My
lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant… since
you have come to your servant.” Genesis
18:3,5
I picked up Sarge just outside of Oneonta,
and told him I was only going as far as Cooperstown, but he was welcome to the
ride. He was familiar to me, a fixture
of the Otsego County landscape, but we’d never spoken before. Sarge was maybe 75, a thin man with leathery
skin and squinty eyes. He always wore a
garrison cap and an olive-green army uniform, with a few medals sprinkled
across the chest. No one was quite sure
if he had actually earned them or if they were just window dressing. But in patriotic upstate New York, Sarge could
hitch his way from one end of the county to another by just putting on a good
show.
He began talking the moment he sat down
and kept it up for a solid half hour, a rambling discourse mostly about old
cars, and the evils of politicians.
Looking over after about twenty minutes, he noticed I was a clergyman
and launched into a discussion of true Christians and hypocrites. Sarge had been to most of the churches in
these parts, he assured me, and he could certainly tell the difference between
them. Catholics wouldn’t give a man like
him the time of day, and would you believe that they once ran him out of a
Pentecostal church because he stood up to speak his mind during the
service. But Methodists—they laid on the
best spread for coffee hours, and sometimes the fellas would even slip him a
few cigarettes.
It did cross my mind as he opened the door
to go his way that Sarge could well have been a kind of messenger. I was a little relieved that he didn’t seem
to know anything about Episcopalians, so he hadn’t turned up in my congregation
and discovered that we came up short. Wouldn’t
it be just like God to separate the true believers from the false ones by the
way they responded to a mysterious stranger?
There’s no reason to assume that the three
visitors who appeared at Abraham’s camp in the heat the day wore olive green
and smelled of Methodist Pall Malls. But
they were clearly there, in part, to test the patriarch. The scene just before this in Genesis is a dramatic
one. God had given Abraham and his wife
new names, promised him land and offspring, and instituted the sign of
circumcision. Jewish theologians often
reckon that experience as the foundation of the nation of Israel.
God had chosen Abraham’s family
alone. He had separated them out for a
unique purpose. Lavish blessings had
been promised for their future. But paradoxically,
that future relied on the way Abraham and his wife greet outsiders.
In a masterful treatment of this passage,
Jewish ethicist Leon Kass sees here the origin of the Old Testament law’s
consistent emphasis on the respect and honor due to strangers. “Hospitality toward strangers,”
Kass writes, “recognizes the importance of moderating, even while preserving,
the distinction…between one’s own and the alien…Sectarian communities, if they
are to be decent and just, depend radically on acknowledging the existence and
dignity of the broader human community.[1]”
Abraham is “decent and
just,” God’s faithful servant, because he extends hospitality to strangers, who
turn out to be the Lord himself in disguise.
The strangers bring good news, that Sarah’s withered body will yet
become the source of life. There is a
future for Abraham’s family because he welcomes the stranger.
From the beginning of the
story, the narrator has told us that the Lord has come in the persons of the
three visitors. We know what Abraham
must still discover, and the story’s dramatic tension lies in Abraham’s dawning
recognition of who actually sits before him.
Abraham isn’t just warm
and generous, he is reverent. He speaks
to the men in a way that amplifies the distance between them. He repeatedly calls himself, “your servant”
and pretends that they need only a crumb of bread when he is actually preparing
a great feast. The meal he prepares, a
young calf and cakes of fine flour, these are precisely the foods that would be
offered to God in sacrifice in Israel’s temple generations later. Ancient commentators often emphasize that
Abraham does not sit down to eat with the three men, but stands attentively by
their table. He is host and servant,
like a priest at the Altar.
Perhaps the penny never
really drops for Abraham until the spokesman among the visitors announces that
Sarah will bear a child, for nothing “is too wonderful for the Lord.” But Abraham’s reverence is exemplary. He is showing us what a true Israelite
does. Abraham is the father of a people
called to worship God with reverent speech and generous offerings. He is the first of the chosen people, whose
calling becomes evident as they turn to the face of God, and to the faces of
mysterious strangers. Because often, it seems, they are one and the same.
In our Gospel lesson,
Jesus sends out his apostles into unfamiliar territory. They are to wander through the villages of
Galilee, announcing the kingdom in words and deeds of power. But there are no hotels in ancient
villages. They pack lightly for the
trip. Those who hear their message and
receive it in faith must first welcome these strangers into their own
homes. “Eat what is set before you,”
Jesus tells them, in St. Luke’s version of the same story. This is practical advice that also points
back to Abraham and the three visitors.
The Good News of Jesus comes as a word on the mouth of a stranger.
We stand before the Lord
this day like Abraham, a people chosen by Him, charged to live in faithfulness
and justice. In a few moments, I will
read to you the Exhortation, a solemn reminder that we should approach our Lord
with “penitent hearts and living faith.”
We stand in need of God’s grace.
The gifts of His table must be greeted with reverent attention,
gratitude and joy.
But our readings also
remind us that something of the same spirit should mark our encounters with
strangers. For they may also be channels of God’s grace, instruments for
revealing truth that gives life, and that leads us in the direction He intends.
I’ve been noticing all
the “for sale” signs around town lately.
The next few months will be high season for strangers around
Potomac. If God is gracious to us, maybe
some of them will cross our threshold in the coming days to sit in the shade
with us. Maybe a few will come after experiencing
your own kind words and gracious hospitality. Invitations to God’s house usually
work best when addressed to people who have first been seated at your own
table.
I wonder how it would
change things if we didn’t just think about these visiting strangers as
potential customers for what we’re already selling, or as new recruits for the
tasks we’re already busy doing.
What if, like Sarge, the
strangers are meant to test us, to sort out if we really mean what we profess? What if, like Abraham’s visitors, they are
agents of the change we really need, change that will bring us closer to what
God wants us to become? What if we
greeted them like those Galileans who welcomed Jesus’ apostles, as messengers
bringing good news we’ve never heard before?
God visits His people in strangers.
Could you join me in praying that God will send a few our way, and that
when He does, we will know how to receive them?
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