Dear one,
A week from this writing, I’ll be en route to Romania: Indy to Chicago to Munich to Cluj Napoca. As upon previous occasions, I am excited, but I’m also pondering: What do I yet need to do? Books ordered? Check. Being delivered today and tomorrow. Temperatures in the Carpathians? Highs in the 60s, lows in the 40s? Check. Sermons prepared? Check. Tickets in order? Check. Review of passages from John’s Gospel—and the eight genre passages for the two exegetical classes? Check: in the next two days.
Ah, but apart from these considerations, mostly I anticipate reconnecting with those Romanians I have grown to enjoy and respect—and yes, love. If only for a moment: to share in their lives, to glimpse the world through their lenses, to see and hear of God in their midst—these are gifts to me—to one who is fully dependent upon their gracious hospitality, when once I land.
As I have thought of their welcome, I recalled Paul’s letter to Philemon. Imprisoned (house arrest?), Paul fully expected to be reunited with Philemon and the believers who met in his home. Given that expectation, he concluded his brief letter with these words:
“One thing more—prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you” (Philemon 22).
Admittedly, Paul’s letter to Philemon is more than the hope of a warm reunion and refreshing hospitality—no, it contains the power of Christ’s love and the smashing of slavery’s shackles: Paul encouraged Philemon to welcome Onesimus, the run-away slave, as his brother. Even so, hospitality is evident: the Greek word translated “hospitality,” φιλοξενία, contains the words for “love” and “strange” or “foreign.” In a sense, Philemon was being asked to love one, who in many regards was foreign to him: to love Onesimus, his former slave; and to love Paul, that itinerant preacher-teacher-pastor-theologian-leather worker-ardent Messianic Jewish rabbi, undoubtedly foreign in guise and gesture.
Hospitality: the love of the foreign or the strange in another; the love of a foreigner or a stranger—in my view hospitality (and its cognates: hospital and hospice) draws near to the embodiment of the Christian faith. In some way, most every other person is strange or foreign to each one of us, irrespective how well and how long we have loved them.
When I land in Romania, I, the strange one, will be welcomed in Christ—this I know.
More ramblings later,
Stan