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Everyday Saints Devotional 20

by David Joynt on January 21, 2022


LUKE 14:12-13 | 12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

The hospitality practices we’ve examined this week take us far beyond the bands of typical entertaining. Commonly, hospitality is reciprocal. Invitations from me lead to invitations to me. But Jesus teaches that the greatest forms of hospitality are where there is no expectation of a return. He connects hospitality to pure generosity. This removes self-interest and competitive hosting from the equation. Guests are never means to our ends.

Is your entertaining focused on return and reciprocity or generosity?

Tags: generosity, entertaining, reciprocity

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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