HOSPITALITY WITHIN YOUR MEANS

Reference text: Luke 11:5-13

Today’s text is a tale of three men with a unique relationship: a pair were friends at a time, so all three were not friends with each other. So we see a summary of events as follows: “A friend shows up to visit a friend. That friend then goes to see another friend to borrow resources to cater for the friend who had arrived.

The friend visiting had nothing to do with the one from whom the loaves were being borrowed, but his friend leveraged a relationship to obtain resources. We are likely to have many questions, one key one being the timing of the friends in question. Both clearly arrived at an inopportune time.

The first arrives when his friend has no resources to receive him. Subsequently, this lack of resources prompts a visit to seek help at an odd hour of the night. In short, he had inconvenienced his friend because his host needed to borrow resources on his account.

Both visiting friends banked on the generosity of ‘their friends,’ and that was a good show of faith. Yet, many questions arise: what if the second friend had no other friend to reach out to at that time of night? What if the one they reached out to did not have the resources requested or had refused to lend? Those are “what if questions”, yet they aren’t very far from reality.

This will sound like a harsh rhetoric, but echoing the words of a message from earlier this year “budget your generosity”.

St Paul writes to the church in Corinth "Of course, I don’t mean your giving should make life easy for others and hard for yourselves. I only mean that there should be some equality" (2 Corinthians 8:13) 

Hospitality is indeed to be celebrated, because through it men have hosted angels, so by all means be good and be hospitable. However, your hospitality must be within your means.

#sly