Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers and sisters, even though they are strangers to you. They have told the church about your love. Please send them on their way in a manner that honors God.
3 John 5-6

A few months ago our friend asked to use our house to throw a semi-surprise party for his wife. It was a blast. This past Saturday, Wendy and I were blessed to host members of her family from out of town for lunch. Tonight we have friends staying with us for the night in our home. This Friday evening a small group of Wendy’s oldest and dearest friends are having a girls’ night at our house. Had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic, this weekend would have been our little town’s annual Tulip Time festival. Our house would typically have been filled with family for the weekend.

Hospitality is something that Wendy does extremely well, and something that we enjoy doing together. One of the motivating factors for building our house was the simple ability to provide hospitality for others. Relatives, friends, children, friends of children, and even friends of friends have stayed with us. The blessing is ours.

The realities of the Jesus movement in its first 300 years are typically lost on modern readers. The tens of thousands of Jesus’ followers met regularly in people’s homes scattered across the Roman Empire. Communication was poor making organization and oversight difficult, and sometimes impossible. That’s why much of what we refer to as the “Books” of the New Testament are actually letters that were written to be delivered, read, and sometimes copied and broadcast to all the other house churches of all the other believers. The letters would have to be carried, and the deliverer(s) (for safety is was common to send two) would need lodging and food. Inns were not great places in those days and typically doubled as brothels. It was imperative that the network of house churches double as the “LandBnB.org” of that day, offering safe lodging and hospitality for fellow believers.

Today’s chapter is another short letter that tradition ascribes to John. It is essentially a letter of recommendation for Demetrius to a house church leader named Gaius. The letter commends Gaius for his reputation as a Five-Star hospitality provider (compared to the One-Star rating John gave to another house church leader named Diotrephes). His letter provided Gaius with John’s Five-Star rating of Demetrius as a guest.

In the quiet this morning I find myself thinking about the gift and art of hospitality. Sure, AirBnB and others have turned many private residences into pseudo-inns for profit. That’s cool, but that’s not the kind of hospitality out of generosity that John was calling upon from Gaius. The “LandBnB.org” that John and early believers depended upon was a non-profit enterprise founded on generosity. Providing a warm and comfortable place that’s generously given with hospitable blessing truly is, I believe, a spiritual gift. And, as Wendy and I have discovered, the profit is joy.