The Gospel Comes With A House Key

Rosaria Butterfield has described her conversion as a train wreck. Surely submitting to the Lordship of Christ is a humbling, oftentimes devastating ordeal for any fallen child of Adam. Yet for her this process was more difficult for her than for the average person. The loss of close fellowship with others in her tight-knit lesbian community and the abrupt end of a promising career were just the beginning. In her autobiography, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, Butterfield emphasizes the hospitality shown to her by a Christian Reformed couple as both the gateway to her conversion and the sustaining agent after. In The Gospel Comes With a House Key, Butterfield aims to teach Christians to regularly practice life-bringing hospitality of this kind. She has coined the term Radical Ordinary Hospitality (hereafter ROH) to encapsulate this idea, and each chapter in the book is devoted to explicating different a facets of this idea.

Butterfield makes clear that ROH is not a natural thing for a Christian to participate in after conversion. One major evidence of this is its lack of adoption among modern American evangelicals. This is because it is an act of dying to one’s own desires. That the Butterfield home has taken in distressed graduate students for 6-month stints, adopted problem teenagers, and has offered free food daily to their community is quite surprising to the average American Evangelical ear. “Surely that room could have been rented out to make some extra money for their family,” our naturally-greedy impulses respond. “Surely that food could have been saved for their children’s lunch tomorrow,” or “How could they open up their homes to a person they only recently met?” Butterfield would respond with something along the lines of: “Do we think our homes too precious for criminals and outcasts? Our homes are not our castles. Indeed, they are not even ours” (Butterfield, The Gospel Comes With a House Key 100). Rather than thinking first about our own desires, Butterfield’s challenge to us is to “[humbly] count others more significant than yourselves.” (Phil. 2:3b). In a word, ROH is foreign to us American Christians in large part because it is mortification. ROH is "indeed spiritual warfare” (36), she writes. Far from being an item on our todo-lists or a conveniently-timed service to the less fortunate, ROH goes deep into the heart of the practicers by inconveniencing them, worrying them, and tiring them. The “payoff” for the Christian, if you will, is that the wide furrows opened up in our hearts by this sanctifying behavior will be filled by the grace of Christ according to His promise.

Far from being a mere exercise in introspective sanctification, ROH goes deep into the hearts of others as well as our own. Sharing regular meals with others in our neighborhood who do not look, act, think, or believe like us transcends political and cultural boundaries, giving us “street credibility with [our] post-Christian neighbors” (40). This credibility is a precious commodity in a country so polarized by a combination of superficial listening and deeply-held conviction. As those unfamiliar faces begin to see the regular hospitality we offer, they will see that we are not stuck-up Christians who swoop into their lives only to speak a word or two of denouncement. Rather, we who live transparent lives with them become “safe" friends with whom they can discuss difficult things. Being a good listener is key in this regard. Rarely are unbelievers looking to hear moralistic- or doctrine-laded sermons. But by practicing ROH we can indeed speak a word in season to those who are suffering. And our witness shines most brightly to others when we (not they) are suffering, for our lives show forth the sweet consolation of the gospel most gloriously when it is all we have. This gospel involves us intimately with our church members, who are there to help us to practice ROH, and to help us suffer well when the trials come. “Radical Ordinary Hospitality is accompanied suffering” (13).