To be better hosts, sometimes we need to practice being better guests. Today, John Falcone reflects on Christ’s guidance on being hosts and guests, and explores the practical approaches that can make our communities welcoming expressions of God’s love.

August 31, 2025: Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Sirach 3:17–18, 20, 28–29
Psalm 68:4–7, 10–11
Hebrews 12:18–19, 22–24a
Luke 14:1, 7–14

Being Better: Lessons on Hosting and Guesting

A reflection by John Falcone

In this week’s readings, Jesus offers some powerful guidance about how we can become better guests and better hosts. At this moment in our church, our nation, and our world, there may be no single more important question for us all to tackle – whether as human beings in general, or as LGBTQIA+ Catholics and allies in particular.

Every Sunday, I go to church twice: evening Mass at Dignity San Francisco, where we gather at 7th Avenue Presbyterian Church, our generous host congregation; and earlier in the day, morning Eucharist at my local Episcopal parish, in the affluent Bay Area suburb where I work and live. (My husband suggests that I do this mainly because I prefer to complain about two liturgies a week, instead of just one.) Each community is unique, and both face important questions about being better guests and hosts.

Dignity San Francisco is a small and dedicated community which meets weekly for liturgy and fellowship, and occasionally for retreats and other kinds of formation. Like many Dignity chapters, attendees are mostly older and male, with some younger folks, women, and trans people in the pews and in various forms of leadership. Blessed with financial resources gifted to us from previous members and from the generosity of current attendees, we support a number of LGBTQIA+ ministries in the Bay Area. Many Dignitarians think of ourselves as the face of the LGBTQIA+ community to the Catholic hierarchy, and the face of progressive Catholic spirituality to the secular queer community and the culture at large. But to be honest, Dignity San Francisco reaches the tiniest fraction of San Franciscans, queer, Catholic, or otherwise. So, we might ask ourselves, “How can we make our chapter more diverse and more impactful? Especially at this moment in our church, nation, and world, how can we better welcome those in need of God’s love and in need of our practical support?”

The Episcopal parish that I belong to is progressive and queer-affirming, with active youth, educational, and spiritual programs. Like the surrounding community, it is mostly well-to-do and predominantly white; so it’s not surprising to hear parish members animatedly discussing the question, “How can we make our parish community more welcoming, more diverse, more inclusive?”

There are many good answers to this kind of question. We can learn more about the history of non-white people, working people, women, and sexual minorities: in Dignity communities, our churches, and our country. We can use that is more varied and diverse in our worship spaces (icons of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mary of Magdala, African and Asian depictions of Christ, God, and the saints; music and prayers that include languages and traditions other than English). We can create outreach programs where we do more than make sandwiches for the homeless and write checks – programs where we invite congregants to make direct, interpersonal contact with the poor and disenfranchised communities outside our doors.

But to my mind, the smartest – and most challenging – perspective in answering this kind of question came from my Episcopal parish’s associate vicar. She said, “If we want to become more welcoming, more diverse, and more inclusive, we need to learn to become better GUESTS.”

If I want to be a less of a knuckle-headed when I act as host, teacher, or community outreach leader, I need to learn how to be a better guest. As a good guest, I will look for the grace and the value in what is offered, even if what’s offered is not what I expected to receive. As a good guest, I will pay close attention to the needs of my host. When is it time for me to go home, so that my host can have the space and the time to relax? A good guest does not act as if they already have everything that they need; they admit that they need something, and allow the other to be a gracious helper and host. A good guest may bring some small gift with them to the encounter (if they can afford it); but they are aware that their own gift is quite limited, and that it may not even be what the host really needs. The real gift in the guest-host encounter is becoming more open to humble, mutual interconnection.

Inviting racial, ethnic, gender, and social-class “others” into my church or community without first learning the lessons of better “guesting,” is a recipe for rude, thoughtless, and ultimately insulting “hospitality.”

This is part of what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel reading this Sunday. When I am invited (or when I invite myself!) into someone else’s space, I might be tempted: to start focusing on what I have and how much they need it; to explain their own story to them, because I actually understand it better than they do; to convince them that they would be better off adopting my ideas, my spirituality, and my cultural tastes; to try and convince them to join my community. Jesus reminds me: “Check yourself, John! You’re not all that.”

When I invite people into my own space, I might be tempted to invite only “my kind of people;” people who share my own privileges; people who replicate my own ideas, spirituality, and cultural tastes. Jesus again reminds me: “Check yourself, John! Where are the people that really need your hospitality, your money, your food, your political clout? Where are the people who might challenge your behavior and force you to change your point of view?”

The other readings for this Sunday also invite us to reflect on the topic of hosting and guesting. Sirach asks us to consider the benefits of humility and generosity in leading a better, wisdom-filled life. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that participants in God’s heavenly banquet are called away from a spirit of domination. Jesus has shown us how to really party: by replacing vengeance and violence with a spirit of love.

To my mind, all these readings are best understood in the light of another key Biblical text: Paul’s letter to the Christians of Philippi. Paul’s challenge is still valid today: have in yourselves the same mind as that of Christ Jesus, who though in the form of God did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but rather emptied himself, taking on the form – as it were – of a guest (2:1-7).

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John P. Falcone is a practical theologian religious educator and a practitioner of Theatre of the Oppressed (PhD Boston College). He has been a Dignity member for more than 20 years with close links to Dignity NY where he met his husband Matias Wibowo in 2005. He is currently the Ford Visiting Professor of Practical Theology at San Francisco Theological Seminary.

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