Let Mutual Love Continue

When I was a pre-teen, I got a copy of a Christian magazine in the mail (I feel like I’m starting to show my age already), and inside it was a poster with Hebrews 13:2 on it: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it” (NIV ). I hung that poster with its vague visual references to angels' wings up on my wall, and it stayed there for years. Unfortunately, the message of that poster and the message I was taught in other contexts about Hebrews 13:2 was, essentially, “Be kind to everyone because you never know when the stranger is actually an angel, and you don’t want to miss out on that.” Looking back, that’s an interesting take on this verse, given that throughout the Bible, people are usually aware when they’re talking to an angel and not an “ordinary” human.

Perhaps the issue with this reading of Hebrews 13:2 is that it is removed from Hebrews 13:1—“Let mutual love continue.” What if the writer of Hebrews is trying to tell us that when we pursue mutual love, we start to recognize strangers as angels, as messengers of God’s good news, as image-bearers of the divine? What if that is our call in worship this week, to practice mutual love that enables us to meet strangers and neighbors alike as embodied messengers of God’s goodness and grace?

Now, you may be thinking, that’s all well and good, but what about the ornery tenor who refuses to listen to directions? Or the congregant who always has something to complain about immediately after worship? Or the person who wanders in partway through worship and makes a commotion? Yeah. Them too. That’s kind of the point of Hebrews 13. The author is not suggesting that mutual love makes living our lives modeled after Jesus easy. Just the opposite. Mutual love requires us to grapple with just how hard it can be to love our neighbors…and ourselves.

So, we encourage you to approach worship planning with honesty about what it means to be a community of mutual love. Pray for the courage to love people who seem hard to love. Preach about the importance of boundaries and that boundaries are necessary for mutual love to exist and flourish. Sing about love as a gift and a choice. Give time to reflect silently on the difficulties of loving ourselves. If this is a Sunday where you celebrate Holy Communion, use the Communion liturgy to reflect on the Table as a place where we come to receive love and grace as we are. Invite those gathered to recognize God’s grace at work not just in their lives but in the life of the gathered community as you sing, pray, and receive Holy Communion together. All of these and more are acts of mutual love, moments to practice love in community together, and to open the hearts of the community to God’s grace that forms us to practice mutual love wherever we go.