Christian Faith and University Life by T. Laine Scales & Jennifer L. Howell

Author:T. Laine Scales & Jennifer L. Howell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Hospitality, Humility, and the Horizon of Well-Ordered Love

While the practices of shared inquiry, reflective writing, and lectio divina can provide an initiation into the right direction of love in such a way that, as Augustine points out, things become evident that would otherwise remain hidden, the LGFP also seeks to introduce various communal Christian practices. Along with keeping Sabbath and communal worship , the practice we have found to be most central to the fellows experience is that of Christian hospitality. We begin the inaugural conference with this theme as it is expressed in the Gospel of Luke, and it is built into the very fabric of the program, in particular, the theme of hospitality to the stranger (xenia), which is familiar to many of the fellows from their reading of Homer’s Odyssey. The code of hospitality is important for understanding the theme of table fellowship in the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus is at table eight times, more than in any other gospel. Indeed, hospitality is central to his ministry.

The focus of our conversation on the Gospel of Luke is chapter twenty-four, which takes place on the road to Emmaus, as two of the disciples leave Jerusalem, disappointed and disillusioned, having abandoned “the way” on the very day that the promise of Jesus’ entire life was being fulfilled (the day of the resurrection). Jesus draws near and walks with them, but he is a “stranger” to them: “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him” (24:16; NAB). In this passage, Luke stresses the disciples, not the change in Jesus’ appearance: “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” The notion of being a stranger to a new place and community, as well as that of welcoming the stranger in the faces of the many undergraduate students and colleagues they encounter is one that graduate fellows can easily identify with, but the question of truly recognizing Jesus is one that requires an understanding of Luke’s use of the Greek word epiginosko. It means to “realize” or “really know” and suggests thorough, unassailable, and trenchant knowledge, not of a fact or metaphor or concept, but of a person. Knowing a person thus presupposes an intimate relationship, one based not on an external appearance but on mutual disclosure and inner attunement.

The final transition from seeing to truly knowing Jesus (24:32–35) occurs in the context of hospitality, when Cleopas and his companion, following the example of Jesus facing the crowd of five thousand, invite him to “stay” (meno: to dwell or make his home with them). The true test occurs when the three are at the table. Given the centrality of Jesus’ meal ministry in Luke’s Gospel, it makes sense that the disciples would recognize the stranger as the resurrected Christ in the very moment “he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” (24:30). Luke goes on to state that, “their eyes were opened and they recognized him (epignosan)” (24:31; NAB). When the two disciples return to Jerusalem and join the

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