Genesis 18:1-15
Hebrews 13:1-3
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
Now and then I read someone—often a minister or some other religious type—who suggests that if we would only open our eyes and look around, we would see God at work in all sorts of places—sometimes in unusual and unexpected places, sometimes in the simple and ordinary events of everyday life.
Now and then I want to believe that—but I’m skeptical. And in all honesty I think that I do a pretty good job keeping my eyes closed.
A few weeks ago, however, I decided to open my eyes, to look around. I wondered what marvels and beauty I might see.
I was down at the bus stop on Washington St. on a warm afternoon in late May. I was sitting on a bench with others who were looking a little weary from the cares of the day.
Across the street a man came along, stopped, and looked into the trash can. He appeared to be in his late 50’s—although he bore the signs of hard living that could make him appear ten to twenty years older than he was. He had a beard, scruffy hair, and was wearing blue jeans.
As I watched—wondering when I would start to see God—he reached into the trash can and pulled out, well, not a half-eaten sandwich nor a couple of cans that he could redeem for a nickel each. He pulled out a book! In Iowa City—in the City of Literature—he pulled a book out of the trash!
Of course I wondered—who throws out a book? And what kind of book? A student tossing a textbook from a course she failed? Someone ashamed to discover that he was reading such a trashy novel? A reader bored by the unimaginative essays between the covers?
Whatever the reason, someone trashed the book.
And after looking at it for about a minute, the man who fished it out tossed it back into the trash can and moved on.
It was a picture of rejection on so many levels.
The book was a twice-discarded tale.
And while appearances can be deceiving, it seemed to me that I was looking at someone who—as far as I could tell—was living a difficult life, reduced to sifting through the trash on the streets of Iowa City. At some point he’d probably lost his job, lost his family, lost whatever friends he might have had, lost his way.
At some point he was rejected, written off, ignored. And I’m sure that I wouldn’t have taken notice of him at all had I not been engaged in my little project of “looking around for God.”
I watched him, sitting there in my blue jeans bearing all the wrinkled signs of my age with my beard and my unkempt hair. It wasn’t a case of recognizing that we were the same or thinking “there, but by the grace of God, go I.”
But I did recall times when I had been rejected, when I had been deemed unworthy, when I had not come up to the mark.
And I did recall the times when I had rejected others—even that current moment.
We live in a growing culture of rejection.
Our nation elected as president someone whose catch phrase was: “You’re fired.”
People take to the courts—and last weekend they took to the streets across the nation—to tell Muslims in America and abroad, “You are not welcome here.”
Angry rhetoric gave rise to violence again last week as a disturbed individual opened fire on a group of Republican lawmakers playing baseball—a rejection of the very foundation of our democracy that insists that our differences are worked out through ballots rather than gun barrels.
Refugees are turned away all around the world and meet with resentment even here in Iowa City—as we reject neighbors we are called to love.
The picture of rejection that I saw at the bus stop, mirrored by so much rejection in the larger world, was not an image of God at work in the world. It was instead an image of absence, of something missing in our world and in our lives.
So the words of the Letter to the Hebrews speak to our hearts as they call people of faith in our nation to a different way: “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
The first part of that admonition is, in some way, the easiest—even as challenging as mutual love can be at times.
The Greek word for “love” here is “philadelphia”—the love of brothers and sisters. Love within the family, within the community. The love of those we know. Yes, it can be difficult, and yet we receive and give this love in our lives. “Let it continue,” the author encourages us—and we can always use that encouragement.
But this “philadelphia” does not wall us off from others on the outside of the love within the community. We also hear: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.” This, too, is love. Indeed the Greek here is “philoxenia”—the love of strangers.
Of course, at the time of this letter, “strangers” were not just any unknown people on the street or any outsiders. It’s suggested that the “strangers” mentioned here were “most likely itinerant Christians who depended on local Christian communities for hospitality.” But to love strangers even that close presented problems in a time when persecution led to an atmosphere of suspicion and outsiders could create turmoil in struggling Christian communities.[i]
Now as then:
Loving the stranger—whoever that is, and however well-known or unknown—is not easy.
Loving the stranger carries its own demands.
Loving the stranger involves risks—and even Jesus cautions those who would follow him to count the cost.
But loving the stranger also brings its own opportunities—for, the author continues, “by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
The reference, of course, is to that story of Abraham and Sarah that we heard this morning.
Last Sunday we heard God’s call that unsettles Abraham and Sarah. They left what they knew. They left what was normal. God said, “Go”—and they went.
Today we watch as they exhibit the virtue of hospitality—the love of strangers. Abraham enthusiastically welcomes the unexpected visitors, extending every comfort to those three who have stumbled upon his dwelling place.
He offers them shade and water,
Sarah makes cakes,
Abraham gets a calf and gives it to a servant who hurriedly prepares it.
There is no suggestion here that anyone recognizes these three strangers as the angels, the messengers, of God. They are simply offering welcome and hospitality.
Commenting on this scene, Naomi Rosenblatt says: Like any enduring virtue, hospitality in the desert culture is grounded in pragmatism. Among the desert nomads, offering a stranger food, water, and shelter constitutes a policy of enlightened self-interest. The desert is a fearsome place to find oneself alone without shelter. The stranger you feed and house today may well be your lifeline tomorrow should you become lost in the dunes with no food or water.
Could it be that in the desert of these days, our well-being is found in welcome?
Could it be that in the desert of these days, our hope is found in hospitality?
In spite of our rejection of others, beyond the times when we ourselves have been rejected, there is something new—the very grace of God. The theologian Paul Tillich famously described this as “a wave of light [that] breaks into our darkness, and it is a though a voice were saying ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you…Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.’ If that happens to us, we experience grace.”
The acceptance of God invites us to be people who show that same acceptance to others—even in an age that glorifies rejection.
The question comes to Abraham and Sarah: “Is anything too wonderful for God?”
This is a fundamental question for everyone. And as with most of the questions in the Bible, we aren’t given an answer—at least not directly. We are left to decide for ourselves.
Can God work in the empty places of life and bring abundance?
Can God make our hearts large enough to welcome the stranger?
Can God make a congregation a community of acceptance and grace?
I believe the answer to such questions is "Yes," that the answer has always been “Yes,” and that the answer always will be “Yes.” That “Yes’ is central to my ministry here.
But my answer alone is not what matters.
Your answer is. So, too, is our common answer as a congregation.
Is anything too wonderful for God?
The need to love the stranger, the one unlike us—except for the common likeness of being an image of God—the need to love the stranger grows ever stronger in these days, even as we are reluctant to hear and act on such a call. As I said, there are risks and challenges that accompany any attempts to respond to this call. If we choose to hear and respond, let us act with wisdom.
The need to bring guns and gun violence under some kind of sensible control grows ever stronger so that we might arrive at the day when we no longer hear about shots fired at baseball fields or gay nightclubs or elementary schools or places of worship. Yes, that day seems distant, but it calls to our hearts this day.
The need to extend the full grace of God, acceptance to the rejected, grows ever stronger even as people are turned away. This need is far from accomplished, even within the United Church of Christ.
We continue need one another—to remind one another of God’s love and acceptance, to remind one another of God’s call to love. The hope remains that we will yet learn to respect each other, to see in each person—in their own joy and their own suffering— an image of the living God. There is the hope that in our growing respect we may find ways to bring a greater peace to this city, to our nation, and even to the greater world.
We need as well the peaceful presence of God in the midst of the swirling chaos of our lives and our world.
And so once more, in our sorrow and our despair and our worry we find good news in gathering together. Each day you seek to make real in the world the peace, the healing, and the comfort of God. Each day you live out your faith in difficult and challenging situations, coping with daily experience. This morning you came to worship God with others who are doing the same.
It might be that we are in the presence of the messengers of God without knowing it. But know this: you are accepted. Live in that acceptance and extend it to others.
[i] Fred Craddock, “Hebrews,” NIB.