“Remember to show hospitality. There are some who by doing so,

have entertained angels without knowing it.”

(Hebrews 13:2)

A play by Christopher Fry called A Sleep of Prisoners had as its opening stage direction this sentence: “The interior of a church turned into a prison camp.”

Do you get the picture? The lower windows of the church barricaded with heavy, rough oak timbers. Straw scattered about littering the floor and pews for the sleeping comfort of the internees. Every door locked from the outside and an armed sentry set to guard each door, twenty-four hours a day — to keep those who are in — in; and those who are out — out.

“The interior of a church turned into a prison camp.” Why is this description by Christopher Fry such a shocking, breath-taking picture of a church? Why, because it is a contradiction of our basic beliefs and sentiments about the nature of the Christian Church.

For the early literature produced by the Christian communities shows a preoccupation to the point of obsession with affording hospitality to strangers. “Don’t forget to be hospitable in entertaining strangers,” wrote the unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “because some people, in doing so. have entertained angels unawares.” The Elder John, in writing to his fellow churchman, Gaius, praised him for his hospitality to traveling Christian evangelists. St. Paul, in his letters to Timothy and Titus, gives as one requirement for serving as an elder in the church, “that he be given to showing hospitality.”

But why was the showing of hospitality so enthusiastically encouraged as an indispensable part of Christian ethics in the very beginning of the church? Was it because the Founder of Christianity was so dependent upon the hospitality of kindly disposed people, both for basic creature comforts and for the opportunity to launch his mission? The gospel writers portray Jesus as saying: “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

And the web of the gospel narrative is woven together with incidents of hospitality extended to Jesus by friends and by strangers. We read of how Jesus was a dinner guest at the home of Simon the Pharisee; and that Zachaeus, the publican who had never seen Jesus before that unforgettable day He appeared in Jericho and that man of small stature and small reputation invited Jesus to come home with him; and there was that house at Bethany where Jesus was always welcome, coming in and out of its gracious hospitality with such ease and naturalness as if the home belonged to Him as much as to its owners, Mary and Martha and Lazarus.

Did the obligation to show hospitality in early Christian ethics grow out of the Christian community’s realization that human hospitality meant so much to its Lord that forevermore it must be a crown jewel in human society?

Or, was it more a utilitarian ethic — adopted because showing hospitality was so important to the evangelistic mission of the church? The first Apostles were poor and unprotected men. There were few inns and no hotels or motels in those times. How would one carry enough money, if he had it, for a long journey? The early missionary travels would not have been possible, nor the missionaries’ small store of courage and endurance sufficient for the almost insuperable task of winning the pagan Roman world for Christ, had not Christian merchants and tradesmen, in Rome and Ephesus and Alexandria and every city and village felt under compulsion to take the Apostles in and give them whatever hospitality their homes afforded.

Or, can it be that Christian hospitality in the early church was just the natural development of the ancient oriental custom that is traceable from the most primitive times? The Interpreters’ Bible Dictionary states that “Entertainment of a stranger or sojourner as a guest was recognized as a sacred duty throughout the Mediterranean world, and more heartily and stringently kept than many a written law. . . The custom seems to have arisen from necessity among people who lived a nomadic life . . . One never knew when he might find himself in desperate need of shelter and protection, or (and here we encounter the strange reoccurrence of an oft repeated superstition) the fear that one never knew when he might entertain or refuse to entertain deity or angels.”

Why this recurring reason for showing hospitality — this ethical injunction to be ready to show hospitality to any stranger — because one might entertain an angel unaware? Why? Was it just an old superstitious fear?

I think it more reasonable to believe that mankind early discovered in his own experience — repeated over and over — that when he acted on the impulse of a hospitable heart and took in a stranger — the foreigner — even one whom he feared because his customs were strange and his manners offensive, again and again, he was aware that the eternal broke through into the temporal at that point — that his soul encountered someone other than the befriended stranger — that the place for God to meet man was always at that point where man met man in loving acceptance and service.

Have you ever heard the beautiful Jewish legend about how the Temple was built where it was located? Two brothers lived on adjoining farms. One was a bachelor and the other, a married man. One night during the harvest season, these two brothers began to think of each other. The married brother thought: “There is my poor bachelor brother living all alone with little to cheer his days, while I am surrounded by my dear wife and devoted children, having all the daily joys of a happy family. What can I do to make my brother’s life more blessed? Why, this I can do. I will go out under cover of darkness and carry sheaves of grain from my field into his field that he may at least know the joy of an abundant harvest.” Meanwhile the bachelor brother began to think of his married brother: “What a time my brother must have trying to rake and scrape together enough to feed all those mouths. My needs are relatively simple. I have enough and to spare. What can I do to make his life better? Ah, this I can do! I will go out under cover of darkness and carry sheaves of grain from my field into his, that he may have the joy of an abundant harvest.” And the point where the brothers met each other, carrying their sheathes, is the place where the Temple was built.

But what is happening to hospitality in our time? Have you noticed in your home and in your heart that something is happening to hospitality? In our culture of disappearing domestic servants, and fading Southern hospitality, in the rising tide of violence and the ensuing fear of strangers; in an era of the proliferation of motels and travelers checks and tourists agencies; in an economy like ours, what is happening to hospitality? Has our contemporary culture produced so many ways of making people self-sufficient that the ancient custom of showing hospitality has become completely unnecessary — like saddlebags would be for the man who drives a Ford Taurus? What’s happening to hospitality among us?

A recently promoted salesman was instructed by his sales manager: “Now, in this new position, you will have to take up golf. The company will furnish you a set of clubs, pay for a membership and lessons at the country club. Your expense account will cover entertainment of customers. You’ll find, as I have, that more deals are closed on the golf course than in the office.” In our culture, has the appropriation of hospitality for promotional purposes, of business, or politics, or personal social ambitions emptied the ancient custom of showing hospitality of all Christian ethical values?

I think not. Changing customs and cultures may alter specific expressions of hospitality, but they never cancel out humanity’s desperate need for the hospitable heart. There always are people who are strangers in every culture. Treated like outsiders, they feel like foreigners in a strange land. From the most primitive times, the need of men and women for hospitable treatment by fellow human beings was not so much for food and drink and shelter, however desperate that might be, as it was for companionship and understanding and encouragement.

Think of the people you and I know who have suddenly found themselves strangers in a strange land, defenseless and emotionally unfed, because of the death of a beloved husband or wife or child. Two by two they have traveled the long road of their pilgrimage. Then suddenly they are alone in darkness. C. S. Lewis said that when his wife died he felt that even God “had slammed the door in his face and there was the sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. And after that — silence.” What was needed? Some expression of a hospitable heart.

Then there is the plight of the mentally retarded child. He’s the fellow who feels left out in society because he can’t keep up at home or school or on the playground. What a hospitable spirit impelled some of our contemporaries to organize the Special Olympic Games, and to found and staff a kindergarten for mentally retarded children to help them, their families, and our society to grapple with this problem so that these who have felt left out would feel strangers no longer, but have a warm, loving place in their community.

The Presbyterian Women of our Rosemark church are leading our congregation in keeping alive the church’s ancient concern of affording hospitality by providing living necessities for distressed men, women and children who seek sanctuary at the Temporary Shelter in Memphis.

Thomas Hall’s Minute for Mission talk today challenged each of us to strengthen one of our Presbytery’s most vital institutions for affording Christian hospitality — our Pinecrest Camp and Conference Grounds.

What’s happening to hospitality? In our times, it is undergoing radical change, of course, but Christian hospitality will never be outmoded. Always there are those who in their loneliness, hopelessness, and despair need the indispensable ministries of the hospitable heart.

But even more important for each of us is our own peculiar personal need to cultivate and give expression to the hospitable heart for it affords the meeting place for our encounter with our God. Not without the hospitable heart is fellowship with our Lord remotely possible. John Calvin said: “We cannot be Christians without being brethren.” And the seer of Revelation records these words of the Living Christ: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open to Me, I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with Me.”