Food for Thought 9: Hospitality
Entertaining Angels
In his funny and insightful memoir, Food Network star Alton Brown writes:
“It is my personal belief that no human being has ruined as many American meals, be they picnics, late-night snacks, dinner parties, casual get-togethers, Thanksgiving feasts, holiday cookie parties, coffee klatches, taffy pulls, and potlucks, as Martha Helen Kostyra, known on this planet (and possibly others) as Martha Stewart” (Brown, 199).1
Though Brown admits he has the utmost respect for Martha Stewart’s drive and ability, he claims Stewart has raised the standard of hosting too high. He argues that Martha’s cookbooks have made the goal of hosting others something no host, much less any human, can attain: perfection (Brown, 199).
The vision of hosting Stewart and other tastemakers like her present intimidates people out of hosting because no one can actually accomplish the perfect meal, prepared by the perfect chef, and placed on the perfectly set table. Brown claims he knows at least three people who “after purchasing Martha’s original bible of perfection, Entertaining, ironically ceased to entertain altogether” (Brown, 201). The standards of perfection were simply too high. These people and many others were convinced that they weren’t hosting right and stopped inviting friends into their homes. Perfection may be the death of hosting. Worse, perfection may be the death of hospitality.
Hospitality is a Christian virtue. But we’ve nearly lost the ability to practice it. Robert Farrar Capon (we’ll hear more from him later) voiced his concerns that the dinner party was dying back in 1969.2 Hospitality shouldn’t be as hard as the cookbooks and tastemakers make it seem. Hospitality is also not a performance where we present ourselves, our home, and lifestyle as perfect (our age of social media pageantry has surely poisoned the way we think about hospitality).
Hospitality of course means many things. It means housing and feeding people in the wake of persecution, natural disasters, seasons of personal crisis, etc. Hospitality is also a way of inhabiting the world, just having a welcoming spirit to anyone we meet no matter where we are. But hospitality isn’t less than inviting people into your home and preparing a meal for them. Sadly, our obsession with perfection is impeding our ability to host others in this way.
The First Hosts
The first people to show hospitality by preparing a meal for guests in the storyline of the Bible are Abraham and Sarah. They are a good model for us because they host a dinner party without hiding any of their imperfections. Genesis 18:1-8 tells the story.
One day Abraham was sitting in the shade in the heat of the day. He suddenly saw three men standing in front of him. These men were no ordinary travelers but angels or some physical manifestation of God. Abraham ran to these men, bowed to them, and begged them to let him practice hospitality by providing refreshments. The men agreed and Abraham (who was an old, old man at this point) set off. First, he ran to his wife, who was in the tent, and asked her to make some bread quickly. Then, Abraham ran to his herd, took a quality calf, and passed the calf off to one of his servants and had him prepare the food for his guests. Finally, he gave the three men the food, and the text notes that he stood with them while they ate.
Abraham and Sarah do a number of things right in this passage.3 First, Abraham honors his guests (Gen. 18:2). He also presents the opportunity to host them like a favor to himself (Gen. 18:3-5). He cooks what he has rather than trying to go out and get something fancier. Finally, Abraham provides his guests with provisions without depriving them of his presence. Abraham runs quickly (and remember, he’s over 100 at this point!) and also distributes the labor of cooking between his wife and servant so that he may be present with his guests. Hosting isn’t just about feeding people, it’s about being with people.
Yet, the imperfections of Abraham and Sarah also come to the surface during this impromptu dinner party. When one of the men says Sarah will have a child within a year, Sarah laughs. This laugh would have been inappropriate even if the guests were humans. Given the fact that these are divine guests, Sarah’s lackluster hosting skills are made even worse. Abraham is by no means better off than Sarah here because he too laughed back in Genesis 17:17 when God told him he would have a son. Whereas Sarah laughed to herself in Genesis 18:12, Genesis 17:17 says Abraham “fell on his face and laughed” at what God promised. All of this is to say, Abraham and Sarah don’t hide the imperfections of their marriage or their personal piety here. While we need to ensure the words of our mouth and meditations of our heart are pleasing to God, Scripture never calls us to act as if we are perfect. Scripture actually warns against that behavior. Pharisees pretend to be perfect, Christians don’t. A level of transparency is essential when hosting.
Some Tips for Hosting
As I’ve mentioned before in this series, the Bible is such a big book, it looks back on itself. Thousands of years after Abraham and Sarah practiced this act of hospitality, the author of Hebrews references them saying, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware” (Heb. 13:2).
While your guests will probably not turn out to be angels, your guests will definitely be image-bearers of God. This means, like Abraham, we need to treat our guests with great respect. When offering advice on hosting, Robert Farrar Capon writes, “Your company is an earthly image of the Divine Sociality of the Godhead” (Capon, 179). Because our guests image our glorious triune God, hosting them and providing food for them is a sacred thing. So sacred and so reminiscent of our relational God, Capon says you should convene dinner parties in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (Capon, 179).
Like Abraham and Sarah, give your guests what you have. There is no implication that the food they offer is extravagant or fancy. When you host, you are, like Alton Brown says, sharing yourself with others. When hosting, therefore, prepare a meal you like and regularly eat. Like Abraham, take a calf from your own herd. Capon advises, “Within reasonable limits, cook to please your guests, not to edify or amaze them. Your dinner party is an act of love, not a lecture on gourmandise” (Capon, 174). Brown echoes this advice saying that whatever you make for guests, “Cook it as simply as you can, make it taste as good as you can without overcomplicating matters, serve it on a fairly simple, tasteful plate (if it’s chipped, even better)” (Brown, 203).
When showing hospitality, don’t strive to be someone you’re not. Don’t try to be perfect. In order to give of yourself in the beautiful sacrifice of hosting, you have to be yourself. Honor your guests as image bearers of the triune God, and cook something simple you enjoy for them. Though it may seem mundane and ordinary, Capon reminds us that history will end with a great banquet (Rev. 19). The simple and unassuming hospitality of having people over and feeding them gives us a “foretaste of what is in store for us” (Capon, 171). So, I encourage you to keep showing hospitality in all its forms, especially by having people over to your home and feeding them. You probably won’t entertain angels. But you just might enjoy heaven as an appetizer.
Alton Brown, Food for Thought: Essays and Ruminations, (New York: Gallery Books, 2024).
Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb, (New York: Smithmark Publishers, 1969).
For an example of a bad host who refused to give what he had, read 1 Samuel 25, where Nabal refuses to host David.