understanding and looking at the world.
Later in Paul’s letter, he challenges the believers
in Rome to, “Welcome one another, then, just as Christ welcomed you,
for the glory of God” (15:7, NRSV). How did Jesus welcome us? He welcomed us on the Cross. While I was a cadet at the training college in Atlanta, I often I went out on our canteen ministry, where we interacted with people living under bridges on a weekly basis. One man
became my friend. He said to me one day, “I know why you do this, ’cause of what He [finger pointing up] did.”
In other words, we help people not to make ourselves feel better but because Jesus has welcomed us.
I suggest that we would do well to reframe our ministry in The Salvation Army. We should
not be simply
“doing social services” or “opening a shelter.” Instead we should be opening ourselves, our
resources, and our buildings, as we
are commanded
to do, in light of Christ’s making room for us.
We should practice hospitality.
