Dog Delight Teaches the Joy of Hospitality

Wow, it’s been a long time since our last blog post. Excuse us, but many trips to doctors, emergency rooms, and hospitals, have kept us busy between late June and mid August.

Thankfully Connie and I were able to recoup just in time to tidy up the farm and house a bit so that we could welcome our daughter, Rebekah, and granddaughter, Rose.

The four of us enjoyed many activities and good foods together, but special blessing came as we slowed down, sat together, and talked about things of the heart.

And a great big punctuation point came when our two old dogs, Max and Hector, came out of their kennels several times a day during that week, saw Rose and Rebekah, and wagged their tails.

Obsessive Max was overjoyed at having two fresh partners for tennis-ball-fetch. But Hector, going on 15 years old, deaf, and terribly arthritic, almost tail-wagged himself off his feet. And a cople times he even barked in sheer delight.

We thank God, because we can always use a reminder of the joy of hospitality.

Lately the whole world has been awakened to the concept of “Zeus’s Law” through the offices of Christopher Nolan’s film version of Homer’s Odyssey. The wife and son of Odysseus are bound by Zeus’s Law to allow the 108 suitors to gobble up food and slurp down wine. Odysseus’ men violate the hospitality of Circe and are turned into pigs. The idea of Zeus’s Law permeates the story.

Indeed, the great god Zeus has the epithet Xenios tacked onto his name in Greek mythology, and the goddess Athena is called Xenia. A foreigner is called xenos or “stranger” in the Greek language, and Zeus’s Law says that when you lavish kind hospitality on a visitor, you honor the gods in the best possible way. And interestingly hospitality can be thought to unite two opposites since both guest and host can be called xenos.

But if you read your cultural anthropology and your Bible you will find that Zeus’s Law is also a central tenant of most of the ancient religions of the world. We can easily imagine that our earliest religious ancestors understood the importance of hospitality as they lived their lives exposed to the hard reality that the more a stranger you might be, the more vulnerable. Hunters and gatherers, and nomadic herdsmen, thrust by necessity into hostile environments, would certainly find the kindness of strangers an absolute necessity.

Abraham rightly shows such care as he rushes out of his tent to see to it that three strangers coming in the heat of day would be washed, rested, and fed in Genesis 18.

Just so, the apostle Paul, in Romans 12.13 urges Christians to both care for the needs of fellow believers, and extend hospitality to strangers.  1 Timothy 3.2 says that bishops in God’s church must be hospitable. And, most famously, Greek mythology and the biblical vision come together as  the author of Hebrews advises, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” He may well have been inspired by the pagan idea that honoring strangers is essential since gods often show up as in very human form as beggars, just to test how caring we humans might be.

But in our own Max’s eager ball playing and Hector’s tail wagging and barking, we learn the secret that hospitality not only honors God, but is a source of great joy. The Bible and Greek literature call this philoxenia—the love of strangers.

I see it every time the dogs are out and a UPS or Amazon driver comes up our lane, or especially when our dear friends visit and volunteer to brush the coats of our dogs. Hector especially cannot contain himself. Even with his arthritis he picks up speed. He wobbles. He wags. He rejoices in each new face, new smile, and new touch.

Hector is teaching us that showing hospitality may be Zeus’s Law, and the will of our Lord. But it is also something that we not only have to do—we get to do it. Above all else, welcoming visitors and strangers is God’s gift of joy.