VHC 9: Church as Community of Hospitality

This second last chapter, along with Ch 10, forms section three: The Public Face of Hospitality. Here Boersma appeals for the church to be the "primary place where reconciliation takes shape and as the place where the atonement--accomplished in principle and decisively through the recapitulation or representation of Israel in the historical figure of Jesus Christ--finds its focus and [purpose]" (205-06). The church accomplishes the hospitality of Jesus by "focusing on the Word of God, on the sacraments, and on the Church's suffering" (207). He first offers a caution that while the church is central, it is not a monopoloy; while it is Christ's representative, it does not fully contain Christ.

First, the Church must move beyond the emphasis of forgiveness--as it is played out in emotional and individualizing ways. Rather, the Church must embody true hospitality which does not raise impermeable boundaries. Boersma calls this evangelical hospitality the hospitality of the preached word. Just as the word is taken throughout the world for all to hear, so is its hospitality extended to those who hear it.

Second, Boersma discusses baptismal hospitality. "Baptism is the sacrament through which one enters into the Church and is united to Jesus Christ" (212). Boersma stresses the close nature of conversion and baptism, of membership to Christ and membership to his Church. Baptism, then, for it to be hospitable, must recognize the baptism of other denominations (if they are baptizing into Christ); and must extend the call to be hospitable.

Third, Boersma discusses eucharistic hospitality, which expresses hospitality better than preaching and baptism. Boersma is not simply discussing the eucharist as accepting fellow believers, but as God's gracious invitation to his banquet. God's invitation breaks the natural work of human invitation. He highlights God's invitations in the gospel accounts of the many unexpected people.

Fourth, Boersma defends penance as an act of hospitality. Boersma says that penance is an act of hospitality because "[w]ithout penance our sins exclude us from the community of reconciliation and turn us into strangers exiled from home" (224). Boersma says that "forgiveness without penance means hospitality without boundaries." Penance is the act in which one takes seriously their own sin--not in order to atone for it, but to seek the transformation of God to correct it. Boersma quotes Barbara Brown Taylor, then, who says that penance "is not for the purpose of inflicting pain but for...changing lives by restoring relationships" (228). (O'Donovan might say that penance is the church's judicial suggestion (not judgment!) to establish the context in which relationship can be restored.)

Finally, Boersma argues against understanding suffering in a manner of theodicy. Suffering can be redemptive and comes about in the specific instances of life in engaging in the imitation of Christ. Suffering in the exercise of hospitality, then, is meaningful insofar as it reflects and participates in God's hospitality in the suffering of Christ.