To this story, she juxtaposes the unfortunate experience of Lot (Gen 19), who was unable to fulfill his obligation to strangers in a lawless and degraded community. 2 Pohl points out that hospitality and table fellowship are a moral imperative in many traditional societies-as shown, for example, in the account of Abraham’s welcome of the three travelers at Mamre (Gen 18:1–8), which turned out to be welcoming angels unawares (cf. The most sustained theological treatment of Christian hospitality to date is Christine Pohl’s 1999 work, Making Room. Hospitality needs to be rethought and it needs to be complemented by a theology of migration.
However, ultimately, I find that it is inadequate to meet the context of world Christianity and the testimony of Scripture. In this article, I shall explore the mission theology of hospitality. Perhaps this is why the theme of welcoming the migrant-or hospitality- has been the most common mission theological approach to migration. Koyama was one of the first to suggest that, since Christians do as Christ did, mission could be defined as “extending hospitality to strangers.” In fact, the Greek word for hospitality- philoxenia-literally means “loving the stranger.” 1 Unfortunately, all too often the reaction to the stranger is better described by another Greek word: xenophobia.
In Matthew’s description of the last judgment (Matt 25:35), Kosuke Koyama noted, Jesus himself was the hungry, thirsty, naked stranger-and he also suffered for loving strangers (Rom 5:6–8).
0 kommentar(er)
