Written by T.M. Suffield |
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
We need difference—the difference between the Church and world is what we usually call holiness—and then we need to behave like Christians and radically welcome people within the bounds of our homes and churches, without having to knock down all the walls, expecting that the encounters around the table will change all of us.

Sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? We think we know that to welcome is the very opposite of having a wall up. We’re wrong.
Ivan Illich taught that the welcome of hospitality requires a threshold. By definition, we need to move over a threshold in order to be welcomed. If there is no threshold to move over, I can’t welcome you.
To put it another way, if someone isn’t in some sense an outsider, I can’t welcome them into my space. Why not? Because if they’re already an insider there’s nothing to welcome them into.
We live in cultures that don’t like this from two angles. Either, we loath the idea of walls—groups that are not accessible to everyone without a process of entry—from the angle of inequality, imagining that the only way to get true equity is to tear down the walls.
Or, we are so radically individualistic that we’re instinctively allergic to the idea of welcoming someone into something private enough to have walls. From this angle we either bridle at the idea of walls because we can only imagine welcoming people in the broad public square, or because we cannot imagine welcoming someone into our lives.
I don’t think either of these thrusts is at the surface, these operate at the level of the stories that we live by, the ‘Social Imaginary’ that describes the space we live in, but that’s why the phrase “welcome requires walls” sounds paradoxical to us.
Tables
I think this is an important concept for Christians to get hold of if we think, as I do, that hospitality is the solution to many of our societal problems. If hospitality should define both the church and the ‘city,’ and is a broad principle that flows to us from the Cross and is encountered at the Lord’s Supper, then we need to understand that tearing down the walls doesn’t help us.
To take the most literal example, if you come into my home then I’m going to do my best to make you welcome. We will eat together and I will endeavour to treat you like you belong. Nevertheless, it isn’t your home, because if it was then I wouldn’t need to welcome you. You must cross the threshold into my world.
My world comes with my rules, even if we’re talking about as mundane things as which items you can stack in the dishwasher after we’ve eaten, or where the teaspoons live. If I’m a good host then I may well try to make you welcome by shifting some of my rules in your direction: perhaps I won’t serve something that I’ve discovered you don’t like to avoid making the threshold too difficult to cross.
You are still crossing into my world. This is always the case when we eat with someone, we enter their world. That’s as it’s meant to be—not least because we learn how to behave at a table by the grand hospitality of God in the Lord’s Supper. We enter his world as we come to eat, which has his rules. We’re invited, we’re welcome, our transgressions are forgiven, but we don’t pretend for one minute that this is our table.
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The book has the following outline. The first section is a historical survey of discussion in the church. The focus here is that the Trinity is indivisible and so the works of the Spirit are inseparable from those of the Father and the Son. So when we consider the Spirit, we must not think of him as out on his own. The second section is biblical, tracing the pervasive and increasing stress on the Spirit in creation, the history of redemption, the life and ministry of Christ, the work of the apostles, and the establishment of the church, ultimately extending to our own transformation and eventual resurrection. The book comes to its climax with a short chapter that asks how we are to discern where the Spirit is clearly at work. 

This book follows an invitation by the publisher to undertake a trilogy on the Trinitarian persons, stemming from my earlier work on the Holy Trinity (2004, 2019), especially the second edition. Further volumes on the Son and the Father are projected. I contemplate this with a sense of overwhelming responsibility. Something in me tells me that it is too much for one individual to give an account of the Holy Trinity in all its uniqueness and glory, and yet also to write of the three hypostases or “persons” distinctly. This is literally an awesome task, too great for a mere human to undertake. Yet God has made himself known to us. He has come among us in the person of his Son, living as man. He has poured out his Spirit upon us and within us. We can so speak; indeed, we must speak, if only through trembling and stammering lips. One thing is certain: this book, as all others on the subject, will be nowhere near adequate. John Stott often quoted the words of the great Charles Simeon, who upon entering the pulpit would remind himself: “One thing I know, I am a fool; of that I am certain.” We are all fools, for such wisdom as we have comes from the Holy Spirit alone.
In order to appreciate the presence and work of the Holy Spirit today, we need to ask how this has been seen over the past two thousand years of the church’s existence. Such a search is not a merely antiquarian exercise. It is vital for us to ensure that our own thinking is within the parameters shaped by more than fifty generations of those who have gone before us. How else can we be clear that our experience is demonstrably Christian? We have two millennia of accumulated wisdom, biblical exegesis, and concentrated thought to guide us. While not all of it may seem fruitful, much if not most will. It is absurd to assume that we must ground everything on our own exegesis of the Bible, while ignoring the cumulative wisdom of the people of God down through the ages.
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Chronic illness isn’t just discouraging and traumatic, it’s actually quite frustrating. Your plans get scuppered. You constantly feel your limitations. You want to do things and achieve things, but you can’t. Recently, Phil 1:12 has been a big encouragement to me. In this verse, Paul explains how his imprisonment has actually become an opportunity for the gospel. In other words, the restrictions on his life actually served to advance the good news. Wow! He has taught me that limitations aren’t just something we endure, or put up with, but they are, in God’s mysterious ways, the very means God uses for his kingdom. The suffering of his ministers is not a problem for God, but part of his mysterious plan.

Andy Mason writes: I’ve been a vicar on a council estate in central London for about 17 years, and have been married for 25 years. During that time, my wife has suffered from a number of distressing chronic conditions. Accordingly, life has, at times, been very unpredictable, very stressful and pretty traumatic.
Firstly, my wife has a particularly nasty kind of endometriosis (you can look it up), which has, over time, caused acute chronic pain. It’s the kind of pain that isn’t controlled by tramadol, or morphine. In fact, when it was at its worst, it couldn’t be controlled by a drip in hospital either. There have been times when I have literally carried her into A&E in my arms.
Secondly, in addition to endometriosis, she also suffers with vestibular migraines (you can look that up too). They are a form of migraine that doesn’t manifest itself in pain, but in acute, very debilitating vertigo and nausea. An attack can leave her, all of sudden, laid out on the floor wherever she happens to be. These migraines can come suddenly and without much warning, leaving us suddenly needing to change all our plans and get her home. I’ve had to collect her, physically, from work a couple of times when she just couldn’t move. 
The combination of these chronic health problems, with their spontaneous hospital visits, have been traumatising for us both. They have understandably left emotional scars and lingering worries about what is coming around the corner. As you can imagine, these struggles have been even made harder by having young children – who themselves have some complex needs.
During these years of ministry I can see that there have been different seasons. Some have been better, some have been much worse. We have been very grateful for a number of medical interventions over the last few years, which have improved the pain significantly. However, they also have side effects that make other things worse. So, while certain issues get dealt, other problems emerge. Anyone who has been operated on understands the complexity of these kinds of interventions. Overall, I’m amazed that we’ve come through some of these situations, but the Lord has been faithful. Somehow, he has kept us going in the drama of it all.
So, how do you cope with chronic illness in the midst of life and ministry?! Well, everyone has their own story and I have huge respect for the particularities of different situations, medical problems and personal struggles. No one context is exactly the same. There will obviously be plenty of people reading this article who have, and are, facing awful struggles. The Lord will have worked in them and they will have a bucket load of wisdom that has been given to them. All this said, I thought I’d share some encouragements from our own life as a family.
Now, just in case you wonder, as you read through this: I’m not a cessationalist with regard to healing. I’m very happy to pray for healing and for others to pray for that. However, I’m also, on the other hand, not spiritually perturbed by the lack of healing we’ve experienced. I’m fully convinced that our hope is not in this world, nor is God’s ‘no’ a demonstration of a lack of love. Quite the opposite! 
So, below are some spiritual principles that I’ve learnt along the way. These are just an excerpt, and not meant to be exhaustive. In sharing these principles, I’m in no way suggesting that they’ll help everyone else, but I can say that they have helped me. Of course, I still hope that they’ll encourage some who read this. Here they are:
1. Sickness Is Bad, but Dependence Is Good
Ill-health very obviously makes you weak and dependent, and my instinct has always been to escape it as fast as I can. Yet it’s ironic that physical ill-health produces much spiritual health through an assault on self-reliance. As Tim Keller said, ‘you’ll never find out that Jesus is all you need until you get into a situation where Jesus is all you’ve got.’ Dependence is great for your prayer life, and if you can bottle it then much good can be done. 
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