abstract

Liturgical Hospitality: Theological Reflections on Sharing in Grace

Hans Boersma
Trinity Western University

This paper looks at the Church's liturgy using the metaphor of hospitality. The paper takes as its starting-point Reinhard Hütter's comment that the Church's practice of hospitality is "both a reflection and an extension of God's own hospitality." On the basis of the notions of recapitulation (Irenaeus) and reconstitution (N.T. Wright) this paper proceeds on the assumption of a participatory identity between Christ and the Church. The connection between the vertical and horizontal aspects of hospitality implies, therefore, that liturgical hospitality forms the primary shape of God's gracious hospitality in our world. The Church as a divine institution both receives and mediates God's reconciling initiative by the preaching of the gospel and by means of the sacraments. Hospitality cannot function, however, without regard for boundaries. This need for boundaries (and the requirement of exclusion) implies that all hospitality--divine as well as human--demands boundaries in order to flourish. As Thomas Oden recently put it: "A center without a circumference is just a dot, nothing more." It is the circumference that marks the boundary of the circle. To eliminate the boundary is to eliminate the circle itself. The circle of faith cannot identify its center without recognizing its perimeter (The Rebirth of Orthodoxy). Thus, the paper focuses on liturgical hospitality while keeping in mind the necessity of legitimate boundaries in each of these liturgical practices. The paper describes four practices of hospitality: evangelical, baptismal, eucharistic, and penitential hospitality.

(1)   Evangelical hospitality: The public and communal character of the gospel proclamation safeguards the hospitable character of worship over against what Patrick Keifert (Welcoming the Stranger) has described as the ideologies of intimacy (which posits "closeness and warmth" as the most valuable experience that life affords) and of individualism (which measures the significance of forgiveness by the impact it has on the emotional stability of the individuals in the relationship). Instead of promoting hospitality, these ideologies function to further exclusivity. I argue that the hospitality of the public proclamation of the gospel constitutes the expression of divine hospitality that counters the tendency to view congregations as "lifestyle enclaves" (Robert Bellah). Furthermore, the exclusive character of the contents of the gospel implies that evangelical hospitality has a particular content, shaped by the good news about the victory of Jesus Christ.

(2)   Baptismal hospitality: Baptism is the prime sacrament of initiation, which incorporates a person into Christ and so into the eschatological community of hospitality. The hospitality of baptism witnesses God reaching out in genuine hospitality; we also see this hospitality in the unity with all believers created through this sacrament. "From its inmost nature baptism has an importance that goes beyond this or that local or confessional church" (Walter Kasper). Baptism, in other words, is a call to resist the sinful divisions that we have erected, and thus calls into question the legitimacy of denominational boundaries. At the same time, however, baptismal hospitality is not absolute, since the Trinitarian creeds of the Church belong to the core of the faith. Baptism, in other words, is a rite that takes place on the very boundary of the Church and implies the necessary exclusion of everything that does not belong to the Church of Jesus Christ. Finally, since baptism is both a divine gift and a call to obedience of faith, baptismal hospitality implies the need for a continual acceptance of the promise of forgiveness and life.

(3)   Eucharistic hospitality: Eucharistic hospitality is a common phrase in ecumenical dialogue to describe the practice of opening the communion table to members of other denominations. In this paper I use the expression to describe, in the first place, "the celebration of the hospitality of God shared by guests who commit themselves to become fellow hosts with God" (Monika Hellwig). Since all guests experience God's hospitality at the Lord's Table, eucharistic hospitality (as it is commonly understood) can hardly be an option. I will argue that baptism constitutes the boundary necessary to safeguard eucharistic hospitality. Eucharistic hospitality is based on the baptismal hospitality that God extends to those who come to him in faith. This again implies that the Church has boundaries, and that in her liturgical celebration the Church has an identity to guard. While the Catholic and Orthodox rejections of eucharistic hospitality (as witnessed, for instance, in John Paul II's recent "Ecclesia de eucharistica") attempt to do justice to the visible unity of the Church, the result tends to be a static ecclesiology. I will argue that eucharistic fellowship should not only be regarded as the end but also as a means of ecumenical dialogue. (Cf. Miroslav Volf's identification of openness to all other churches as an "interecclesial minimum.")

(4)   Penitential hospitality: Penance is more directly concerned with boundaries than the other means of grace. Confession and discipline are nonetheless means of grace and hospitality, in that the absence of penance implies continued exclusion from the community of reconciliation. Forgiveness without penance means hospitality without boundaries and an invitation to Satan, sin, and death to take over the community of grace. Protestant Churches have largely abandoned the practice of penance as a result of the contemporary psychologizing of the faith. They need to recover the ecclesial practice of penance for the reception of divine and human grace in order to maintain the integrity of hospitality and of their ecclesial character. Confession, I will argue, is a means to hold the twin aspects of consolation (forgiveness / hospitality) and discipline (boundaries) in balance (Thomas N. Tentler) as a practice of "restorative justice" (Barbara Brown Taylor).