“Hospitality flows out of an obedient relationship with God and is exemplified in our worship. Each week in worship we rehearse the story of our faith: we were lost and unable to save ourselves, but God has graciously shared his riches with us, resulting in our salvation and adoption into God’s family. God is the host, and we experience God’s gracious hospitality. As recipients of God’s hospitality we also act as hosts as we welcome the alien and stranger among us.”
—Joyce Borger, “Hospitality is Messy,” © September 2006, ReformedWorship.org, CC BY-NC-SA.
What if…what if we are empowered by God’s Spirit to plan and lead worship with a true sense of hospitality for the people whom that same Spirit has brought together as the body of Christ? I think we are and we can. And if that’s true, the “beatitude” is quite simple: Blessed is the worship leader who serves with a spirit of hospitality.
Like the Pharisees we often are too worried about what others think about us. We worry what would happen if we hung out with the wrong people, or if someone saw us acting outside of approved norms. We spend so much time talking about our differences that we fail to see the many more ways that we are the same. The father in the story of the prodigal son loved the prodigal son and he loved the lost son who stayed at home. Christ loved all the sinners around the table. Christ loved the Pharisees though they chose not to see it.
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