Transcript
Well, I want to say something that may sound a little strange, but if you're going to be committed to hospitality, one of the powerful things that you can do is put strange feet under your table. Now, I don't mean weird, distorted toes or freaky ankles. No, I mean the feet of strangers under your table. It's a metaphor, it's a word picture that's used all over scripture for God's acceptance of us that we are invited to His table. It means something.
A Table in the Presence of My Enemies
He prepares a table in the presence of my enemies. He's inviting me to the final wedding feast. He's calling me to the privilege of sitting at His table and eating His food. What a disarming thing. It's disarming when you do that with people. It's disarming when you open your doors and you invite people in, but you haven't done just that. You've prepared a meal for them and they're now sitting next to you, and they're actually eating what your hands have lovingly prepared.
Listen, I'm afraid that as a Christian community, we've been known more for our criticism and our judgment, our self-righteous condemnation than we've been known for our love. It's sad that we who have been rescued by love and drawn into a story of love by a God of love who sent His Son of love on a sacrifice of love so that we would become people of love, it's sad that we're known more for our anger at what is wrong than our love.
How about committing yourself to bringing the feet of strangers under your table? How about preparing wonderful meals for people, disarming them? When you do that, it's not just that you are loving to them, you are in that moment incarnating the love of God because there's no more ultimate blessing than to be invited to His table. There's nothing sweeter. There's nothing more fulfilling than to eat His food.
Mirror the Hospitality of God
How about mirroring that? How about not being so busy and not being so consumed with your schedule and your plans and your purpose and your privacy that you don't invite people to sit at your table and to consume what your hands have lovingly prepared.
Now, I'll admit to you, this is hard for me. I tend -- this will surprise many of you -- by nature, to be a shy person, but it's God's call that we would be those who incarnate, make visible His love. He, by grace, invites us to His table. How about, in grace, you do that with your neighbors?
