Keys: Hospitality

Keys: Hospitality

Romans 15: 5 - 7

Hebrews 13: 2

Romans 12: 9 – 13

September 28, 2025

When I grew up, in a military community in Pacific Beach, there was not a household on the street where we couldn’t get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if we were hungry, a hug and cleanup if we had fallen and scrapped up our knees or elbows, or a swat and a phone call home if we had been bad.

Our community reflected that same sense of connection. Little League, Parent Teacher Associations at the local school, even civic groups were well populated and seldom lacked for volunteers.

We belonged to a church that reflected our tightknit community. In addition to the expected worship, Sunday School, and three-year confirmation classes we had church picnics, church excursions to the minor league Padres and AFL Chargers games, roller skating nights when it seemed like the entire church drove to a North Park skating rink, and regular monthly fellowship nights for our families.

I don’t remember our church ever talking about hospitality. I don’t remember hospitality, as the practice of welcoming strangers, being lifted up as an important value in our church family. Perhaps because we were a military community and used to people being transferred in and out, the idea of making strangers feel welcomed, safe, and at ease was just what we did.

However, Pacific Beach was not entirely a military community. Getting together for cocktail parties, dinners and gatherings with friends, and picnics were just the cultural norm. Pacific Beach was a blue-collar town, at least as compared to our neighbors to the north – La Jolla. Reaching out and bringing in was just who we were.

But times have changed, haven’t they? There may still be places where that kind of hospitality is the cultural norm, but they are increasingly the exception – not the norm. After growing up in Pacific Beach, Becky and I have lived in Northern California, the Northeast, the South, and back in Southern California. We lived in neighborhoods segmented by fences and populated by people whose names we didn’t even know.

Our experience is not unusual; it is increasingly becoming the norm. Loneliness and isolation have, according to a 2023 Surgeon General’s report, risen to epidemic levels. And let’s be sure we understand the difference between loneliness and isolation.

Isolation is an objective measurement of how many social connections one may be maintaining. Loneliness is a subjective evaluation of how meaningful those social connections might be.

One person that I love dearly maintains very few close friendships, but the friendships she has are deep, meaningful, and lifegiving. She is not isolated; she simply is not terribly relationally needy. She is happy, content, and healthy.

Another person I know has hundreds of contacts on his phone, but not a single person to call if he was in a desperate place. He is typically surrounded by a number of acquaintances but often feels lonely even in those crowds.

According to a 2024 Harvard Graduate School of Education article, loneliness is about emotional well-being, while isolation is about social circumstances. Isolation can be a choice or sometimes imposed while loneliness is often involuntary. Loneliness and isolation are not synonymous terms, but they can be related.

Many of us want to point to the recent COVID epidemic as a catalyst for such problems. But scholars tell us that loneliness and isolation have been on the rise since the 70s.  In 2000, Dr. Robert Putnam – Harvard research professor and political scientist - published his ground-breaking book, Bowling Alone, documenting the decline of what he describes as “social capital” in our communities.

At least in 2000, more people were bowling in America than ever before. Meanwhile, at the same time, bowling leagues had decreased by well over 50%. More people were bowling, but they were bowling alone.

Using that as a metaphor for the decrease in social capital in America, Putnam demonstrated that while membership organizations like the P.T.A., Boy Scouts, Knights of Columbus, Rotary Clubs rose dramatically as a percentage of the relevant population over the first half of the century, those groups showed dramatic declines in membership from the 60s through the 90s.  The decline is echoed in many other measures such as union and professional association membership, involvement in community projects, neighborhood picnics, and other formerly popular neighborhood events.

Today, the effects of this decline are precipitous and well-studied. In the Harvard report previously cited:

·       People between 30-44 years of age were the loneliest group — 29% of people in this age range said they were “frequently” or “always” lonely.

·       Among 18–29-year-olds — the rate was 24%.

·       For 45–64-year-olds, the rate was 20%.

·       Adults aged 65 and older reported the lowest rate: 10% felt frequently or always lonely.

The rates are tragically higher within other affinity groups.

In densely populated urban areas, the numbers are uniformly higher. In a report published just in February a national health organization declared that 40% - 40% that is almost half of us! – reported that they are lonely.

The reasons for such loneliness and isolation are many and varied, depending on who is writing the report. Technology – the dominance of screen time over in person human interaction is often cited. Insufficient family time, overworking, changing lifestyles and movement patterns, living in a society that is overwhelmingly individualistic and increasingly polarized – all of these concerns are listed. COVID-enforced isolation compounded prior problems. The world is still grappling with its consequences at home, in the workplace and at every level of community life.

The problem is well documented and possible solutions are varied. They range from demonizing social media to heralding it as the answer. Many place the responsibility for becoming less lonely or isolated on the one struggling with the problem. Volunteer more. Get active. Break out! As an introvert, I find those answers to be reflecting our cultural tyranny of the extroverts.

Maybe, just maybe, maybe it is time for the church, for communities of faith, for church families to rediscover the ancient Christian value of hospitality – true Christian hospitality. In a world of increasing loneliness and isolation, Diana Butler Bass, in her book Christianity For The Rest of Us, quotes Henri Nouwenwhen he proposed “ if there is any concept worth restoring to its original depth and evocative potential, iit is the concept of hospitality.

And let’s be clear what hospitality is NOT. Christian Hospitality is not the creation of a warm and aesthetically pleasing place, where everyone goes to exceptional lengths to be warm and welcoming as a behavioral investment in getting new members, more offerings, and greater institutional status.

Friends, can we be honest here? In far too many churches, all too often, visitors get viewed as fresh meat, as the potential answer to insufficient funds and budget struggles, as a possible recruit to address membership decline. And the church wonders why visitors don’t come back.

Or even worse, they don’t get recognized at all! We are so busy loving on each other that we don’t even see how we are excluding the newcomer. Our holy huddles are so deeply intertwined that we don’t even notice the person on the outside. Of if we do, there is an unconscious judgement made about the suitability of their inclusion.

Dear Ones, hospitality is not an investment in some perceived return. Hospitality is a conscious decision to let love be genuine. Hospitality is, as Nouwen states, the creation of free space where the visitor is welcomed, feels safe and cared for, for no other reason than the understanding that the love expressed for them is for their benefit, not ours. 

Christian hospitality seeks out the tourist, seeks out the traveler, seeks out the wanderer and offers them a home, a place to rest, a place to feel included. Christian hospitality is offered for no other reason than it was the same hospitality that Jesus offered to each of us. Loving us no matter where he found us. Accepting us no matter what we brought or how we looked.

It was in that space - in that warm, loving, inviting, accepting space – that the Holy Spirit came to us, transformed us, blew holy life into us, and ushered us into the church family.

As those in the midst of transformation – moving from tourists and travelers to pilgrims walking together on the journey of faith – today’s world is crying out for true, active, sincere Christian hospitality.

I was speaking with a homeless person last week who was wondering if our church would be a safe place to worship. He wasn’t asking for anything material. He wasn’t loitering here, getting food from our barrels, or sleeping on our benches. He just said, “I desperately need to find hope - somewhere, anywhere.” Could he find that here? Would he find welcome?

Christian hospitality. Letting love be genuine, welcoming the stranger, creating a safe place for the stranger, for the traveler to move from traveler to pilgrim and friend. May we rediscover, reembrace, and then offer true Christian hospitality. You never know, we may be welcoming angels into our midst! Amen.