I was reading an article on a travel blog about hospitality:

The world is big, and mankind has progressed in many ways over the centuries.  However, in some ways we have grown more paranoid, and less hospitable.  As religion slowly fades away, so do the moral codes people used to live by.  In the United States today, the only situation I can think of where it is obligatory to help a stranger, is if you are the first to see a car accident…

In the Ancient Middle East the Christians, Muslims, and Jews all showed unimaginable hospitality towards strangers.  In Islam, the hospitality relationship is triangular, including host, stranger, and God. Hospitality is a right rather than a gift, and the duty to supply it is a duty to God, not to the stranger.

Regarding Islam, Louis Massignon was drawn to the sacredness of hospitality.

Meanwhile, in the covenant as it was revealed deliberately and slowly to the Hebrew people, there is the story of Abraham “entertaining angels” (Gen 18). This clearly was kept, highlighted, and amplified by the revelation of Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of the precepts of the Law; the author of the letter to the Hebrews writes,

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. (Heb 13:2 NRSV)

Insofar as everyone has a guardian angel, of course this too is true!

Nonetheless, in the spirit of the letter to the Hebrews, we also know that one greater than the angels is here.That’s exactly what the two disciples on the road to Emmaus discovered. To whom were they hospitable? Jesus. Jesus it was who was going to walk farther.

But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them… Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. (Lk 24:29, 31 NRSV)

They were hospitable to not only angels, but their own Lord.

Following the Gospel, where we are asked to see Jesus in our neighbour and treat them accordingly – and where we do not get to choose our neighbours – the “third party” to any hospitality is clear (as in Islam). We don’t just have two people. God is present, too. Something about a relationship of hospitality is especially pleasing to a God who rescues orphans and fights for captives. The traveller is, after a certain manner, poor. (Like the student or the person looking for work: perhaps not materially poor, but in a certain respect poor, particularly in terms of stability.) Of course God is on his side.

Even where travellers are not to be found, hospitality can be extended. In what material, emotional, or spiritual ways do people need others, especially others’ time and space and property? In what way are the things that are mine put at the service of everyone else? – Not grudgingly, but with an awareness and faith that the holy angels and, moreover, Jesus are present, making it sacred.