Esther Meek in “The Other: Returning to Our Natal Philosophy in the Mother’s Smile” invites us into a relational knowing that is deeply dependent on and indebted to the other. Meek defines this other as “another being—the world, a person or thing—beyond me.”She goes on to explain that “even the mention of the other rightly wakens us to consider presences beyond ourselves.”[1] We are struck by Meek’s invitation.
As I (Ron) reflect on this invitation, I go to the table fellowship in the Gospel of Luke. Although sacred texts speak of the perceived other in many ways, including the themes throughout the Old Testament text of widow, orphan, and alien, there is no place where the invitation to this transformational way of knowing is more clear than in the narratives of Luke and Acts. In Acts, we see the Divine Spirit’s boundary-breaking, inclusive, and transformational work in its missional effort, something that is significantly foreshadowed in the gospel of Luke.
Luke, does this in many ways, including by demonstrating a broad and inclusive interest in all people. Theophilus is named as the recipient of the letter, yet, more inclusively, the writer of Luke addresses his words to “all” (2:10), to the Gentiles (2:32), or to anyone who is a lover of God. The writer also broadens the coming to the kingdom from the east and west, as we read in Matthew 8:12–13, to include all directions, from the east and west, and the north and south.
Luke also highlights the social outcast, an economic and religious other, in the blessing of the poor and woe to the rich (6:24), the story of the Samaritan (10:25–37), the filling of the barns (12:13–21), and the kingdom outside the temple (18:9–15).[2] Luke brings women to center stage in the Gospel, mentioning them some forty-three times and making sure that the stories of men are paralleled by stories of women. The most clear place Luke points this out is in his use of table fellowship and hospitality, which becomes a radical place of transformational knowing. The discovery of the other is reveled in the tables of hospitality in Luke’s Gospel.
But before we go too far, I (Joel) want to acknowledge that by wading into the work of Meek or pulling out our Bibles, we risk letting you, the reader, drift off the page. We think it’s important to point this out, to note that, at times, the Scripture itself can cause us to disengage. We might think, “That’s OK for Jesus—he’s God—but I’m only human” or “That was a long ago and far away.” In our secular world, where we are locked in the immanent frame and buffered from the transcendent, we have all manner of ways to feel removed from the scared text. So as Ron shares from Luke, it may feel natural to quickly dissociate. And philosophy has a similar problem. No offense to philosophers, but philosophy is a discipline that can cause both casual and more astute readers alike to check out. Our eyes glaze over, and we have trouble connecting the words on the page to our day-to-day lives. It is into this exact space, this twin opportunity to disengage, that I (Joel) want to step in and put our feet on the ground by applying the hospitality we see in the Luke and Acts narratives and in Meek’s understanding of a necessary other in one concrete and specific location: Sunday morning.[3]
In his book Jesus, John Dominic Crossan helps us understand the meals and dynamics of hospitality in Luke. He describes the social landscape of the first-century table and the social and religious structure around the ancient use of hospitality, sharing the following insight from the anthropologist Lee Klosinski: “Eating is a behavior which symbolizes feelings and relationships, mediates social status and power and expresses boundaries of group identity.”[4] It is no surprise, then, that in John’s Gospel, Jesus’s first miracle is an act of hospitality. That miracle not only saves a young couple from the embarrassment of running out of wine at their wedding but puts them in good standing with their guests because it makes it seem they had saved the best for last. What incredible hosts—or so Jesus makes them appear! This new wine in John’s Gospel is a foreshadowing of the messianic age that is dawning with the incarnation of Jesus.
In the Lukan account, the writer seems intent on presenting a table with the perceived other—both religious and political outsiders—as a place of deep transformation. These tables of hospitality are where many of the previously mentioned themes converge, and they are present throughout the entirety of Luke’s first volume.[5] It seems that whenever Jesus sits at a table in the house of a tax collector, a women, or any categorized social outsider (an other), it ends up being a deeply relational time of knowing. This is contrasted by the times when Jesus sits at the tables of religious leaders or social elites—these are the kinds of dinners that disintegrate into one of those holidays you spend carving turkey with relatives you don’t really like.
The lesson in Luke is that for formation and learning to take place, a group must practice hospitality. This starts by removing the barrier between the pastor and other leaders and those who gather for worship. In recent years at my church (Joel’s), Reclaim, we have begun to create a more hospitable environment by having everyone gather in a circle. Gone is the stage and the rows of seating in which attenders saw the backs of heads. Instead, everyone can see each other; everyone is physically and participatorily on the same level. This configuration, as well as the way we use the circle to facilitate discussion rather than a sermon that favors one voice in a pulpit, creates a form of relational hospitality and an opportunity for knowing that gives us the voice of the other that Meek posits we need. The circle removes the sense of who is in and out, who is the leader and the congregation. There is no sense of the loudest voice or the person who carries the most weight. Everyone is welcome in the circle and welcome to participate, just like everyone is welcome at a table with Jesus.
Henri J. M. Nouwen explores the idea of hospitality in his book Reaching Out. He argues that much of what we refer to as hospitality is exemplified by fearful efforts to manage and control our guest—perhaps, I would guess, because we are concerned with feeling good about ourselves and protecting our self-image by achieving the status of the perfect host. I (Ron) am so familiar with this impulse to invite a guest and make sure all is perfect, and I feel convicted that much of this is tied to my desire to project an image that is complete, in need of nothing from my guest who I implicitly ask for compliance. In contrast, Nouwen presents a beautifully rich definition of hospitality in which the host lets go for the sake of the guest: “The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers discover themselves.”[6]
As I read Nouwen’s radical rethinking of hospitality, I thought about the many times that, as a guest, I felt the awkward sense of not knowing the rules or the agenda. As a host, if I manage these interactions with little or no risk to myself, or if fill the space with my preconceived notions and my own forgone conclusions, I make little room to discover the other. But if my posture can shift to curiosity regarding my guest, imagine the potential discoveries. This different posture, a posture of openness and love, feels like risky space, but a space open and empty enough for true discovery and a sense of relational knowing.
On a Sunday morning when we practice what Nouwen is proposing, an environment of participation is created. When we allow for the voices in the circle to all contribute to the interpretation and application of the biblical text, we invite the other to teach us. When we practice a starting point of wonder as well as recognition of the other, we can be hospitable to one another and allow for multiple points of view that lead us to a greater understanding of the biblical text and truth. When we turn toward one another, there are increased opportunities to know ourselves, the other, and God.
Esther Meek’s work is heavily influenced by an understanding of knowing put forth by Michael Polanyi known as subsidiary focal integration, which holds that “all knowing involves focal awareness responsibly achieved through integration from clues of which we are subsidiarily aware.” Meek has added to Polanyi’s thinking by proposing what she calls covenant epistemology. She writes that “covenant epistemology contends that the paradigm of knowing is, most fundamentally, not impersonal theory, but interpersonal, covenantally constituted, relationship between the knower and the yet-to-be-known, to the end of, not comprehensive, static and absolute information, but rather, more dynamically objective and ongoing communion.”[7] In other words, Meek is saying that knowing is relational. One is in relation with what they are hoping to know, but also with other knowers. We learn relationally, and in community. We need the entire community, and all its ways of knowing (subsidiary clues), to come to an understanding.
By creating a space through open discussion based in hospitality, the group seated in our circle at Reclaim—a space that is interpersonal and covenantally constituted—are able to hear different subsidiary clues and create meaning together as it comes into focus. This is not the norm in a traditional church, where a single point of view, that of the preacher’s, is privileged, and no other point of view is added in to create a more complete understanding—much less a relational sense of learning together.
In the biblical text, we see the different understandings of hospitality play out in the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel. There, Jesus is invited to the home of Mary and Martha. Luke, consistent with his pattern, calls it the home of Mary and Martha rather than the home of their brother Lazarus. Although it is clear to us that Luke is deconstructing some of the patriarchal scaffolding of his day, I (Ron) will here focus on Mary and Martha in relationship to hospitality. Both chose to make space for the other but in radically different ways.
Martha appears to be the good host. She does what we often do—gets busy preparing a meal for the guests. Mary ends up not helping with dinner prep but, rather, sits with Jesus, listening to his every word. This upsets Martha. She is frustrated that her sister isn’t being a good host and complains to Jesus, who simply tells her that Mary has made the better choice. Many have claimed that in this response Jesus differentiates between choosing to do and choosing to be. Often, this passage is read as a parable about being with Jesus (Mary) and/or doing for Jesus (Martha), but it tells us far more about different ways to be hospitable.
Martha does exactly what I (Ron) am inclined to do in the name of hospitality. I love inviting people into my home. I love to barbecue—and rumor has it that the love that I put into it results in mouthwatering meat. When people come over to our house, they have a good meal and a good time, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Hospitality can be about a host setting a good table for their guests. But when I think about this type of hospitality and I evaluate what’s happening, I realize that I am usually the one choosing the menu and making the rules. I am, for the most part, in control. Like Martha, I am doing and I am creating, and my guests, if they are good guests, take cultural cues from me as the host; they simply play by my rules.
But Mary has a different way of hosting. She sits, she listens, and in some magical way, she turns the tables and allows Jesus, the guest, to lead. Jesus is now the teacher, and Mary has created space in her home for him to be who he is. It is almost like they have switched places. In listening, she opens herself up to her guests’ agenda. The guest now has the opportunity to occupy a space that was once occupied by the host.
Nouwen’s way of being hospitable is exemplified by Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus. Nouwen’s hospitality is not about control but about cultivating a holy emptiness for the sake of those who sit with us, an emptiness that allows room for others to be released from our agenda and to discover and define their true selves. But this also means our guests are free to discover themselves in their own time and in their own ways. This means that I, as a host, must suspend my own judgment and agenda and trust the Spirit to manage the space between me and my guests.[8]
In our church we think of this kind of hospitality as jazz. In classical music the idea is to reproduce a piece of music exactly as it was written. In the same way, in many churches the idea is to express the gospel in the precise way it has been expressed in the past. However, in jazz, the same song might be played night after night, and while the chords and even the themes and lyrics are the same, the song will be different every time. In jazz, the goal is to create space for each player to do their thing. Each player is given space to be who they are in the midst of the ensemble. If a soloist gets too wild and out of control, the community (i.e., the band) is there to bring them back to the group. In the end, it is the soloing that takes the song in new directions and creates something new each time. This creation of space is exactly what Nouwen is talking about as hospitality. In our discussions as a church, we create space for everyone to speak, to share, to ply their solo, and each time it is a bit different. By creating and sharing that space, we hear a variety of voices, each from the other, and we learn something new each time. This is a world of echo chambers that reenforce our own thoughts and voice, so the circle of discussion at Reclaim gives us the opportunity to hear voices that are not our own.
These types of interactions move us from transactions to mutual transformation. They are a form of hospitality that honors the image of God in the other. This hospitality is Mary suspending what Martha thought as necessary to be with the other. It is letting go of fear and control and what we think we might know, all for the sake of the not-yet-known in the other. It is the creating of space where one has the opportunity to truly be with the other, to be human together. This kind of hospitality can be magical.[9]
Throughout her career, Meek has been concerned with what it means to know, and in the essay at hand, she focuses specifically on how knowing relates to the other. There, she writes, “Knowing requires an other. Knowing requires holding the other in regard and attentive empathy. Knowing is an intimate encounter and communion which is the dynamic of love. Where this dynamic is not present, there is damage to knower and known. And there is no knowing.”[10] Meek says that we cannot know without an other, and so she draws us toward a table where the other is seated. At that table, like the tables where Jesus sat, if we want to learn, we must sit with those who are different than us. In fact, for us to fully know and learn, we need an other who is not only different than us but who resembles those who we might cast out, look down on, or try to avoid. This is a radical call to relationship—and also discipleship—as we seek to follow Jesus.
I (Ron) have already shared about my own implicit desire to control hospitality, but Randy Woodley puts a new spin on this desire for control when he explains that America’s original sin is not slavery or the genocide of Native Americas, as many have observed, but rather “the original sin of America is theological control. . . . A theology that said, not only are we in charge, but we need to control everything.”[11] Likewise, in hospitality, when we seek to control everything, we create little space for the other, no hospitality is present, and, as Meek asserts, we hinder our ability to know.
Think about the typical church service. More often than not, our worship times in North American churches reflect our theology of control. Start with the liturgy. In most churches the liturgy is planned out in advance and gone through on Sunday Morning without much, if any, allowance (or even tolerance) for something spontaneous to happen. And in most churches, the arrangement of the room reinforces the control. Worshipers sit in row facing the stage where the action is. Those in the pews are expected to participate in prescribed and limited ways—singing, a scripted responsive reading, taking notes on the sermon, and perhaps sharing a prayer request. The stage reenforces that some in the room are set aside and special, thought we say they are called or ordained. Those special people are allowed to do certain special things—preach, offer the Lord’s Supper, pardon, bless. The typical church, then, reflects a theology of control.
Even during our fellowship hospitality hour, over coffee in the lobby, many church spaces operate with an unwritten rule of keeping the conversation on the surface. A typical church has little or nothing to do with creating space for the other. Sure, there might be an emphasis on making newcomers feel welcome or making sure the environment is friendly, but no real space is given for the other to be engaged at any real depth. Too often, we treat our church spaces like a dinner party in which everything is highly controlled by the hosts—in this case, the pastor and other worship leaders—and we seek to make everything perfect. This desire for control stifles the community that could be present and the perspectives of the majority of the people in the room.
How one might approach the other and lean into a hospitable community comes into focus when we consider how the church I (Joel) copastor interacts and learns together. An attractional church that became too small to sustain, my church veered into a new direction, prioritizing an openness to the other and a relational and hospitable approach to church. As we have observed, in an attractional or traditional model of church, the action all takes place up front on a stage and the congregation is configured to observe those actions with limited participation. In the model used by my church, everyone in attendance is a participant. Long gone is the sermon, which is essentially a teaching based on a single person’s view of the text. Replacing that single voice is the voice of the other. A discussion-based church places participants in direct interaction with the others in the room as they learn together. The Scripture is read and the group discusses its meaning with each person offering their perspective and asking their questions. It is a group process in which one hears the voice of the other and the Spirit in community. The result is learning or coming to know more about God, God’s people, and how the Spirit is at work in the world. However, all this only happens when we create space for the other to join the circle and give them the space to share.
I (Joel) want to add one final thought. Leslie Newbigin notes that the acid test of evangelism is found in this question: “Is the evangelist ready to be changed by the encounter, or does he or she look for change only in the other party?”[12] Newbigin is stating that an act of true hospitality causes a transformation for both parties or all involved. He promotes, as does Nouwen, the creation of space for the other, the cultivation of new perspectives and mutual transformation. Being open to two-way transformation is the definition of hospitality. This is exactly why knowing needs an other—we are transformed by each other.
If Meek is right that we tend to reject the other in our modern world, then what is needed are more spaces in which we invite the other to speak to us and in which we curate a space for the other to be themselves so they can give to us their unique perspective. In that effort, we must practice the type of hospitality we see modeled in Luke and Acts. We must take the suggestions of Meek, Nouwen and Newbigin seriously and be open to how this type of hospitality gives us the opportunity to know and be transformed. We can only know if there is another. On this Meek is most certainly right, and we can only learn from the other if we practice hospitality.
[1] Meek, “The Other: Returning to Our Natal Philosophy in the Mother’s Smile,” The Other Journal 38.5 (2024): #.
[2] This idea of the sinner as a social outcast or a religious category of other apart from that persons moral actions is well articulated in David Neal, None but Sinners Religious: Categories in the Gospel of Luke (Sheffield Academic, 1991).
[3] Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age, Harvard UP (2007).
[4] Klonsinski quoted in Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (Harper Collins, 1989), 69.
[5] A Quick survey reveals how pervasive this them is Luke 5:27-31, The call of Levi , 7:36-50, The women of the city,10:38-41, Mary and Martha, 11: 37-53 Seats of honor and dirty hands, 14:1-23 The place of honor , 19:1-9 Zacchaeus, 22:28 I will not eat is until it is fulfilled in the kingdom, 24:8-31 their eyes were opened in the breaking of bread.
[6] Nouwen, Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (Double Day, 1966), 51.
[7] Polanyi quoted in Meek, “A Reformed View of Life and Learning: Covenant Epistemology,” in Liberal Learning and the Great Christian Traditions, eds. Gary W. Jenkins and Jonathan Yonan (Pickwick, 2015), 80; and Meek, “Reformed View,” 82.
[8] These ideas were forumulated as I read David Bohm, On Dialogue (Routledge Classic, 1996). This little book speaks to how to engage in discourse. Although it is has no sense of Christian spirituality, it feels directly connected to Nouwen’s idea of hospitality.
[9] My (Ron) reflection on The hospitality of Mary and Martha was first published in a chapter titled, Setting a Different Table, Creating Space for the Other. Ron Ruthruff, Closer To The Edge: Walking With Jesus For The Worlds Sake, (Birmingham, AL. New Hope Publishes 2015)pgs. 51-54.
[10] Meek, “The Other.”
[11] Woodley quoted in B. Katt, host, Replacing Church, podcast, episode 77, “Randy Woodley on the Harmony Way,” September 12, 2017, https://www.replacingchurch.org/77- randy-woodley-on-the-harmony-way.
[12] Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way: A Gift, a Command, an Assurance (Friendship Press, 1987), p. 35.