True hospitality is not simply about offering occasional charity or gestures of kindness but about dismantling the structures that prevent full participation in community life. It requires courage to challenge entrenched systems of exclusion and to imagine social bonds not as transactional exchanges but as expressions of shared humanity.
God provides a reminder: whatever reforms might take place in the formal leadership structure, God is going to keep favouring those outside that structure. The centre might expand, but God’s preference for the margin is not going away.
Jesus’ message was not only spiritually transformative but also politically charged, as it reimagined who held power and how that power should be used—not to marginalize, but to uplift and include.
Despite meeting all the eligibility criteria, Peter and the men disciples did not regard the women and mother Mary to be considered for this new post of apostleship. They were looking to choose ‘one of the men’ who would meet the criteria.