"Mi Casa Es Su Casa?”

In Spanish this is a standard way of welcoming someone to your home: “mi casa es su casa.” My home is your home. It is, of course, the Spanish equivalent to the English “please make yourself at home,” which we instinctively say as someone arrives to our home as guest. It is an assurance that this guest is welcome; we want them to feel, as we put it, “at home.” But let’s face it: while the sentiment is appreciated, we all know that no one is to take this literally. As your guest, I know that later this evening you would like me to thank the chef for a wonderful meal and good conversation and note that the time is getting on and tomorrow is a full day—our usual rubrics for signaling that we need to get our coat and make our way home—yes, our home, not this home!

All of this is a way of indicating something that has to be discussed when it comes to the meaning of hospitality. Yes, we offer hospitality—and all that this means. But it always comes with limits. That is, we need to speak to the limits of hospitality—to actually acknowledge that in the end true hospitality is not unconditional. You are welcome into our home; we offer an eager welcome. We want you to feel our acceptance, our delight to have you in our place, and we hope you will enjoy the meal. And as you go home later that evening, you will head home encouraged by good conversation. But we are not inviting you to “move in”—to re-arrange the furniture, to take over the management of the home. In a future posting, I want to consider the question: what does it mean to receive hospitality? But here, I want to raise the question: what are the limits of hospitality?

Hospitality does involve flexibility, sacrifice and generosity. When I welcome you to my home, we want to be attentive to what makes you feel at ease and accepted and appreciated. We want to meet your needs. But I am not free, in this offer of hospitality, to put at risk myself, my family or those for whom I am responsible. You may not bring a firearm into my home or into the classroom at Ambrose University. You may not smoke in our home or on the university campus. These are the rules of what it means to be welcomed into this space. And during a pandemic, we expect that you will honour what it means to be in community when there are vaccines available. You are welcome here—in this home, my home, and on the campus of the university. However, hospitality is not merely about the act of welcome; it is also about creating a safe space for each of those who are welcomed into this space or this community. And thus we necessarily and rightly insist: do not smoke a cigarette here; we are protecting the health of one and all. Please come vaccinated; we are protecting the health of one and all. Hospitality is only hospitality if this guideline is observed. There are limits. 

You are welcome to join us for worship on Sunday morning at such-and-such community church. We want to embody the love and acceptance of God. But, you are not free to disrupt the service: to sing whatever you want to sing, to interrupt the sermon or in any way shape or form threaten others who have joined us for worship. We will not tolerate harassment or racism, sexism or ageism. Part of what makes us a vibrant Christian community is that we insist that we will honour and respect one another. As such, those are the “limits” or terms of our hospitality. This does not mean that we are so uptight that we cannot patiently let a parent be present with an infant child lest they disturb the reverence of this place. But it does mean that we ask that you go easy on whatever scent you are wearing, out of consideration for others who have joined us for worship. We ask that in our welcome you honour what it means to be part of this community of faith—as we are hospitable to one another.

 As a student in such-and-such class, we ask that you respect the terms of the class that are set by the course instructor: this is what we will discuss today, these are the requirements for the course, and so on. And if you are going to be disruptive or adversarial, we might have to ask you to excuse yourself from the class. If you serve on a committee or governing board, we do welcome your opinions or observations, but only insofar as you defer to the committee chair and to the due process by which ideas and perspectives are going to be aired and considered.

You are eagerly welcome to set up your tent in this campsite; but you are not free to start a fire that might grow into a wide inferno; you are not free to pollute the stream that runs through the camp site; you are not free to party late into the night disturbing the other campers.

And yet, we are always learning, and this means that when we offer hospitality it always does truly involve a stretch—a reaching out, a willingness to be flexible and adapt and adjust our ways to do what we can, on our end of things, to make our engagement with you, with the other, a source of potential learning and growth. And so when it comes to the character of hospitality and the limits on hospitality, we are always in a posture of learning: asking hard questions about what it means to welcome children into our home—children who will be children, not miniature adults; and what it means to welcome the new immigrant into our neighbourhood, who might not fully appreciate “how things are done here” and who might actually teach us a thing or two about what it means to be a neighbour. And the newcomer to our church community—well, they might not only be on the receiving end, but also have something to teach us. Thus, the point is that the “limits” on our hospitality have to be something that we discuss and reflect on so that these limits are truly limits and not merely an imposition that keeps us from change, growth and new learning.