Hospitality

It was many years ago now that I first noticed it, first saw that embedded within the word 'hospitality' was the word 'hospital.' At first I didn't get it. To me, these words were at polar opposites of the emotional spectrum. 'Hospitality' connotes something inviting, warm, with good friends all around and good food just over in the next room. 'Hospital,' largely because I had spent so much time in one growing up, conveys a sense of dread, pain, loneliness, stale-white brokenness, and of course bad food.

But then it hit me. The two words are intimately linked. They're not 2 sides of the same coin; they are both sides all at once. Hospitality in its purest form is what we extend to the broken, to the lonely, to those whose pain is bearable only in the company of others--in other words, to those we'd find in a hospital. And when we're sick or broken or in unbearable pain, where do we go? To a hospital, because that's the place we can be healed. So it turns out that the two words are connected because hospitality is in fact an act of healing. It took my breath away when I first saw this; it still does.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, seeing how today is Day 15 of my latest hospital stay. The other day a nurse, unprovoked, started telling me about her father who had been homeless and had recently died a broken and lonely man. And here she was, supposed to be binding up my wounds when hers seemed much deeper to me. But that's the funny thing about hospitality--the guest just as easily becomes the host when we are transparent with one another.

Jesus knew this well. Just before his birth, the world was waiting for the Messiah, holding its breath, even. And when he came so gently, so quietly, the world had little choice but to extend its hospitality to him (excepting, of course, for Herod). But in one of the great cosmic ironies, the guest was in fact the one through whom the world was made. And as the guest grew up, he slowly and without fanfare assumed the role of host. We were the ones who were desperate for hospitality, aching for healing, yearning to be made whole.

And Jesus invites us to the banquet still.