Doing Justice and Loving Mercy: Compassion Ministries, Mentor's Guide, MG16

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D O I N G J U S T I C E A N D L O V I N G M E R C Y : C O M P A S S I O N M I N I S T R I E S

reciprocal welcoming, preeminently at meals, becomes both an act of worship and a display of unity that will attract outsiders. A similar point is made when Paul writes to correct abuses of the Lord’s Supper in Corinth which have the effect of excluding or dishonoring certain believers, especially the poor. Paul insists that there must be no second-class citizens in this ritual proclamation of the crucified Christ and his world-reversing gospel (1 Cor. 11.17–34). Much earlier in his ministry Paul had opposed Peter publicly in Antioch when the latter reneged on his practice of eating with gentile converts (Gal. 2.11ff.). For Paul, the meals of the Church have become a critical arena for the revealing of God’s righteousness in Christ and humanity’s response to it. It is not surprising that the Pauline disciple who wrote 1 Timothy considered the talent for hospitality much to be desired in one who occupied the office of bishop (3.2). In the Fourth Gospel exchanges of food or drink also function as occasions for the revelation of God’s love in Christ (4.7ff.; chaps. 6 and 13–17). But the distinctive character of John’s concern for hospitality shows itself in his Christological statements. Jesus is not only the door to the sheepfold, the preparer of heavenly chambers, and the way to the Father (10.1ff.; 14.1–6), he is himself the place where believers worship (2.13–22) and dwell (14.20, 23; 15.1ff.). These images take on special meaning if members of the Johannine community have recently suffered expulsion from the synagogue. In the Johannine letters the presbyter-author urges his readers not to receive Christian travelers who do not abide in the doctrine of Christ (2 John 9-10). But he and his emissaries are themselves the objects of inhospitable treatment by a certain Diotrephes (3 John 9-10). Apparently the issue is one of conflict over authority. Images of hospitality occur with some frequency in the general epistles. James exhorts the recipients of his epistle not to humiliate poor people by assigning them to inferior places in the public assemblies of the Church (2.1–7). The author of 1 Peter addresses his readers as aliens and exiles who were once “no people” but are now a “chosen race . . . built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood” (1.1; 2.4–10). As such, they are to “practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another” (4.9). This terminology may reflect a real social-political situation in which the readers suffered from their status as resident aliens and transient strangers (Elliott 1981). Perhaps the most winsome of