One of my favorite professors at Wesley, where I did my seminary studies, was Dr. Amy Oden. Not only was she from Oklahoma, but she brought a lot of passion and context to her teachings. She tried to make the Bible and church history relevant to our own situations. I am especially grateful for our class with her on early Christian communities. Awesome stuff.
On her blog, after announcing that she is stepping down as Dean to teach again due to health reasons, she challenges us to recover the Christian practices of hospitality in a divided political year.
Dr. Oden writes:
As Christians, we have an ancient spiritual practice that could make a real difference in the public square as well as in our own lives: welcoming the stranger. What if we reframed our political differences in terms of hospitality rather than battle, seeing “political others” not as enemies to be defeated, but as strangers to be welcomed, to be explored? What if we got curious instead of frustrated? What if, with God’s help, we even saw Jesus in the political stranger?
Read the rest of the post here. This kind of hospitality is what the Table is about.
