"Hospitality to All"

An important concern of the last several weeks and months in the United States has been that of how do we make sure that we are safe. While it is an important concern for us all, we must balance it with ethical consideration for how we are to treat other people. In fact, our leadership has been so overly concerned about security that we have lost the biblical and Christian traditional concern for the outsider, those who are different from us. in the discussion of the “Muslim ban” and the wall we have failed to remember that we ourselves are strangers who have been welcomed by God into His people.

Xenophobia, the phobia or fear of strangers, seems to be running rampant today. Ironically, it has frightened strangers in our midst. A recent showing in the movie theaters of the Broadway musical Allegiance-- about the internment of Japanese prisoners during World War II-- was sold out. The show will be done live a second time on February 19. According to their website, “this date is the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, known as the Day of Remembrance, which marked the beginning of the forced relocation and internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during WW II.” Paying attention to how we treated Japanese American citizens during a time of war is important today.

After 9/11/2001 we have seen a growing anxiety toward others, which has led us to lose our hold on the basic legal and practical principle that people are “innocent until proven guilty.” We have begun to live by the pre-Christ Old Testament view of Lex talionis, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, even toward those who just share the same skin color or nationality of those who have hurt us or threaten us. We need to get back to the golden rule, treating one another as we would like to be treated. Although tight security procedures at all crossings of people from countries coming to America should be followed, there should not be the blanket forbidding of people from other countries. Just as importantly there should not be mistreatment or profiling of people in our country.

Think about how it must feel to be someone who, like many of our ancestors before, recently came to the United States because they saw it as a land of opportunity? You have followed all procedures to go to work in a one-of-a-kind company or to attend a university that excels in your field. Now based on your adherence to a world religion the government is suspicious of you. They want to keep any more people like you out of the country. How would you feel toward this country who treated you so suspiciously without proper cause?

How should we treat the stranger in our midst? What should be our view toward the outsider, the foreigner, those who haven’t come to our country through normal legal means? We ought to show hospitality to all. In Matthew 5 we read that we are to “love our enemy.” Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer…. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Benjamin Corey writes in “True Biblical Hospitality: Loving Immigrants, Strangers and Enemies” (Sojourners online, 7-23-2013): “God’s desire that we show others hospitality is a common theme in scripture… The Greek term that is often translated into the English term “hospitality” is the word philoxenon… Philo is ‘brotherly love’ and xenon means ‘stranger’ or ‘immigrant.’… The word becomes ‘one who loves strangers/immigrants like you would your own brother…. In Romans 13 we are told to practice hospitality. We are to love strangers and immigrants as if they were our siblings.”

This is truly food for thought for all Christians. Xenophobia or philoxenon? Let us opt for philoxenon and love will cast out all fear! Let us make every day a "day of remembrance" as American Christians to aim for hospitality for all, treating any human being on prima facie appearance as we would like to be treated.