Genesis 18:1–15, Matthew 9:35–10:8
The lectionary readings this week remind us of the importance of hospitality from both sides: as host and guest.
In Genesis, we read the famous passage about the hospitality of Abraham. Abraham welcomes strangers, invites them in, feeds them. This event of hospitality proves to have been a gift to God or God’s own angels. It bears fruit, in the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham that he will become the ancestor of many nations. Abraham’s openness in inviting strangers to stay, rest, and eat, is the basis for the promise. It is the living out in action of the faith he has already shown in trusting the apparently-impossible promise of God. Perhaps the faith of Abraham – his trust that God will make of him a great nation – is also what powers his courageous hospitality. How do we, in faith, also reach out to those who are traveling, migrating, or strangers?
In Matthew, Jesus sends out the twelve apostles to be strangers and guests, seeking hospitality from the towns they come to. The sending of the twelve with almost nothing, dependent upon those they encounter, reminds us that discipleship does not come only from being a host but from being a guest. We are all, at times, travelers, strangers, and migrants. We all depend on others to have our needs met in the places we come to or arrive at. The practice of hospitality is not one-sided. It is the practice of giving and receiving care, of opening our doors and arriving at open doors. It is a mutual act of care for one another across borders and differences.
Migration With Dignity is a powerful set of principles because it does not only affirm policies about immigration, but the fundamental rights of human dignity that inhere in all people where they are and where they travel. The rights to movement, care, and history that the MWD principles articulate are rights for us humans who are simultaneously hosts and guests. We have come from somewhere; we are going somewhere; and we are called to care for one another along the way.
Hannah Bowman is a member of the Episcopal Migration Caucus who lives in Los Angeles, the founder of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons, and the author of Abolition Ecclesiology: A Spatial Theology for a Church Against Prisons (forthcoming from Fortress Press in November 2026)