david dark, the Kingdom, and hospitality

first of all, here is a link to a david dark talking head which he posted on his blog yesterday. secondly, let me say that david dark is a person who makes me truly believe that the Kingdom has come and that living as if that were true is actually a real possibility.

towards the end of this little video, he mentions "hospitality." maybe God is just trying to teach me something, but i've seen "hospitality" popping up all over the place in the past couple of months. theme of orientation chapel at gordon: hospitality. theme of my church's women's retreat: hospitality. a main emphasis in my seminary wives class: hospitality. i'm reading a book about spiritual direction--first chapter: welcoming the stranger--hospitality! and now david dark: hospitality, a vital part of living out Jesus' teachings.

i think i've always instinctively known the importance of hospitality. for those of you who know my mom at all, i'm sure you can find that very easily believe. my house was always the social gathering place. my mom always had chocolate chip cookies made when friends came over, even into my college years. she teaches her basket-weaving classes out of our home, and even though that's a business, she still makes sure that people are comfortable and free to share their lives, and in that, she models "welcoming the stranger." at different points while i was growing up, we had at least 7 different non-family members living at our house for long periods of time. we even had about a dozen or so people staying at our house for 4 days before mine and jason's wedding. (turns out that that may have been a crazy idea, but it seemed like a very natural thing to do.)

as i'm learning more about hospitality, i'm starting to understand that it's not just about having people over and making sure the house is presentable and baking cookies, (although i put great stock in the spiritual significance of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies). hospitality is about creating space in every encounter to see the image of God in people, to make them feel safe and valued, even in brief encounters. it's about really listening to them. it's about being vulnerable and inviting them to take part in your life, sharing from the abundance or the meagerness of whatever you have. david dark would add that it's about finding people interesting. (one of his quotes from rock n roll camp that is forever burned into my memory is, "i think there's something a little demonic in finding people uninteresting.")

now if all that is true--and i believe that it is--there is something that is required of me, and it's more than just making nice with people or having them over for dinner. it's a Kingdom calling. it's a lifestyle that--like jason's junior year chapel message--calls us to abandon the arrogance of "bringing Jesus to people" and instead forces us to see Jesus in people. yes, there is a danger of pantheism in seeing God in everyone, but i think the bigger danger comes when we make people invisible, when we fail to recognize the eternal significance of another person.

we all know the matthew 25 passage where Jesus says, "if you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me." and what's He talking about here? clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, tending the sick, visiting the imprisoned--hospitality!! and when we do those things--whether it is taking care of people's physical needs or clothing the emotionally naked, feeding the intellectually hungry, tending the spiritually sick, or visiting the psychologically imprisoned--we do those things to Jesus. and that takes the martyrdom out of service and replaces it with high privilege..and some holy trembling if you ask me.

i'm rambling a bit here. i guess what i mainly want to know is: is hospitality popping up in your world, too? if so, what are you learning about it? what are you finding challenging about it? where are you meeting God in it? how do we change its connotation from the work of quaint little pastors' wives to a subversive and Kingdom-coming activity? what do you think of when you hear "the hospitality of Jesus" or "the hospitality of the cross" or "the hospitality of God"? or maybe you were struck by some completely different aspect of David Dark's video: creation care, Jesus as "the bloke who tried to help," or something else entirely. any immediate reactions?? any thoughts??