Canadian Mennonite
Volume 10, No. 09
May 1, 2006

In my work as an English professor, I am frequently led into new ideas through my engagement with other disciplines. In particular, since my primary research interest is Renaissance devotional literature, I am always interested in comparing the way Christians were in that time and place to the way we are now.

I had occasion for such thought a few years ago when Letty Russell delivered Canadian Mennonite University’s annual J.J. Thiessen Lectures on the topic, “Hospitality in an age of difference.” She argued that hospitality should be the primary way that we, as a church, understand who we are in the world and in relation to God. Whereas we culturally seem increasingly drawn into a fear of others, hospitality asks that we not only treat the other well—whether that be across religious, cultural, racial or other lines, but that we delight in the host/guest relationship.

Shortly after Russell’s lectures, I was teaching the poems of one of my favourite writers, George Herbert, the early 17th-century Anglican minister. As I came once again to Love, I had occasion to rethink both the poem and Russell’s lectures, each in light of the other. For all their differences, it seems to me that these two Christians are speaking the same language, not understanding hospitality as a duty of faith, but faith as hospitality.

Herbert addresses here the spiritual core of our life in the world: Our life in Christ. If we are to host, we can only do so because we have been, and continue to be, hosted. Herbert’s poem helps us to think about how human hospitality should both imitate, and not imitate, divine hospitality.

Notably, the poem works through two layers of metaphor. We first encounter Love as a host, and then realize that Love itself is, in fact, Christ. Within Herbert’s historical context, the literal level of the poem describes an aristocratic lord, a noble house, and an unworthy guest of lower social status.

In this context, hospitality functioned not only as an exercise in community, but also as an occasion of courtly power negotiation. By hosting, powerful people would not only exercise generosity, but also display their power to be generous, and command loyalty. Attending guests would themselves bring gifts and return favour for favour. The entire event enacted a political economy in which, whether one was a host or a guest, one could advance in the world by giving and receiving.

Herbert’s poem alludes to, and then stands in contrast with, this cultural backdrop, for it is precisely not about giving and receiving. Rather, it presents divine hospitality as distinctly other than that of humans.

The host of Love differs from an earthly host almost immediately in the poem. While earthly hosts concern themselves with display, this host observes, first bidding the poem’s speaker welcome, then noticing, “quick-ey’d,” the speaker’s discomfort. But Love is graceful, never making the speaker feel out of place. Love is gentle and intimate, not afraid of touch, drawing near and then taking the speaker’s hand and guiding him to the table. Love is also persistent, growing neither impatient nor dismissive of the speaker’s objections. Instead, those objections lead only to an ever greater unfolding of Love’s depth, both in the words Love speaks and in the way Love says them. Love combines our two meanings of the word “grace”: Love is both graceful and full of grace.

So what do this poem and Russell’s lectures combine to say to us? It seems to me that we too easily fall into thinking that we understand grace, and even deliver it, without being very graceful. The church’s hospitality in the world must be filled with a delight in the host/guest relationship. Hospitality is not simply a duty—it is a joy-filled way of being.

While the poem demonstrates Christian hospitality, it also demonstrates a hospitality that is uniquely Christ’s. Russell pointed out that Christian hospitality is not done solely on the host’s terms; rather, it is a two-way, open encounter. The church cannot choose to whom it will show hospitality, on what conditions, and to what ends, and then deliver that hospitality. Instead, living hospitably means being vulnerable to the stranger, and even finding Christ in that stranger. Such hospitality does more than offer reward points to the Christian; it becomes a mode of spiritual growth, an ongoing prodding that pulls us into real engagement with others and, through that engagement, with God.

The difference between Christian hospitality and Christ’s hospitality is that Christ welcomes us on his terms, rightly rejecting our terms. Notably, when the speaker of Love finally runs out of excuses as to why he cannot receive hospitality, when he finally offers to receive it, he proposes his own terms: “My dear, then I will serve.”

The speaker insists on helping. Why does Love reject the offer? At this feast, there is nothing for the human to do but receive, to “sit and eat.” Within the courtly culture Herbert knew, giving was a way of getting, and the speaker here can hope to earn favour only by serving. In the end, though, both the speaker’s excuses of unworthiness and his offer to help stand in the way of fully encountering Love.

What does the poem imply about human hospitality? We cannot host as Christ hosts, but we can host in light of how Christ hosts. We can recognize that when we host, we are, in fact, inviting others to the table of Christ and into the presence of Love. In the presence of Love, we can delight in the other.

Such delight resonates with Christ’s persistent, tender grace, and not with the anxieties of display or fear, of giving to get. Our recognition that in Christ we are always guests should help us exercise a radically Christian hospitality.

—Paul Dyck

The author is associate professor of English at Canadian Mennonite University.