The Church as Host

This is an article I wrote for "The White Rose", a periodical published by Old St. Paul's Scottish Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, Scotland. Shortly after returning to the States after spending a year in Edinburgh, I received a request from Nick Clark, one of our Scottish friends, to write an article about "the Church as Host".



In the American South, especially in the rural areas, we have a tradition that over the years has come to be known as “Southern hospitality”. It is still seen in some parts of the South in the friendly wave people give when they pass each other on a lightly travelled stretch of a farm-to-market road. It is characterised by the way strangers are greeted and welcomed in the home, and popularised by the Beverly Hillbillies’ famous “set a spell…kick your shoes off…y’all come back now, ya’ hear.” Of course, as the world gets busier, engrained traditions of hospitality seem to quietly fade into memories. But my Dad still tells me stories about the good ole’ days when people offered a stranger at the door not only a cold drink but a bite to eat as well. Truly hospitable folks would not only open their door to strangers, but would open their table as well. So, to my mind, an enduring symbol of hospitality will always be an open table.

One of my favourite worship songs begins: “Lay your burden down, every care you carry, and come to the table of grace for there is mercy. Come just as you are; we are all unworthy to enter the presence of God, for He is holy.” It is a beautiful call to worship to be reminded that Christ’s table is open to sinners, and that the Host of the universe turns no one away from His spiritual feast. Our Creator, who first sets the table with his own precious body, offers Himself freely to all who believe in Him. In the flesh, He hosted the first meal, and in the flesh He continues to host it as long as this world endures, for the Church is the Body of Christ.

Unfortunately, as the Church has struggled through the centuries with factions and divisions, the universal welcome of Christ’s table has become much more difficult to hear. Now we tend to share Christ’s table with people who think like us and speak like us and hold the same beliefs as us. The visiting stranger is often consigned to a chair in the corner while the “family” sits down at the table. Sure, the stranger might be graciously offered doughnuts and coffee when the service is over, but doughnuts and coffee won’t satisfy his spiritual hunger. Any secular club in town would gladly bribe a new visitor with doughnuts and coffee, but the Church has a higher calling than that. The Church has a divine mandate to open Christ’s table to all of God’s children, serving as host in this spiritual meal.

So, as I think back over our recent experiences in Edinburgh churches and ponder what it means for a congregation to fulfil its role as “host”, I find that a good host is a one of which I can say this:

“We were strangers, and you invited us in…to kneel with you in the presence of the same God, to eat of the same bread and to drink of the same cup and to commune with you in sharing the body of Christ. We came as sinners and you did not condemn us but acknowledged your sin in return. You knelt beside us as our brothers and sisters in Christ, accepted us as members of your spiritual family, and shared with us your spiritual feast.”

Our year in Edinburgh could best be described as spiritually invigorating, because we have this new awareness of the vastness of the body of the Christ. When I imagine Christ’s Church meeting together on the Lord’s Day to share in His feast, I envision an enormous rectangular table. There is a place with my name, so I pull out my chair and sit down at the table. I look across the table and see my friends in Abilene, Texas sitting just across from me. Then I look off to the East and see Christ’s table, lined with Christians, stretching like a ribbon across the flat West Texas plains and disappearing over the horizon. And I know that somewhere along that table there is a group of people that we love very much sitting down at the same meal, sharing the same bread, drinking of the same cup, and worshipping the same Lord. I know their names and I can recall their faces even though I am unable to see them, and I am consciously aware of our communion with one another. Then, if I listen very closely, my spiritual senses veiled by earthly flesh can barely detect the sound of the Lord of the feast pulling out His chair and taking His place at the head of the table, pouring out His blessings on His children and reminding them to continue in love and unity until He comes again in glory.