The Other Commandment
but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, just, devout, self-controlled, Titus 1:8 NASB
Hospitable – Can you express the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself in one word? Paul can. That word is philoxenos. OK, it’s really two Greek words combined into one, but if you look carefully you can see why Paul fuses these together. The first part is obvious. Philo, from philos, meaning, “friend.” You recognize that this is associated with the verb phileo, the act of being a friend, showing affection for an individual or object. What about xenos? That is the Greek term for foreigner, stranger or guest. So philoxenos is literally, “to make a stranger into a friend.” And you thought hospitality was about inviting people for dinner! Paul wants you to have your friends over for dinner, but he is much more interested in how you treat the outsider, the foreigner, than he is about what you serve to the people who you already like.
Remember that this is one of the attributes of the episkopos, the overseer. Notice that it is not administrative. This is the very down-to-earth, practical action of taking care of someone who isn’t part of the clique. This is extending yourself on behalf of the stranger. This is not sitting on the board of the welcoming committee.
In every community there are those who quite naturally fill this role. They are most alive when they are acting with benevolence toward outsiders. But this does not make them episkopoi. It is the combination of all these factors, demonstrated in practical application, that creates the role of the episkopos. Paul expands the list of positive attributes with words that we have no difficulty understanding. “Loving what is good, sensible (reasonable), just, devout, self-controlled.” All of these are qualities we want in those who lead. And they are necessities for those who act as overseers.
Abraham is considered the father of hospitality in Jewish circles. Why? Because of his reaction to the three strangers who showed up at his tent one day. He ran to care for their needs. He took the best he had to give them comfort and nourishment. He held nothing back. He did not ask, “What will I get from all this?” or “Can I really trust these men?” He simply took their needs upon himself, welcoming the strangers. That’s being an episkopos. So if we are going to follow the Abrahamic faith, we will need to do a little more than get together with friends for a birthday party.
I’ll leave the rest up to you.
Topical Index: hospitable, philoxenos, Titus 1:8
There is an art to “making a stranger into a friend”. That is because there are the real needs of all people to be loved by all other people, and then there the tainted overtones of sin that create expectations and desires of others to feed sin. The sin in us responds to the sin in others, too. This codependent sin fest, where my stuff feeds on and feeds your stuff CAN look very much like just folks mutually interacting. In fact, the world has some very clever counterfeits of love that can look just like love, but all concerned can go away from these encounters just as empty as when they came.
What are our real needs, then? What do we really need from those around us? Exactly what we need from God and from ourselves. The problem can start here. Sin can dictate to us what we THINK we need from God and from ourselves, too. In fact, sin taints our encounters with God and with ourselves. Many people are so toxic they cannot be left in a room with themselves, much less anyone else, and their encounters with God are so overloaded with their expectations and projections they might as well not even be at all. How to get past our sinful projections onto others, as well as how to not respond TO the sinful projections of others? The way of making strangers into friends starts on the other side of all this.
Abraham was called “the friend of God”. I bet he had learned how to be a friend to himself from that, too. The rest is just about extending that reality to all beyond us. Friendship starts at home.
Sometimes the hostility and stiffness of others can be the greatest challenge in being hospitable..and these have become my greatest rewards as many times I feel compelled to be a friend, or to at least show that someone cares.
Everyone has a story. Some horrific and some not enough, the higher the wall, usually the deeper the need to be heard.
Some people of course are a tick looking for a dog, there is a price but the reward has been far greater.
I marvel how the spirit moves omnipresently. I was considering these things, meditating on friendship, exclusive versus inclusive fellowships as I am meeting with a leader of our very superior, exclusive fellowship (I am exaggerating for effect mind you). My experience has been that to make friends you need to be a freind, “no greater love has this than a man lay down his life for his freind”. Ah their in lies the rub, we must lay down our lives to make friends, consider others more important than ourselves. Considering others well being above our own requires the cross. Ah their in lies the rub; sacrificial service, death to self interest, death to self serving- all hinder our developing of intimate friendships or communities. But through these we gain access to the other side of the cross of Messiah, resurrection and true life!