Hospitality (Luke 14:7-24)
Big Idea: Love and serve others generously through hospitality, just as Jesus has done for us.
Twelve people sat in silence, on the edge of their seats. You could have heard a pin drop.
They had pilgrimaged from Minnesota to muggy Orlando, and her stifling August humidity, for a weeklong intensive course on evangelism with Steve Childers.
With only a dozen students on board for five 9-hour days with one of the country’s top church-planting strategists, it was a rich week. These students learned about the advance of the gospel around the world and in personal conversation.
Time and again Childers had thrown them curveballs. He knew how to keep them on our toes. But now he had them nothing short of captivated.
“You know what the key to evangelism in the 21st-century will be, don’t you?”
He wasn’t talking Global South, but the Western hemisphere. I’m sure that he saw in the faces of the students how eager they were for his answer. Wow, the key, they were thinking. This is huge.
He paused and smiled that memorable Steve Childers world-evangelism grin. He waited. Still waiting. Still paused. Still nothing. Hold it . . . hold it. One of them was almost ready to burst with, “Just c’mon already!”
Finally, he lifted the curtain.
“Hospitality.”
David Mathis, who records this story, writes:
In a progressively post-Christian society, the importance of hospitality as an evangelistic asset is growing rapidly. Increasingly, the most strategic turf on which to engage the unbelieving with the good news of Jesus may be the turf of our own homes.
When people don’t gather in droves for stadium crusades, or tarry long enough on the sidewalk to hear your gospel spiel, what will you do? Where will you interact with the unbelieving about the things that matter most?
Invite them to dinner.
We’re in a series on developing a Liberty Grace Rule of Life. We’re looking at the rhythms and practices that will help us love God and love others in our context at our time. We’re even creating a crowdsourced page at https://libertygrace.ca/ruleoflife/. Please go there and contribute your ideas. In a few weeks we’re going to turn them into a book, kind of a manual, so that we can work at implementing these practices into our lives.
Today we’re talking about a practice that is so important that we’ll be returning to it again in May and June. In fact, we’ll kind of camp there all year. We’re going to talk about hospitality.
A Case Study in Hospitality
To look at this, I want to look at a story with you. We just read it. It’s found in Luke 14:7-24. Jesus was invited to the home of a prominent citizen, and it was a dinner party. In verses 7 to 11, he speaks to the dinner guests. In verses 12 to 14, he speaks to the host, and in verses 15 to the end he speaks to his disciples and to us.
So let’s look at what he says on the subject of hospitality to each of these groups, and by extension, to us.
To the Guest
In verses 7 to 11, Jesus teaches us how to be a dinner guest.
In those days, teachers sometimes lectured or dialogued with students and disciples according to social rank. You could tell how important people are according to how close they sit to the places of honor.
At this particular dinner party, it seems that when people came in they got to pick their place. They jockeyed for position so that they were closest to the host so that they were seen as the most important people there.
But Jesus says:
When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 14:8-11)
This isn’t new. The book of Proverbs says:
Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence
or stand in the place of the great,
for it is better to be told, “Come up here,”
than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.
(Proverbs 25:6–7)
Jesus isn’t just giving us an etiquette lesson. He’s teaching us about how his kingdom works. When we move into social relationships with an eye on what we can get from them, we’ve missed the point. But when we approach social situations with an attitude of loving people and serving people, without any concern for what we will get out of it, then we’ll not only be better prepared to serve people, but we’ll actually receive greater honor exactly when we stop caring about it.
As we think about our church, and about inviting people into community, what if we entered social situations with the mindset of love and service without expecting to get anything out of it?
We live in a great community with lots of great events going on. One of the great opportunities we have as a church is to just show up and be present in this community. It’s actually a lot of fun.
As we live in our community, as we’re invited to people’s homes, and as we attend community events and activities, Jesus teaches us to go with a mindset of loving and serving other people, not of seeking or own interests. There are so many opportunities for us to do this, to intentionally accept invitations to other people’s homes, to coffee shops, to book clubs, to community meetings, to cooking classes. Go, and don’t think about what you’ll get out of it, but what you can give to others.
When we do this, we’ll be doing exactly what Jesus did for us. Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
I encourage you, I charge you, let’s do this. Let’s strategically attend parties and dinners and clubs in our community for Jesus’ sake. Every time we do, let’s go with an attitude of love and service. That’s what Jesus says to the dinner guests in verses 7 to 11, and it’s what we want to do as a church. Be a guest who focuses on blessing others.
To the Host
That’s what Jesus says to us when we’re guests. In verses 12 to 14 he speaks to the host. And what he says is so important to us as well, because I hope we lean into opening our homes. We need Jesus’ counsel as we learn to be hospitable.
He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (Luke 14:12-14)
Jesus was speaking into a hierarchical society. There were different classes of people, and to get important stuff done, you needed to know the right people. To get ahead, you needed to reach out to those who were higher than you so that you could leverage that relationship to get what you needed.
The way to do this would be through hospitality. Plutarch, the Greek biographer and essayist, talked about the “friend-making power of the table.” You would invite people over, and the purpose would be to get something out of that. It would be a utilitarian investment designed to increase your status, influence, and power. You scratch their back, they scratch yours.
And what Jesus says here completely trashes that. Jesus says instead to invite people who can’t pay you back. Invite people, not because of what they can do for you, but simply because you want to love them and serve them.
Jesus says to open your home, not just to those who can benefit you, but to people who can’t pay you back, people who don’t add value to your life. Practice gospel hospitality.
Why?
To All of Us
In verses 15 to 24, Jesus speaks to all of us. Someone responds to Jesus’ instructions in verse 15 by saying, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Jesus responds to this by telling a story about a man who throws a banquet. He invites people, but they come up with lame excuses for why they can’t attend.
Eventually, the master says:
Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet. (Luke 14:23–24)
What is Jesus saying here? He’s responding to the person who said, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” by saying, in effect, “Not everyone who talks about the banquet at the end will actually be at that banquet. And I’m also going to invite people you wouldn’t expect.”
In other words, Jesus gives us a picture of God’s radical hospitality. We should be hospitable because God is hospitable to us. You are invited to the Messianic banquet mentioned in Revelation 19:6-9, but some of you just may miss out. But make no mistake. It won’t be because God is inhospitable. God is radically hospitable. The reason we should be hospitable is because God is so radically hospitable to us. Our hospitality is an overflow of God’s hospitality to us.
In this story, Jesus reminds us of his hospitality. He welcomes people who come and have nothing to offer. They get to eat and to feast at God’s banquet table free of charge simply because of God’s grace.
We’re hospitable because we serve a hospitable God, a God who welcomes and loves strangers. He’s a God who is inviting people today — maybe even you — to his feast.
I want to pause here because I think this is so important. God has opened up his home to you. He is so gracious in inviting all of us. How will you respond? Don’t miss the point of this story. Jesus tells it because he doesn’t want you to miss out on his invitation. Respond to your Creator in simple faith and trust. You will never receive a greater invitation than this.
Getting Practical
There’s a word that never shows up in this passage, but that shows up all over the New Testament and summarizes the message of this passage.
The idea that Jesus is getting across here is hospitality. Romans 12:13 says, “Seek to show hospitality.” Hebrews 13:2 says, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” When the apostle Paul gave the qualifications necessary to be an elder, a leader, in the church, he included hospitality as an essential. Hospitality is a forgotten and essential practice in the church.
What is hospitality? The Greek word comes from a compound of “love” and “stranger.” Hospitality has its origin, literally, in love for outsiders.
Loving other Christians is important and essential, but it’s not enough. In fact, Jesus says that if we just love those who love us, we’re no different from anyone else (Matthew 5:47). What is really unusual is to do what Jesus says in this passage: to show hospitality to people we don’t even know, and who can do nothing for us, because we want to love them and serve them.
John Piper puts it best: “There are few joys, if any, greater than the joy of experiencing the liberating power of God’s hospitality making us a new and radically different kind of people, who love to reflect the glory of his grace as we extend it to others in all kinds of hospitality.”
Here’s how I would summarize this passage in one sentence: Love and serve others generously through hospitality, just as Jesus has done for us.
We’re going to spend a lot of time on this theme this year. We’re reading a book on hospitality in our Grace Groups that should help us, but here are a few ideas on how we get started. I’m really excited about this.
- Show up at social events with a focus on serving others. I think that’s a good application of Jesus’ advice to guests: don’t show up focused on what you can get out of it. Show up with a focus on serving others who are there. Ask them questions. Let them have the last nacho. Imagine if all of us purposely went into Liberty Village with this mindset. Who knows what God would do?
- Be strategic in opening your home. That’s Jesus’ advice to hosts. Usually we’re strategic in inviting people who can benefit us. Jesus teaches a different kind of strategy. Here’s how one person (John Piper) describes it: “How can I draw the most people into a deep experience of God’s hospitality by the use of my home or my church home? Who might need reinforcements just now in the battle against loneliness? Who are the people who could be brought together in my home most strategically for the sake of the kingdom?” Look around and invite those kind of people into your home. Don’t invite those who can benefit you. Invite people, not because of what they can do for you, but simply because you want to love them and serve them.
Those are just two of my ideas. I need yours. Don’t forget to go to https://libertygrace.ca/ruleoflife/ to submit your ideas.
I started this sermon with the question, “You know what the key to evangelism in the 21st-century will be, don’t you?” And the answer: hospitality. Let me close with this.
Increasingly, the most strategic turf on which to engage the unbelieving with the good news of Jesus may be the turf of our own homes.
When people don’t gather in droves for stadium crusades, or tarry long enough on the sidewalk to hear your gospel spiel, what will you do? Where will you interact with the unbelieving about the things that matter most?
Invite them to dinner. (Matthis)
Let’s love and serve people through hospitality because this is exactly what Jesus has done for us.
Lord, help us to be hospitable to others as you have been hospitable to us. Let us invite others to eat at our tables just as you’ve invited us to eat at your table. Unleash a movement of hospitality within this church. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
