Transcript

Hi.

I'm Emily Stimson Chapman, and this is the third of our discussions about my book, The Catholic Table.

Today, we are gonna be talking about one of my favorite things to talk about, and that is hospitality.

First of all, I wanna ask you a question.

When was the last time that you invited friends over for dinner?

Or what about acquaintances, like people you don't know quite as well?

Maybe your neighbors?

Someone you just met at church?

A single or widowed coworker?

If it's been in the last few weeks or even the last month, good for you.

But if you're like most Americans, the answer is more likely, Not lately.

For any number of reasons, work, kids, activities, travel, most of us aren't having people over for dinner anymore.

Or drinks, or coffee, or even playdates.

If we socialize with people in real life, as opposed to on Instagram or Facebook, we usually meet them elsewhere, outside of our homes, where someone else is doing the cleaning and cooking.

Like I said, some of the reasons for that have to do with how busy so many of us are.

Life moves fast, and in between meetings and carpool and the soccer schedule, it can be really difficult to find time to get together with friends.

But it's not just our schedules getting in the way of hospitality; it's us.

It's our expectations of ourselves, like what we think about our homes or our cooking or our families, what they should be like.

We look at these picture-perfect homes flashing before us on Instagram, or we see the gorgeous table settings that Joanna Gaines is laying out in Magnolia magazine, and we think that's what we're supposed to be doing, too.

We think we're supposed to be serving up, you know, gourmet dinners in meticulously clean and gorgeously decorated homes, preferably without an ill-behaved child in sight.

And most of us know we can't do that, you know, at least not without banishing a child to the attic or having a nervous breakdown somewhere in there.

But that idea, those expectations?

They're all wrong.

You know, they're based on what the culture is telling us we need to do, and not on what Christ is calling us to do.

What the culture is telling us to do is entertain, to put on a show for our guests, where our home is the stage and we are the main performer.

Our cooking, our decorating, our housekeeping, our devising, you know, the perfect party theme and then accompanying favors, that's the show.

And the goal of the show is to impress, to wow our guests and convince them how perfectly fabulous we are.

What the church is calling us to do, though, is practice hospitality, to welcome people into our lives and homes, even if only for a night, and extend to them some of the generosity and some of the love and some of the kindness that God has extended to us.

Hospitality is about showing the other person that they matter, that they are important, that they have dignity and value, and that they are worth our time and attention in the hour we spent cleaning our bathroom and cooking some soup before they came.

There is a huge difference between the two, between entertaining and hospitality.

If you wanna boil it down, entertaining is about impressing people; hospitality is about loving people.

Entertaining is about you; hospitality is about others.

Entertaining requires time and money; hospitality requires vulnerability and an open door.

Entertaining is for the few who enjoy it; hospitality is for everyone.

And the Bible says so.

Uh, in 1 Peter 4:9, we're instructed, Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Later on, in Hebrews 13:2, we are told, Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some people have entertained angels unawares.

Later on, in 1 Timothy 5:10, Paul warns that no widow is to be honored unless she has, quote, Shown hospitality.

Again, when the biblical writers talk about hospitality, they're not talking about slaughtering a fatted calf for every person who comes calling, or, you know, doing the modern equivalent and laying out a fancy spread of artisanal cheeses and imported olives with the china and the crystal.

What they're talking about is simply opening the doors of our homes and inviting others in, giving the lonely, the lost, the weak, the hungry, the struggling, the searching, the stranger, and the friend an opportunity to experience the love of God through the love we show to them.

That type of hospitality doesn't demand craft cocktails or five-star menus or killer playlists.

Like, you can save the party favors for the children's birthdays, if then, and ignore the stains on your couch.

You can dim the lights a little bit for those.

All you need to do to practice hospitality is have something to eat, something to drink, and a heart willing to love.

And I know what you're thinking: easy for me to say, right?

Here I am, standing in my beautiful home with my one child, and everything's clean, and I've got a food blog to my name.

But this hasn't always been my kitchen, and this life has not always been my life.Over the years, I have cooked for friends in kitchens that bore more than a passing resemblance to a crack den.

Like, kitchens with crumbling walls and leaking sinks and floors that wouldn't come clean no matter how much you scrubbed.

And I even had a stove with only two working burners once.

Like, I've cooked for friends, back when there were no children to worry about, through construction, when we all had to eat in the basement because there was too much drywall dust upstairs.

I've cooked for friends when my budget was so tight that all I could afford to feed them was soup.

They had to bring the desserts and the salads.

And I've not cooked for friends when I've had a new baby and haven't had a good night's sleep in weeks.

Still have people over 'cause I like people, but I order pizza instead.

And you know what?

Despite the cruddy kitchen, the simple food, the construction dust, the lack of china and crystal and handmade favors, people accepted my invitations for dinner again and again.

Not because I was wowing them with my cleaning and cooking abilities, but because they were lonely or because they wanted adult conversation, or just a break from cooking, or maybe they wanted to get out of their house in February.

People accepted the invitations because they needed what we all need: friendship and love, someone who looks them in the eye and asks about their day and their life and then listens to what they say.

And I extended those invitations despite my own stress and busyness and relative poverty because I needed it too.

You know, I needed to interact with real-life people, not faces on a screen.

I needed to talk and laugh and be listened to in return.

Everything I have given in opening my house to people, I have gotten back tenfold, which is how hospitality works.

When you let someone into your home, you are letting a unique, unrepeatable image of God into your life, and you are always gonna be richer for that.

You are always gonna be changed by that.

Some of my very best and very oldest friends are people who were practical strangers when I first invited them over to my broken down, construction-ridden mess of a home.

They are in my life today because I chose not to worry about my less than perfect home and less than fancy cooking.

In fact, I think you could say they're in my life today because of my less than perfect home and less than fancy cooking.

I let them see the reality of me, the good, the bad, the ugly, and from that, friendship grew.

Same holds true for all of us.

If we don't let people see us, like who we really are, there can be no real friendship.

There can be no real intimacy.

Intimacy requires knowledge, and that flows from seeing the good, the bad, and the beautiful, and the ugly.

It goes part and parcel with the dust bunnies and the chipped dishes and, you know, your toddler who's decorating the dining room with macaroni and cheese.

If you're putting on a show for a person, if you're performing for them in an artfully constructed stage, they never get to see the real you, the real you who is infinitely valuable and beautiful.

They also never feel free to show you the real them, you know, the real them who also is infinitely valuable and beautiful.

So many of us are afraid that we aren't that, you know, that we aren't lovable, we aren't valuable, we aren't truly worth getting to know.

We think we need to do more and be more than ourselves for guests to enjoy themselves.

But that is a lie straight from the devil, 'kay?

He loves for us to think that we're not enough.

He also loves it when we compare ourselves to others, thinking we can never measure up to the mom with eight kids or the mom with only one, the working mom or the stay-at-home mom, the mom who has a killer design sense or the mom who dedicates long hours to the church.

The devil is always trying to divide us, to keep us from loving others and welcoming others.

He's always trying to keep us from the communion with one another that we were made for.

Making us think that our houses and lives and dinners have to be Pinterest perfect is one of the ways that he does that.

Making us fear being judged by others who are different from us, who have different gifts or different experiences, is another.

But those differences aren't a bad thing.

They're glorious.

They're part of God's plan for us.

God gave us different gifts and experiences to show us that we are made for communion with others and with Him.

Each of us by ourself is never enough because we weren't created to be enough.

We were created to be gifts to one another.

And all that's different about us, all that's lacking about us should draw us together, with the woman with one child learning from the woman with six, and the woman with no decorating skills benefiting from the friend who has tons, and the mom with full hands getting a break from her friend with empty arms.

But we only get to experience the richness of these differences if we make ourselves vulnerable and let people into our lives and into our homes, you know, if we let go of our insecurities about our dirty walls or mismatched dinner plates or sticky floors and invite people over for some soup or pie or a glass of wine.

I keep saying this, but when you let someone into your home, you're letting them into your life.

You are letting them into your world, and that is the place where real intimacy can flourish.

We've all got so many excuses for why we don't do that.

You know, our houses are a mess.

We're not good cooks.

We don't have enough money.

Our kids are monkeys.

But those are all just excuses.

They're not reasons to not have someone over.

You know, if you don't believe me, just put yourself in your guests' shoes for a minute.Imagine you're new in town and looking to make friends or you're longing for adult conversation after a week alone with the kids, or you're like I was for a long time and you're the last single friend who's struggling with the loneliness that comes when everyone else has a house full of littles and you have none.

So, imagine you're any one of those people and then imagine how all your excuses for not inviting them over for dinner sound.

For example, you say, I'm sorry, I can't have you over tonight.

My kids' bedrooms aren't clean.

And your guest is thinking, Um, are we eating in your kids' bedrooms?

You: I'm sorry.

I can't have you over.

I've got laundry on the dining room table.

The guest: We can eat in the kitchen.

You: I'm sorry.

I can't have you over, but there's toys everywhere.

And I promise you because I've heard this excuse, your guest is thinking, You have five kids.

Of course there are toys everywhere.

I don't care.

Lastly, host: I can't have you over because my bed isn't made or my floors aren't mopped or my walls haven't been scrubbed or I don't have time to make anything fancy.

And your guest is thinking, I am coming to see you.

I don't care about the rest.

Each of us has something to offer one another.

And what we have to offer isn't dependent on how big or how nice or how clean our house is.

It's dependent on our willingness to let people into our homes, to be real with them and love them where they are.

It's dependent on setting aside our own insecurities, so we can make room for another.

Right now, someone you know is lonely, struggling, and longing to be included in your crazy family life or just have a break from cooking dinner.

Let them in even if all you have room for is just one extra person.

And you don't have to only invite families with eight kids over.

There are lots of childless couples or single people or elderly widows and widowers who need to be welcomed too.

And while you're welcoming them, don't worry about the toys in the living room or the broken dining room chairs.

You know, don't be that crazy person who makes everyone miserable cleaning the house from top to bottom before letting anyone into your home.

Just give the bathrooms a quick wipe down, clear off a place for your guests to sit and go shut the doors to the rooms where you don't want them going.

Lastly, don't worry about giving guests something fancy.

Like if you like fancy and you can do fancy without having a nervous breakdown, that's awesome.

But if not, soup will do.

You know if you need to serve them takeout pizza on paper plates with wine in plastic cups, your guests, at least the nice ones, they're not gonna care.

You are so much more than your housekeeping or cooking or decorating skills.

If your guests have your time and your attention, they will have the best you can give.

The essence of hospitality is really so simple.

It's just love and kindness and respect.

It's attention.

It's giving people a space where they can come to know others and be known by others.

That's all that makes for a successful dinner party and allows community to grow.

That's also what gives people a foretaste of the supper to which we are all invited, the marriage supper of the lamb.