Food as Hospitality
Somewhere between takeout containers and overbooked calendars, we’ve lost the beauty of the shared table. Hospitality, once a cornerstone of Christian life, has been replaced by busyness — or by the pressure to make everything look perfect. But true hospitality isn’t performance; it’s presence. In this thoughtful article, author Theresa “Sam” Houghton reminds us that opening our homes and sharing a meal can be one of the most meaningful ways to reflect God’s love in our everyday lives.
Article By: Theresa “Sam” Houghton
“Use hospitality one to another without grudging.” – 1 Peter 4:9, King James Version
The Biblical Roots of Hospitality
In the early Church, hospitality was built into the regular rhythms of life. After Jesus’ ascension, the disciples “continu[ed] daily with one accord…, breaking bread from house to house,” (Acts 2:42, 46) —an activity that likely combined a shared meal known as a love feast (Jude 12) with the observance of the Last Supper. The Apostle Paul did the same as he traveled on his missionary journeys, stopping to break bread with fellow believers when he preached in Troas (Acts 20:7, 11).
Shared meals were also a fixture of Jesus’ life and ministry. Over and over, the gospels record Him sitting down to eat with His disciples and followers (Matthew 9:10, 26:7; Mark 2:15; Luke 7:37, 14:15). He was invited for feasts and meals by people like Matthew (Luke 5:29), Simon the leper (Matthew 26:6), and Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-40). And He brought meals to others in a humble act of service when He fed the 5,000 and 4,000 (Matthew 14:13-21, 15:29-39; Mark 6:30-44, 8:1-10; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-13).
It didn’t matter if He was asked to dine with a Pharisee (Luke 7:36) or the table was filled with society’s undesirables (Mark 2:16; Luke 15:2): Jesus never said He didn’t have time for people. He was never too busy for hospitality.
Yet perpetual busyness is an unfortunate reality for many Christians. We’ve been sucked into the tornado of the modern world and bought the lie that we somehow have to “make time” to exercise the hospitality our faith calls us to (Romans 12:13b; Hebrews 13:2). We’ve turned the very thing that came so easily to Jesus and His disciples into a burdensome ministerial responsibility, another thing to add to our already insurmountable to-do lists.
When Hospitality Became “Entertaining”
We conflate Christian hospitality with worldly entertaining and think it requires making elaborate plans, cleaning the house from top to bottom, and spending hours scouring recipes on Pinterest to design a picture-perfect spread. We paralyze ourselves with unrealistic expectations and put off hospitality for some mythical, nebulous time in the future when, we’re sure, we won’t be so busy.
Then, we think, we’ll have time to share that meal. Then we’ll have time for hospitality.
But where did we get the idea that we’re too busy? (Or the audacity to claim that we are?) Are we really busier than Jesus?
This, too, is a lie from the world. In our current cultural moment, meals have devolved from sharing time around the table to grabbing something at the last minute as we rush from one work meeting, school event, or sports game to another. We’ve become desperate for fast, convenient options we can munch as we multitask. Eating is just something we do to fuel our hectic schedules, and an increasing number of us do it alone..
Eating Alone in a Crowded World
According to the World Happiness Report (yes, believe it or not, there is such a thing), the number of American adults who reported spending full days eating alone at least some of the time jumped over 50% between 2003 and 2023, meaning that one-quarter of all adults eat daily meals by themselves at least some of the time.
The alarming thing is that people are starting to see this as normal — and embracing the isolation. Restaurants are catering to a growing trend of solo dining among Gen Z and Millennials with meal deals and smaller servings, and they’re offering solo-friendly seating that creates insulated personal bubbles.
It’s easy to scoff at such a trend as the foolishness of a secular age where self is king. But if we honestly assess our own lives, we’ll find that, in our busyness, we’ve done exactly the same thing. We’ve become so consumed by our packed schedules that we live in self-focused bubbles where we go from one thing to the next to the next. In so doing, we blind ourselves to the opportunities for hospitality that God puts right in front of us every day.
To see those opportunities, we have to shift away from the mindset we’ve co-opted from the world, challenge the notion that food is merely convenient fuel for “too busy” schedules, and instead recapture a Biblical approach to meals as communal and relational. We have to stop conflating hospitality with entertainment and start practicing the simplicity of sharing food with others in the context of daily life.
Inviting Others Into the Mess
“So many people, when they want to be hospitable, they think that they need to put on a performance and invite people into this perfectly curated, manicured sort of vision of what their life and home are,” filmmaker Houston Cooley observed in an interview with Mere Orthodoxy magazine. “But actually, the real community happens in inviting people into the messiness and allowing them to participate rather than making it perfect before they arrive.”
Hospitality isn’t about waiting until life becomes “not busy” enough to do something elaborate. It’s about inviting friends, neighbors, and fellow believers to join the ordinary moments of our (yes, often messy) realities and including them in the mundane rhythms of chopping ingredients and setting the table and washing the dishes. It’s about stopping long enough to sit down, share food, talk, laugh, and just do life together.
And somewhere, in the middle of it all, those ordinary moments reflect the life and attitude of our Savior. When we open our homes and invite others to our tables, we do the same thing Jesus did: show people that they matter and are valuable, that our schedules aren’t more important than their company, that we care about them and want to show them love. We create space for conversation and open the door for ministry opportunities that we wouldn’t have if we remained stuck in the bubbles of our perpetually crazy schedules.
Most of all, we demonstrate the grace of God.
The Ultimate Act of Hospitality
In His final meal with His disciples, Jesus displayed the ultimate act of hospitality. As He passed the bread and the cup, He extended an invitation for all to come to Him and enter the Kingdom of God. His body about to be broken and His blood about to be shed opened the way for sinful man to one day feast with Him in the presence of God in heaven (Matthew 26:29; Revalation 3:20, 21:3) — a position that, but for grace, but for the unearned and undeserved favor of a loving heavenly Father, no sinful man could ever enjoy.
Imagine for a moment if God Himself had decided He was too busy to deal with our sin, if He had decided that we weren’t worth the time and He had better things to do. As a holy God, He would have been perfectly right to destroy all humanity as punishment for our rebellion. But He didn’t. He made a way, and Jesus took the time to leave the splendor of heaven, walk and talk and eat with mankind for some 30-odd years, and sit at table after table with society’s outcasts until He ultimately went to the cross to give His very life for those same kinds of people.
Never Too Busy for People
In light of that elaborate act of sacrifice and love, we can certainly make space in our lives to receive others — and show them the love of the Savior (Romans 15:7).
About the Author
Theresa “Sam” Houghton is a freelance writer, health reporter and trained health coach from upstate New York. She holds a Nutrition Consultant certificate from Bauman College and a Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies. Her writing appears regularly in The Epoch Times health section and has been featured in Modern Farmer and Green Queen Media. When she’s not writing, Sam likes to read and study the Bible, cook tasty plant-based food, hang out at farmers markets, and knit crazy socks.
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Excellent article! It seems built into my DNA to feed people (maybe due to my Italian heritage)! However, I typically drop the food off or bring it to church. This article has challenged me to invite people in and not worry if every floor is clean.
The Lord has been impressing hospitality on my heart. You know how these things work. First the Lord lays something on your heart that needs improvement, then He solidifies the idea by dropping learning opportunities in your lap, like this eye-opening (heart-opening) article, and then He appoints further opportunities to put what you’ve learned into practice. God is so good and so gracious to work on us like this! Thank you so much for publishing these Biblical insights. I for one have gleaned much from it.
That is so beautifully said, and I can completely relate to how the Lord works in that gentle, guiding way—stirring our hearts, teaching us, and then giving us opportunities to live it out. I’m so grateful this article spoke to you and that God is using it as part of that refining process. He truly is so good and patient with us! Thank you for sharing this encouragement—it means so much!