Once my mother forgot that
she invited a guest for dinner. We were midway through our meal at the kitchen
table when the doorbell rang. There he was, all dressed up and smiling,
prepared to be a guest. My mother was acutely embarrassed, as well as panicked.
She reacted quickly, though, and gathered us all together to go out to a nearby
restaurant with our guest, as though she had planned it that way all along. For
the first and only time in my life I was encouraged to eat a second dinner – a
special treat. My mother was a delightful hostess all through the meal. I
always found it remarkable that she was able to recover so well and turn a near
crisis into a very enjoyable evening.
This was an unusual
experience, but actually, hospitality was an ordinary everyday thing for my
mother. My mother was a generous host. She didn’t have much but she was
open-handed with what she had. She worked with many young immigrant women, and
she opened our home to them as if they were family. She made sure they always
felt loved and wanted and cared for in a strange land.
She always cared about her
guests’ comfort, no matter who they were. She was positively scandalized if I
ever forgot to offer a guest something to eat and drink. And she wouldn’t offer
just anything – she paid attention to what her guests liked, and she would go
out of her way to make sure they had it. It gave her pleasure to do so. She
managed to treat her guests like royalty without ever making them feel
self-conscious.
This was a kind of old
fashioned hospitality, maybe. Perhaps even Abrahamic hospitality.
The New Testament book of
Hebrews encourages us to show hospitality to strangers because, in doing so,
some have entertained angels. We have always understood that verse as a
reference to this story of Abraham and Sarah. In the first sentence of this
story, we are told the Lord appeared to Abraham. The second sentence says there
were three men. Then in the fourth sentence, Abraham addressed the three men as
“my lord,” but in this case the term is simply one of respect. It certainly
doesn’t seem as though Abraham knew he was standing in front of messengers of
the Lord. He just greeted them as travelers deserving of whatever he could
offer them.
The moment he saw them, he
immediately sprang into action and began over-functioning. He told Sarah how to make bread, as if she
needed him to do that. He personally selected a calf from the herd and had the
servant prepare it. They all moved as quickly as possible, because a simple
snack was not going to cut it for Abraham. His guests deserved the best.
At last, when they were
enjoying the meal prepared for them, and Abraham was standing by closely to be
sure that his guests should want for nothing, the strangers begin to give us a
glimpse of who they are. They say, “Where is your wife Sarah?” How do they know
Sarah’s name? They say, “In due time, Sarah will have a son.” In due time? How
do they know that Sarah will have a child – a son even?
Sarah, standing behind the
tent wall, laughed into her hand – quietly, politely, surely not wanting to
offend these guests, but really – a child? Honestly. The guests say, “Why did
she laugh?” How do they know that Sarah laughed?
These strange travelers
seem to know everything, which seems a little jarring to me. But Abraham and
Sarah don’t appear to be fazed by it. Perhaps they are not unaccustomed to
meeting angels on the road – or perhaps it is just that their outrageous announcement
takes all the oxygen out of the room. 90-year-old Sarah is going to have a
baby.
Of course, she laughed. In
the previous chapter, Abraham fell on his face laughing at the suggestion his
old wife Sarah should become pregnant. It’s just hard to believe – for both
Abraham and Sarah. But the visitors say, “Is anything too wonderful, or too
hard, for God?”
Is anything too hard for
God?
That’s an interesting
question, isn’t it? How do you want to answer that? Maybe you want to say that
the correct answer is no, there is nothing too hard for God. And yet there are
certain times and circumstances when it is very hard for you to believe it –
that there are some things that really do seem too hard for God.
Neither Abraham nor Sarah
found it easy to believe that God could give them a son at this stage of their
lives. They had long ago stopped believing this was in the realm of
possibility. Yet, neither one of them had an answer to these messengers’ very
provocative announcement.
In a little while, they
would come to know the truth of it. Sarah would give birth to her son Isaac – whose
name means laughter, by the way. He would be the long-delayed but finally
delivered promise God made to Abraham. And he would give Sarah immense joy in
her old age. And – we wondered at the roundtable: would any of this have
happened if Abraham had failed to welcome these three strangers?
What if Abraham had ignored
them and let them continue on their journey without any rest or refreshment?
What if Abraham had shown no curiosity or care for who they were and what they
needed? What if he had turned his back on them because they were not friend or
family? How different would things be?
Science has shown us that
something as minute as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can lead to dramatic
changes in weather patterns in a far time and place. How much might our small
actions impact the world we live in? How can a small act of hospitality change
the world?
When we think of
hospitality we might think of ladies in aprons with trays, but it’s so much
more than that. To practice true hospitality is to open yourself to receiving
someone just for who they are. And when you do this you open yourself to
receiving something you need. And this
is why hospitality is an act of creativity: because you find yourself playing a
part in the ongoing creative work of the world, you find yourself getting
involved in God’s business of making a way out of no way. And when you do you
will always be surprised.
Maybe not as surprised as
Abraham and Sarah were, but surprised.
We will never know, of
course, if Abraham’s hospitality that day made a difference in the plans God
had for their lives. It may very well be that this visit had nothing to do with
the birth of Isaac. But it is interesting to take note of what happens at the
end of this visit – in the next verses. Abraham walks out with the travelers as
they resume their journey, kind of the way you might walk your guests out to
their car, and here is where God chooses to confide in him certain plans for the
city of Sodom.
Sodom had become a wicked
place and, God tells Abraham, there is a plan to destroy it. Just wipe it off
the face of the earth. Then Abraham does an extraordinary thing, something we
might not have thought possible, except that it is written in the pages of the
scriptures. Abraham persuades God to change God’s plan. He negotiates a
different outcome.
And so it’s like this:
Abraham opened his home, opened his heart, to three wayfaring strangers and he was
given an opportunity to change the world.
If we are open to
receiving, God will give us what we need. If we are open to taking part in it,
God will make us partners in the ongoing creation of this world.
What do you have to give, and what, in return, do you need? we
all have both. Are you willing to give it? And are you open to receiving it?
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