Benedictines in recent years have generated a significant amount of writing and reflection on Christian hospitality.
Homes are some of the best places where hospitality can be clearly displayed. This is evidenced and strengthened by the frequency with which people define hospitality as "making someone feel at home". Inour homes, we can welcome Christ as our guest through the way we attend to our fellow humanity. This idea of "welcoming Jesus into our homes" is shaped by ancient church teachings on home-based hospitality. An illustration: Bishop John Chrysostom instructed his parishioners to make for themselves "a guest-chamber in your own house: set up a bed there, set up a table there and a candlestick. ... Have a room to which Christ may come; say 'this is Christ's cell; this building is set apart for him"'. Christ's room, Chrysostom wrote, would be for the "maimed, the beggars, and the homeless." (Pohl 1999: 154). Chrysostom's advice shows that the ancient church traditions have a big role in shaping the traditions of our modem times. It also shows that the characteristics of the hospitable places-be it homes, churches, monasteries or in social gatherings-ought to consider the welfare of others regardless of status, gender or whatever background.
In contributing to the nature of the characteristics of hospitable places, Martin Luther, like other reformers viewed homes and meals as a crucial setting for "edifying discourse" and growth in faith. He relished conversation at meals "for discourses are the real condiments of food if. .. they are seasoned with salt. For word is whetted by word; and not only is the belly fed with food, but the heart is also fed with doctrine" (Luther 1961 :200). In his works therefore, Luther shows the characteristics of hospitable places as where there are discussions that enrich the heart/mind and where the 'belly is fed with food'. Luther could be alluding to the fact that during the last supper, Jesus ate with his disciples while at the same time the discussions were on top gear with regard to his betrayal and the way forward. In so doing, he set up a trend where eating goes simultaneously with discussions or analysis on important issues of the day. Homes provide a healing environment where individuals and families can offer a place for bereaved, exhausted, and the sick to recover health and regain strength. In any case, hospitality provided in the homes of Christian people is a key foundation for hospitality in the church. For as one Pastor remarked:
The front door of the home is the side door of the church (Poh11999: 157).
The church, like home, can provide clear characteristics of a hospitable place. For when we gather as a church our practice of hospitality should reflect God's gracious welcome, since Christ is host, and we are all guests of God's grace (Poh1 1999:157). As individual leaders of the churches, we can also act as hosts who welcome others, making a place for strangers and sojoumers. In Buxton Anglican church, in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, where I have been serving as a Priest, I have always attended strangers who get stranded in the city after failing to trace their relatives. Some need food, others money, while others need mere advice as to how they can trace their beloved ones. They see the church as a hospitable place where they expect to be treated kindly. The danger is that there are some who come withill motives and pretend to be genuine seekers of hospitality from the church of Christ, only to be spying thieves. Whatever the argument, the church is a place where the bereaved, the depressed, the downtrodden or the needy cases ought to seek their consolation and further acquire spiritual nourishment.
As Poh1 (1999: 157) further says, churches tend to embrace a model of hospitality to strangers in an attempt to get past racial, ethnic, and other distinctions. In other words, it is the characteristic of the church to offer hospitality, which is free from racism, tribalism, biasness or whatever prejudices. It is also in the church as the assemb1y/househo1d of God where both majority and minority groups have an equal place before God. Meals or drinks shared together in some churches that have such programmes "provide opportunities to sustain relationships and to build new ones" (Poh1 1999: 159). They therefore establish a space that is personal without being private; an excellent setting in which to begin friendships with the new corners to the church. It strengthens the fellowships of believers that are a good characteristic of a hospitable place.
One contemporary testimony to the significance of shared meals comes from the African- American church tradition. Dodson and Gi1kes (1995:520-521) explain:
African-American church members in the United States feed one another's bodies as they feed their spirits or, more biblically, one another's 'temples of the Holy Spirit'. In the process, an ethic of love and an emphasis on
hospitality emerge, especially in the sharing of food, which spill over into the larger culture. Ritual moments of most African-Americans occur at home and in their churches, and they are connected to food, meals, and their remembrance.
They note further that such meals are tied to anticipating the eschatological banquet, the
"welcome table" with its abundance:
It is this hospitality, this love that is symbolised in the preparation and giving of food. The love ethic that pervades the ideology of African- American churches is constantly underscored and reaffirmed in the exchanges of food and the celebration of church contents with grand meals.
This love and this hospitality remind the congregation that they are pilgrims and strangers and that as they feed somebody one day, they may stand in need on another (Dodson and Gilkesl995: 535).
After attempting to show how African-American Christians interprets Christ's hospitality, Dodson and Gilkes (1995:536) conclude, "And in a world of hatred and conflict, with its racism and deprivations, the saints are able to sit together at their welcome tables and remind one another in the giving and receiving of food, that they may continue to believe that 'the greatest of these is love'. There is nothing like church food". Thus, churches like homes ought to strengthen one another with fellowships that are accompanied by eating together sessions that aims at sustaining their identity as a community. In any case, as Christians, we are all members of one family of Christ For indeed, the table is central to the practice of hospitality in home and church especially in African traditional setting as we shall see in chapter three on "African hospitality". The nourishment we gain there is physical, spiritual and social. For indeed, whether we gather around the table for the Lord's Supper or for a church potluck dinner, we are still strengthened as a community. In attempting to explain the characteristics of hospitable places, Jean Vanier writes that "welcome is one of the signs that a community is alive. To invite others to live with us is a sign that we aren't afraid, that we have a treasure of truth and of peace to share". She offers an important warning: "A community which refuses to welcome-whether through fear, weariness, insecurity, a desire to cling to comfort, or just because it is fed up with visitors-is dying spiritually" (Vanier 1989:266-267).
As Pohl (1999: 163) says, one distinctive feature of many contemporary advocates of hospitality is their rejection of bureaucratic styles of helping. They stress minimal scrutiny and focus instead on respect and friendship. This is to avoid making the concept of hospitality a routine
"service" business. It is to give it a human face and to avoid making it a mechanical undertaking. Thus while advocates of hospitality emphasise solidarity and mutuality, most practitioners do not consider personal hospitality a replacement for government provisions or political advocacy; it is concurrent with it.
Mary O'Connell, in her work on inclusion of people with disabilities in the practices and relations of ordinary life, stresses the significance of not defining people by their disability and the importance of welcoming people with disabilities "into situations that are not about disability" (O'Connell 1988: 19). This view therefore suggests that it is wrong to categorise people into weak and strong or disabled versus normal people when dispensing our hospitality because we are all created in the image of God whatever our condition; for to be hospitable is to be kind and positive to everyone. This is a very important characteristic: To treat everyone with dignity and seeing Christ in every creature whatever the situation or context.
O'Connell is reasonably critical of social services where the focus is exclusively on disability because it adds to the person's isolation. She therefore, rightly, sees an opportunity within the practice of hospitality, to focus on the individual and not on the category of his or her disability, on the whole rather than the part, and on a person's capacity rather than on his or her deficit (O'Connell 1988:15). Ideally, therefore, hospitality allows people with disabilities to find a place within a network of relations where they can share their gifts, as well as bring their needs.
Itought not give room for downplaying or isolating whatsoever. As a characteristic, hospitality is also an effort to empower the unskilled or the unprofessional amongst us. For as Murray remarks, "As professionals proliferate, the scope of activities that a non-professional feels competent to perform narrows". Hospitality reclaims "basic areas of human social interaction for the nonspecialist" (Murray 1990: 5). This point is crucial especially when we consider that the professionalisation of care can intimidate and disempower persons inclined toward voluntary activity. If professionalisation is not taken care of, it may make the unprofessional to feel
insufficiently equipped or prompt an unskilled person to loose the much-needed self-confidence in carrying out social duties.
One of the few places in modem politics where the explicit language of hospitality is still used is in the reception of refugees. This is mainly an African phenomenon-as Africa is the continent which hosts the highest number of refugees?9 In general, people continue to connect theological notions of sanctuary, cities of refuge, and care for aliens with the needs of today's displaced people-refugees inclusive. This plight of refuges naturally calls for Christians to make sure that their needs (refugees) are taken seriously by national governments. However, Christian calling goes beyond public policy to more personal involvement in voluntary agencies, communities, churches, and homes "where acts of welcome offer refuge and new life to some of the world's most vulnerable people"(PohlI999: 166).
Caring for people with terminal diseases like cancer and HIV/AIDS suggests another important place for hospitality in the 21st century, especially in Africa where over 11 million people have so far lost their lives due to HN/AIDS. Especially as modelled in hospice,3o such care is a move away from a highly clinical model in the face of impeding death. As Pohl (1999: 167) says, hospice represents a return to hospitality that connects care with respect, comfort, and presence.
It allows primary attention to be given to the relationships and connection. In short, hospice workers usually go to the home of the dying person and support the family in caring for their dying member.
Another area where Christ's hospitality ought to be felt is among the prisoners. Prison's hospitality will not involve inviting people "in". For a variety of reasons, some people cannot
"come in". Rather hospitality to the prisoners requires that the concerned persons go to the
29See I.N.K. Mugambi 1995: From Liberation to reconstruction. (Nairobi: E.A.E.P) P. 176-180.
30The name "hospice", a resting place for travellers or pilgrims, was popularised by Dame Cicely Saunders (1918), who founded St. Christopher's Hospice, London, in 1967, and thereby launched the modem hospice movement. In other words, hospice is a programme of care for terminally ill patients and their families. In practice, most of the patients helped in this way have cancer. The launching of the hospice movement, in 1967, was dictated by desire to provide a type of care, which incorporated the skills of a hospital and the more leisurely hospitality and warmth of a home. In the hospice, the centre of interest shifts from the disease to the patient and family, from the pathological process to the person. In our modem Africa, hospice movement must rehabilitate HIV/AIDS suffers, those
prison and minister to the prisoners accordingly. Some prisoners are first offenders, others are hardcore criminals and others are on death row. In any case, care for prisoners, in the early church, was viewed as a work of mercy. Thus, as we enter the prison to assess the condition of prison and the prisoners, we should never forget the ministry of St. Paul and Silas while they themselves were prisoners in a Roman jail. . Rather than being ungrateful to God now that they were previously stripped, severely flogged and then thrown to jail (Acts 16: 22-23) they displayed hospitality by blessing the other people around them through singing hymns to God and praying. Interestingly" the other prisoners were listening to them". This is reminiscent of Christ own words: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you ... Do for others just what you want them to do for you ...."
(Luke 6:27ff). Thus, the drama in the Roman jails where Paul and Silas were the main characters (Acts 16) shows that even when we are experiencing the worst times in our lives-be it stress and depression, poverty and disease or even persecution, the concept of hospitality for the followers of Christ must be exercised and felt. It is interesting that St.Paul and Silas were even kind to the jailer and they stopped him from killing himself upon realising that the earthquake that had just taken place had set the prison doors open-and possibly the prisoners had escaped.
Hence, the fear of punishment by his superiors for allegedly neglect of duty.
Modem communication gadgets such as fax machines; emails and ordinary telephone calls may be helpful as a place for hospitality. Given our high mobility and the numbers of people who live alone, these gadgets, for example, phone calls, can easily sustain crucial human relationships. In any case, a phone conversation with a lonely or weary person does represent welcoming someone into our lives. Similarly the other modes of communication such as fax messages and email messages can actually be an important way to care for one another. Jean Vanier (1999:283) offers an important challenge as we contemplate on how we might make places for hospitality in the future:
In years to come, we are going to need many small communities, which will welcome lost and lonely people, offering them a new form of family and a sense of belonging. In the past, Christians who wanted to follow Jesus opened hospitals and schools. Now that there are so many of these, Christians must commit themselves to the new communities of welcome, to live with people who
have no other family, and to show them that they are loved and can grow to greater freedom and that they, in turn, can love and give life to others.
For as in the words of an Irish proverb,"Itis in the shelter of each other that the people live.,,31
On the whole, hospitable places can be homes, churches, monasteries and other "Intentional communities,,32 that we may create. Hospitality can also be manifested in our social services as we interact with one another in following the example of Christ. Characteristics of hospitable places will therefore include: care, restoration, justice, encouragement, welcoming, hosting, sharing, servant hood, reconciliation, capacity building, rehabilitation and compassion. These views will be explored further in the next chapter.
In the coming chapter three, we shall be looking at how various people at different times in history sought to interpret Christ's hospitality. In so doing, we shall be looking at how the concept underwent various shifts and challenges from the early Christian monks to the post reformation period.
31 Quoted in Mary Pipher 1996. The shelter ofEach Other (New York: BalIantine Books)
32 Intern~tional communities are those, which we may desire to create-sometimes for short-term purposes. For examp~eInKenya, we ?ave Kakuma refugee camp, where the United Nations agents and the church, especialIy the Cathohc Church estabhshed thereby displaying hospitality. After the political crisis in Sudan and Somalia is over
CHAPTER THREE
A SURVEY OF HOSPITALITY: FROM CHRISTIAN MONASTICISM TO POST-REFORMATION PERIOD
3.0 Introduction
This chapter is a continuation of the background survey. It is going to inform us about the various shifts that the concept of hospitality has undergone after the success of the early church.
In particular the fourth and fifth centuries, hospitality was negatively affected by Emperor Constantine's decree, which made Christianity the state religion in the Roman Empire; for nominal Christianity now replaced devoted Christianity. Similarly, devoted hospitality as exemplified by the monasteries replaced nominal hospitality that clearly contrasted Christ's hospitality as we have discussed in the previous chapter. As we move through the sixteenth century reformation, where the likes of Luther and Calvin come to the fore, the concept of hospitality, as Christ spelt it through his earthly ministry, had grown feeble and in need of re- activation and rejuvenation. The activator was found not later than in the eighteenth century in the name of Rev. John Wesley- an Anglican Minister who came to become the founder of the Methodist church as we know it to day. His new method of leading the flock towards renewed hospitality, no doubt, gave birth to the Methodist church. Thus, in attempting Christ by attempting to lead the life of love, this chapter has a lot for the African church of the twenty first century to draw some insights as we grapple with the issues of our time.