illustration in grass and people

Grace In Daily Life: Gratitude, Generosity, And Hospitality

God has already given us what we need to renew the church. The renewal of the church will come when we learn to embody God’s grace.

The problem, of course, is that the church often stands for the opposite of grace. If you ask people who are not Christians to describe the Christian church in one word, the same word comes up again and again: “judgmental.”1 The renewal of the church will come when we become known for the welcoming grace of Jesus rather than the condemning judgment of the Pharisees.

Throughout Christian history, there have been at least three ways to embody God’s grace: gratitude, generosity, and hospitality. And together, they will transform our churches.

Gratitude and Generosity

Let us discuss gratitude and generosity together because they are two sides of the same coin. Gratitude is about choosing to remember the gift of God’s grace. “For by grace you have been saved, through faith. It is the free gift of God, lest anyone should boast” (Eph 2:8–9). Gratitude is choosing to remember that God has given me a gift. I did not get what I deserve. If I got what I deserved, it would not be a gift. It would be something I earned. If I got what I deserve, I would receive death because of my sin (Rom 3:23, 6:23). But instead of death, God “lavished” an “inheritance” on me at the cost of his own Son (Eph 1). Gratitude is not looking at the bright side. Gratitude is acknowledging that God’s gift is much brighter than anything I ever deserved.

Of course, the Pharisees thought grace was not fair, but Jesus did not always think things should be “fair.” He thought the last should be first. In Matthew 20, he tells a story to describe what grace means. If we could learn to internalize this story, it would transform our churches because it would change how we see the free gift of God’s grace. In this story, a farmer owns a vineyard. He hires some workers for his vineyard and agrees to pay them a denarius, a day’s wage. After all, that’s fair. But then, around 9:00 am, the farmer sees some idle workers in the village, so he hires them, saying, “I will pay you what is right.” The same scene plays out at noon, at three, and even just before quitting time. Then at the end of the day, when it is time to settle accounts, he gives everyone a full day’s wage. When I teach that story in churches, Christians of all ages have the same reaction: “That’s not fair!” And they are right. If things are fair, that means you get what you deserve. That’s when the next question comes. Do you really want God to give you what you deserve? Do you want to set that precedent? What do you and I deserve? If you and I get what we deserve, we get death. You don’t want things to be fair. You want grace.

Grace means that we receive more than we deserve, and we get it because Christ paid a price we could not pay. It is an undeserved gift. Grace is not fair. And that’s the whole point. Jesus’ message in the parable is that the last shall be first. That’s not fair. You and I, we want to act like we were the workers who came first thing in the morning. But that would mean that we had earned our salvation and that we had lived the sinless life that the Law demands. But none of us can live up to that standard. So, we act like Pharisees, looking down on other people. “I may not have worked all day,” we say to ourselves, “but I worked longer and harder than they did” (whoever “they” are). We try to convince ourselves that others deserve judgment but we—we—deserve the reward that cost Jesus his life. We want to pretend that things should be fair, but if we get what we deserve, we get death. You don’t want things to be fair. You want grace.

Some people tend to spiritualize this parable, saying that anyone who accepts Christ on their deathbed will still get into heaven. And that’s true. But that’s not the only point Jesus set out to make. Grace is not just something we receive from God. We are supposed to practice grace. “Judge not, lest you be judged,” he warned (Matt 7:1). “Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). Don’t just be fair; show grace. And that requires generosity.

Grace unites gratitude and generosity because gratitude is not complete until it becomes generosity. Generosity is choosing to practice grace with others, even and especially when they don’t deserve it. Generosity is not (just) about money. It is about a generous spirit—a willingness to give others the benefit of the doubt. Jesus told many parables about the dangers that come when gratitude does not lead to generosity. For example, in Matthew 18, Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive a brother or sister. And, in response, Jesus tells the story of a man who is forgiven a large debt by the king. The man then chooses not to forgive a much smaller debt from a friend. He wants grace for himself, but he wants to be “fair” with the man who owes something to him. He wants to receive generosity, but he does not want to practice it. That is what Jesus condemns.

Hospitality

If we want to embody the grace that God has shown to us, our generosity must particularly transform the ways that we treat strangers. And that will require us
to recover the Christian practice of hospitality because hospitality is extending grace across difference.

Hospitality is a Christian practice that extends all the way back to the book of Genesis. Although, in the contemporary United States, people use the term to mean catering a meal or putting on a party, hospitality means far more as a Christian practice. How might we recover the Christian practice of hospitality, especially in a way that brings the wholeness of the biblical practice into contemporary life?

Hospitality is the offer to extend the privileges of community2 to those who do not have the standing to expect it, especially those who are vulnerable because they are strangers. Hospitality often involves sharing meals, but hospitality is about more than eating. Eating is, for example, one of the privileges of being in my family. My kids have the right to expect to be fed every single night. When I share a meal with them, it is not an act of kindness. I owe it to them. When I share such a meal with an outsider, I invite them into my family for that brief period. Hospitality is an offer to identify with outsiders and to treat them like insiders. Hospitality is extending privilege across difference. It is the offer to give outsiders what they do not deserve, just as God has given us the grace that we do not deserve.

All of human life begins with God’s act of hospitality—with God’s making a place for us in the world that God created, a world that we had no claim to inhabit. God knew that this offer was dangerous because we as outsiders might defile God’s pristine world. But God, in his great love for us, offered us hospitality while we were yet sinners. He invited us into his household, not just as guests but as adopted coheirs with Christ. And God’s hospitality came at a cost. God’s only Son had to suffer and die (and rise again in vindication) so that we might have a place once again in God’s family. Hospitality is at the core of the Christian experience. “Having been embraced by God,” Miroslav Volf says, “we must make space for others and invite them in—even our enemies.”3 Hospitality is treating outsiders like insiders, just as God treated us.

Hospitality is integral to the earliest biblical stories. God welcomed Adam into the Garden of Eden. Hospitality is a significant part of Abraham’s story in Genesis 12, 14, 18, and 19. Each of these stories turn on the proper (and improper) way to treat a stranger. Later in the Old Testament, Rahab welcomes the Hebrew spies, Elijah receives the hospitality of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17–18), and Elisha is hosted by the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4). God expands the notion of hospitality to include more than meals. It becomes central to the very identity of what it means to be the people of God. “Treat the foreign-born the way you treat the native-born,” says Leviticus (19:34). “Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” Later in the Old Testament, God’s prophets remind Israel and Judah that God will judge them based on how they care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien in their midst (e.g., Jer 7:6)—that is, by the degree to which they provide outsiders with the privileges that automatically come to those who are part of the community. Of course, these outsiders do not deserve the privileges reserved for insiders. That is the whole point. God calls us to give to others what they do not deserve because God has given us a priceless gift that we did not deserve. And this has been true since the dawn of Christianity.

One of the primary reasons why the gospel spread throughout the Roman Empire was that the Christians practiced a different kind of hospitality.4 Ancient Romans typically practiced hospitality only for important people—that is, only for people who could give them something in return. But the Christians became noted for extending hospitality to all, even the least of these. This was a significant part of how the early church developed a reputation of love.5 The early church loved outsiders as if they belonged.

In the same way, hospitality is often the first experience outsiders have with God’s people (and the loving God we represent). Outsiders measure “warmth” by hospitality—by the degree to which insiders treat outsiders like they belong.6 That means that hospitality must adapt to the experience of the outsider. Perhaps I have a friend who is a vegetarian. When my wife and I invite her to dinner, we don’t serve steak. That would be rude. Part of being friends with her is our knowing that she is a vegetarian. We have listened to her long enough to know how she sees the world. So, we accommodate ourselves to her experiences. Accommodation is different from assimilation.7 In assimilation, the burden is on you, the outsider, to change if you and I are going to share a culture. In accommodation, the burden is for me, the insider, to change. We in the church know the right way to treat friends: We accommodate ourselves to their needs. Yet somehow, when we deal with those outside the church, we often have the attitude that they should be grateful for whatever we offer and that they should change. But, if hospitality is treating strangers as part of the community, then I owe them the same obligations that I owe my friends.

It is easy to think about hospitality in terms of what food we might offer at a dinner. It is far more difficult (and far more important) to think about what it means to accommodate a stranger when it comes to the things we do as the people of God. We, the church insiders, have things just the way we like them. We selected a congregation that sings the songs we like, that meets at the time that works for us, and that has sermons on the things we think are important. But if we are going to welcome outsiders, then we bear an obligation to listen to those people who are not like us and then to change our music, our services, and our sermons so that they reflect the tastes of those we intend to welcome. Hospitality will cost us.

What about the “bad guest”? Doesn’t hospitality leave us open to exploitation? Don’t good guests have an obligation to be grateful? Our worries about good hosts and bad guests depend on whether we see ourselves as the hosts or as the guests. We practice hospitality because God practices hospitality. God invited us humans into this earth, which God created. Yet we were (and are) bad guests. We messed up the Garden of Eden, and we continue to treat each other poorly. We do not show gratitude to God. Yet God keeps offering us hospitality. The only way we can ask about the “bad guest” is if we see ourselves as only being the good host—that is, if we forget that we are the ungrateful guests at God’s table. We must treat other people the same way we want God to treat us.

If hospitality is extending privilege across difference, then it will change the ways we invite people to participate in our community. For example, Reuben and Sonja were a homeless couple in their twenties. They showed up at a church office on a Friday, asking for help with food. They were living with their infant in a van. The congregational coordinator, Carol, obtained food vouchers and arranged temporary housing for them. But Carol did something more. In talking with Reuben, she discovered that he played the bass guitar; she saw it in the van. So, she invited him to come back in two days to play with the worship band on Sunday morning. Carol did not ask if he was a good musician and did not even ask if he was a good Christian. She simply welcomed him in Jesus’ name. And now, years later, Reuben and Sonja (and their child) are regular members of that church.

How is that a story about hospitality? Let us say that we had a twenty-five-year-old bass player who was a child of the church. Would the praise band welcome him? Of course. Not only that, they would recruit him. Carol extended to Reuben the privileges that any member of the congregation would have expected. She treated an outsider like an insider. Because of that, he became an insider. That is the Christian practice of hospitality.

And that takes us all the way back to the renewal of the church. If I think that “other people” need to change before the church will be renewed, then I am part of the problem. I am the one who has to change. I have to stop acting like a judgmental Pharisee and learn to embody God’s welcoming grace. And, to do that, I might focus on three ancient Christian practices. Gratitude is choosing to remember the gift of God’s grace. Generosity is choosing to practice grace with others, even and especially when they don’t deserve it. And hospitality is extending grace across difference; it is treating outsiders like insiders, just as God treats me. If each of us can embrace and embody these manifestations of grace, then we will be transformed and the church will see renewal.

Written By

Scott Cormode is the Hugh De Pree Professor of Leadership Development in the School of Mission and Theology. With significant leadership and teaching experience, Dr. Cormode also founded the Academy of Religious Leadership, an organization for professors who teach leadership in seminaries, and created the Journal of Religious Leadership, for which he acts as editor. His writing on leadership, organization, and technology have been published widely, and he is the author of Making Spiritual Sense: Theological Interpretation as Christian Leadership.

God has already given us what we need to renew the church. The renewal of the church will come when we learn to embody God’s grace.

The problem, of course, is that the church often stands for the opposite of grace. If you ask people who are not Christians to describe the Christian church in one word, the same word comes up again and again: “judgmental.”1 The renewal of the church will come when we become known for the welcoming grace of Jesus rather than the condemning judgment of the Pharisees.

Throughout Christian history, there have been at least three ways to embody God’s grace: gratitude, generosity, and hospitality. And together, they will transform our churches.

Gratitude and Generosity

Let us discuss gratitude and generosity together because they are two sides of the same coin. Gratitude is about choosing to remember the gift of God’s grace. “For by grace you have been saved, through faith. It is the free gift of God, lest anyone should boast” (Eph 2:8–9). Gratitude is choosing to remember that God has given me a gift. I did not get what I deserve. If I got what I deserved, it would not be a gift. It would be something I earned. If I got what I deserve, I would receive death because of my sin (Rom 3:23, 6:23). But instead of death, God “lavished” an “inheritance” on me at the cost of his own Son (Eph 1). Gratitude is not looking at the bright side. Gratitude is acknowledging that God’s gift is much brighter than anything I ever deserved.

Of course, the Pharisees thought grace was not fair, but Jesus did not always think things should be “fair.” He thought the last should be first. In Matthew 20, he tells a story to describe what grace means. If we could learn to internalize this story, it would transform our churches because it would change how we see the free gift of God’s grace. In this story, a farmer owns a vineyard. He hires some workers for his vineyard and agrees to pay them a denarius, a day’s wage. After all, that’s fair. But then, around 9:00 am, the farmer sees some idle workers in the village, so he hires them, saying, “I will pay you what is right.” The same scene plays out at noon, at three, and even just before quitting time. Then at the end of the day, when it is time to settle accounts, he gives everyone a full day’s wage. When I teach that story in churches, Christians of all ages have the same reaction: “That’s not fair!” And they are right. If things are fair, that means you get what you deserve. That’s when the next question comes. Do you really want God to give you what you deserve? Do you want to set that precedent? What do you and I deserve? If you and I get what we deserve, we get death. You don’t want things to be fair. You want grace.

Grace means that we receive more than we deserve, and we get it because Christ paid a price we could not pay. It is an undeserved gift. Grace is not fair. And that’s the whole point. Jesus’ message in the parable is that the last shall be first. That’s not fair. You and I, we want to act like we were the workers who came first thing in the morning. But that would mean that we had earned our salvation and that we had lived the sinless life that the Law demands. But none of us can live up to that standard. So, we act like Pharisees, looking down on other people. “I may not have worked all day,” we say to ourselves, “but I worked longer and harder than they did” (whoever “they” are). We try to convince ourselves that others deserve judgment but we—we—deserve the reward that cost Jesus his life. We want to pretend that things should be fair, but if we get what we deserve, we get death. You don’t want things to be fair. You want grace.

Some people tend to spiritualize this parable, saying that anyone who accepts Christ on their deathbed will still get into heaven. And that’s true. But that’s not the only point Jesus set out to make. Grace is not just something we receive from God. We are supposed to practice grace. “Judge not, lest you be judged,” he warned (Matt 7:1). “Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). Don’t just be fair; show grace. And that requires generosity.

Grace unites gratitude and generosity because gratitude is not complete until it becomes generosity. Generosity is choosing to practice grace with others, even and especially when they don’t deserve it. Generosity is not (just) about money. It is about a generous spirit—a willingness to give others the benefit of the doubt. Jesus told many parables about the dangers that come when gratitude does not lead to generosity. For example, in Matthew 18, Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive a brother or sister. And, in response, Jesus tells the story of a man who is forgiven a large debt by the king. The man then chooses not to forgive a much smaller debt from a friend. He wants grace for himself, but he wants to be “fair” with the man who owes something to him. He wants to receive generosity, but he does not want to practice it. That is what Jesus condemns.

Hospitality

If we want to embody the grace that God has shown to us, our generosity must particularly transform the ways that we treat strangers. And that will require us
to recover the Christian practice of hospitality because hospitality is extending grace across difference.

Hospitality is a Christian practice that extends all the way back to the book of Genesis. Although, in the contemporary United States, people use the term to mean catering a meal or putting on a party, hospitality means far more as a Christian practice. How might we recover the Christian practice of hospitality, especially in a way that brings the wholeness of the biblical practice into contemporary life?

Hospitality is the offer to extend the privileges of community2 to those who do not have the standing to expect it, especially those who are vulnerable because they are strangers. Hospitality often involves sharing meals, but hospitality is about more than eating. Eating is, for example, one of the privileges of being in my family. My kids have the right to expect to be fed every single night. When I share a meal with them, it is not an act of kindness. I owe it to them. When I share such a meal with an outsider, I invite them into my family for that brief period. Hospitality is an offer to identify with outsiders and to treat them like insiders. Hospitality is extending privilege across difference. It is the offer to give outsiders what they do not deserve, just as God has given us the grace that we do not deserve.

All of human life begins with God’s act of hospitality—with God’s making a place for us in the world that God created, a world that we had no claim to inhabit. God knew that this offer was dangerous because we as outsiders might defile God’s pristine world. But God, in his great love for us, offered us hospitality while we were yet sinners. He invited us into his household, not just as guests but as adopted coheirs with Christ. And God’s hospitality came at a cost. God’s only Son had to suffer and die (and rise again in vindication) so that we might have a place once again in God’s family. Hospitality is at the core of the Christian experience. “Having been embraced by God,” Miroslav Volf says, “we must make space for others and invite them in—even our enemies.”3 Hospitality is treating outsiders like insiders, just as God treated us.

Hospitality is integral to the earliest biblical stories. God welcomed Adam into the Garden of Eden. Hospitality is a significant part of Abraham’s story in Genesis 12, 14, 18, and 19. Each of these stories turn on the proper (and improper) way to treat a stranger. Later in the Old Testament, Rahab welcomes the Hebrew spies, Elijah receives the hospitality of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17–18), and Elisha is hosted by the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4). God expands the notion of hospitality to include more than meals. It becomes central to the very identity of what it means to be the people of God. “Treat the foreign-born the way you treat the native-born,” says Leviticus (19:34). “Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” Later in the Old Testament, God’s prophets remind Israel and Judah that God will judge them based on how they care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien in their midst (e.g., Jer 7:6)—that is, by the degree to which they provide outsiders with the privileges that automatically come to those who are part of the community. Of course, these outsiders do not deserve the privileges reserved for insiders. That is the whole point. God calls us to give to others what they do not deserve because God has given us a priceless gift that we did not deserve. And this has been true since the dawn of Christianity.

One of the primary reasons why the gospel spread throughout the Roman Empire was that the Christians practiced a different kind of hospitality.4 Ancient Romans typically practiced hospitality only for important people—that is, only for people who could give them something in return. But the Christians became noted for extending hospitality to all, even the least of these. This was a significant part of how the early church developed a reputation of love.5 The early church loved outsiders as if they belonged.

In the same way, hospitality is often the first experience outsiders have with God’s people (and the loving God we represent). Outsiders measure “warmth” by hospitality—by the degree to which insiders treat outsiders like they belong.6 That means that hospitality must adapt to the experience of the outsider. Perhaps I have a friend who is a vegetarian. When my wife and I invite her to dinner, we don’t serve steak. That would be rude. Part of being friends with her is our knowing that she is a vegetarian. We have listened to her long enough to know how she sees the world. So, we accommodate ourselves to her experiences. Accommodation is different from assimilation.7 In assimilation, the burden is on you, the outsider, to change if you and I are going to share a culture. In accommodation, the burden is for me, the insider, to change. We in the church know the right way to treat friends: We accommodate ourselves to their needs. Yet somehow, when we deal with those outside the church, we often have the attitude that they should be grateful for whatever we offer and that they should change. But, if hospitality is treating strangers as part of the community, then I owe them the same obligations that I owe my friends.

It is easy to think about hospitality in terms of what food we might offer at a dinner. It is far more difficult (and far more important) to think about what it means to accommodate a stranger when it comes to the things we do as the people of God. We, the church insiders, have things just the way we like them. We selected a congregation that sings the songs we like, that meets at the time that works for us, and that has sermons on the things we think are important. But if we are going to welcome outsiders, then we bear an obligation to listen to those people who are not like us and then to change our music, our services, and our sermons so that they reflect the tastes of those we intend to welcome. Hospitality will cost us.

What about the “bad guest”? Doesn’t hospitality leave us open to exploitation? Don’t good guests have an obligation to be grateful? Our worries about good hosts and bad guests depend on whether we see ourselves as the hosts or as the guests. We practice hospitality because God practices hospitality. God invited us humans into this earth, which God created. Yet we were (and are) bad guests. We messed up the Garden of Eden, and we continue to treat each other poorly. We do not show gratitude to God. Yet God keeps offering us hospitality. The only way we can ask about the “bad guest” is if we see ourselves as only being the good host—that is, if we forget that we are the ungrateful guests at God’s table. We must treat other people the same way we want God to treat us.

If hospitality is extending privilege across difference, then it will change the ways we invite people to participate in our community. For example, Reuben and Sonja were a homeless couple in their twenties. They showed up at a church office on a Friday, asking for help with food. They were living with their infant in a van. The congregational coordinator, Carol, obtained food vouchers and arranged temporary housing for them. But Carol did something more. In talking with Reuben, she discovered that he played the bass guitar; she saw it in the van. So, she invited him to come back in two days to play with the worship band on Sunday morning. Carol did not ask if he was a good musician and did not even ask if he was a good Christian. She simply welcomed him in Jesus’ name. And now, years later, Reuben and Sonja (and their child) are regular members of that church.

How is that a story about hospitality? Let us say that we had a twenty-five-year-old bass player who was a child of the church. Would the praise band welcome him? Of course. Not only that, they would recruit him. Carol extended to Reuben the privileges that any member of the congregation would have expected. She treated an outsider like an insider. Because of that, he became an insider. That is the Christian practice of hospitality.

And that takes us all the way back to the renewal of the church. If I think that “other people” need to change before the church will be renewed, then I am part of the problem. I am the one who has to change. I have to stop acting like a judgmental Pharisee and learn to embody God’s welcoming grace. And, to do that, I might focus on three ancient Christian practices. Gratitude is choosing to remember the gift of God’s grace. Generosity is choosing to practice grace with others, even and especially when they don’t deserve it. And hospitality is extending grace across difference; it is treating outsiders like insiders, just as God treats me. If each of us can embrace and embody these manifestations of grace, then we will be transformed and the church will see renewal.

Scott Cormode

Scott Cormode is the Hugh De Pree Professor of Leadership Development in the School of Mission and Theology. With significant leadership and teaching experience, Dr. Cormode also founded the Academy of Religious Leadership, an organization for professors who teach leadership in seminaries, and created the Journal of Religious Leadership, for which he acts as editor. His writing on leadership, organization, and technology have been published widely, and he is the author of Making Spiritual Sense: Theological Interpretation as Christian Leadership.

Originally published

January 27, 2023

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