“The hostess with the moistest”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Thursday, December 30, 2021
3 John 1-15 (Forward, p. 62) CEV p. 1291
He wasn’t exactly a hostess, but he was a host, and a host with very high credentials. The name Gaius shows up seven times in the New Testament but it is hard to know for sure whether they are all one and the same person:
a) In Acts 19:29, a certain Gaius is mentioned as being in Ephesus with along with Aristarchus and the apostle Paul, and having been seized by the rioting crowd upset over alleged slights to the goddess Artemis. Apparently the whole group of them had just arrived from Macedonia;
b) After leaving Ephesus, the group of them left for Macedonia and then on to Greece. Several of them went on ahead of Paul and waited for him in Troas (Acts 20:4). One of them is mentioned as being Gaius from Derbe. (It is highly likely that this is the same Gaius as mentioned just one chapter earlier.)
c) In Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 1:14), two people, a person named Crispus and a person named Gaius are mentioned as being two of several people baptized by Paul while in Corinth. (Paul’s time in Corinth is recorded in Acts 18, where Crispus is mentioned as the leader of the synagogue. He and his entire family is mentioned there as having put their faith in the Lord.) All of this predates the two previous instances noted above, so it is quite likely that he is the same person.
d) Once again, the name Gaius comes up in the final section of Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Romans 16:23) where he is listed as Paul’s host and as welcoming the whole church into his home. It would appear, from internal evidence, that Paul was writing from the city of Corinth.
e) Finally, there is today’s reference in 1 John. John’s mention of him as being a loving and welcoming host to itinerant Christian missionaries fits in well with what Paul has said earlier, so it is quite logical and fitting to think of him as being the same man.
The main issue in this letter is the practice of Christian hospitality. This may seem quite at odds with our current Western practice where visiting clergy are often put up in motels or hotels during their stay. However, in Biblical times, this was not the case. In addition to being few and far between, and often being removed from the centre of town, inns were often the very worst place a person could stay. They were often occupied by the very dregs of society and infested with bedbugs and all sorts of other vermin. Private homes, particularly of fellow believers, was a much better alternative. In fact, it was insisted upon. Hence, John’s words of approval for Gaius and his disapproval of Diotrephes.
However, his lack of hospitality isn’t the only beef that John has about Diotrephes. He is also spoken of as someone who likes to take charge in the church, to be the number-one leader and have pre-eminence within the community. He is mentioned as ‘throwing his weight around’ by rejecting John’s letter and instructions, by attacking John and his fellow workers by gossiping about them, and by refusing to welcome any of their fellow Christians when they pass through the city.
One has to wonder whether some of the other comments that John makes in this short letter might also apply to Diotrephes, in John’s comments about the truth and teaching the true message (verses 1, 3,4,12), for instance, or in his mention of kind deeds or evil deed (verse 11).
To me, all this sets up some interesting challenges to much of modern thought. We often set up a dichotomy, a separation, with truth and doctrine on the one side, and good deeds (like hospitality) on the other. And sadly, sometimes those that espouse doctrinal truth are less than loving and sometimes those that try to be hospitable and caring sacrifice truth and obedience.
However, that is not at all what we see in this letter. And we see ideal leaders depicted as those who manage to practice and encapsulate both truth and good deeds in themselves, and lesser leaders depicted as those who seek to promote themselves at the expense of others, and not serve the wider Christian community. This is a good model for all of us in the Church today. Amen.
Forward notes: “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil but imitate what is good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God” (verse 11).
“Perhaps because of the ages of my young sons, we often find ourselves in conversations of good and evil. Recently, they took a liking to Disney’s
Descendants, in which the sons and daughters of various ‘evil’ Disney characters descend on an unsuspecting boarding school (full of the sons and daughters of various ‘good’ Disney characters). But when the two of them start singing, ‘Ways to be Wicked,’ as soon as they start spelling the word W-I-C-K-E-D, I start spelling G-O-O-D instead.
“Granted, the letters don’t exactly match each other, but the message is the same: no part of me wants my beloved children to imitate what is evil but to instead imitate what is good (because sometimes, even something as harmless as a Disney movie can promote being ‘bad to the bone’).
“All of this goodness, though? It’s from God, and as Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, when we each do little bits of good where we are, ‘it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.’
“Now that’s the kind of good I want to see.”
Moving Forward: “What do you think it means to imitate good in this world?”
