The Gospel Comes with a House Key
Preface
Pages 11-14
Luke 10:25-37 - The Parable of the Good Samaritan (NIV)
On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” In reply, Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
As you read this book, you will encounter the phrase “Radically Ordinary Hospitality” over and over again. It already appeared 19 times just in the preface. What is your initial response to that phrase?
What is your response to the five occurrences listed below?
Radically ordinary hospitality - those who live it see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God.
Those who live our radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but God’s gift to use for furtherance of his kingdom.
Practicing radically ordinary hospitality necessitates building margin time into the day, time where regular routines can be disrupted but not destroyed.
Radically ordinary hospitality lived out in the family of God gathers daily, prays constantly, and needs no invitation to do so.
Engaging in radically ordinary hospitality means we provide the time necessary to build strong relationships with people who think differently from we do, as well as build strong relationships from within the family of God.
EXTRA READING:
“The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.”
- Dorothy Day (1897 - 1980)
Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York. She worked as a journalist for radical newspapers in the 1920s and found most of her friends in the bohemian crowds that gathered in Greenwich Village. While living with a man she loved in 1926, she became pregnant and experienced a mysterious conversion to following the way of Jesus. Raised as a Roman Catholic, she struggled to unite her personal faith with a passion for social justice until she met Peter Maurin, (1877 - 1949) a French social activist and theologian, with whom she founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933. Through hospitality houses in the city, agronomic universities on the land, and roundtable discussions for the clarification of thought, they aimed to “create a new society within the shell of the old,” offering American Christianity the witness of a new monasticism that combines piety and practice, charity and justice.