SERMON Hosting God

Pentecost 8C Genesis 18:1-10

Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

A while back I had an opportunity to visit one of the big public buildings that grace our fair city. Like any visit to any such place, it involved a fair amount of waiting. Waiting that had to be done outdoors. Stray into the wrong area and you would be shooed outside. I and other people in my situation were chasing the shade offered on this hot day by a few trees. Nearby a guy in a truck was selling bottles of water for a dollar, water that you came to need after a while. And a while after that, you come to need a bathroom. To get to one of those, you have to surrender virtually all your personal items to be admitted to the building and to get through the security screening.

Now there was nothing at all unusual about this. We modern Chicagoans have come to take for granted the idea that much of the world we live in is off limits to us except under certain narrow circumstances. We circulate in a world that is segmented by ID badges, metal detectors, parking lots for customers only. The most basic courtesies of life--a drink of water or the use of the bathroom--are in most places accessible only with a purchase of some kind. And sometimes not even then. Your $2.25 fare on the CTA won’t get you access to a bathroom, unless you count the elevators. But my $3.30 Metra fare does.

If there is one thing that American travelers to the Middle East, Africa, or many Asian countries tend to find most consistently surprising, it’s the existence of a real culture of hospitality. It is an idea that we have pretty well lost. The money you can spend, the job you hold, or the status you have governs where you can go and on what terms. Throwing our doors open to strangers and travelers is something most of us do only with great effort.

Our tale of Abraham at the oaks of Mamre this morning portrays a very different attitude toward hospitality than the one we usually experience. Abraham is sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. Now understand that this was a very hot place, much hotter than Chicago. It gets so hot in this part of the world that the only way to endure it, in those days before air conditioning, was to find some shade and just do nothing. You sit yourself down in your tent, you conserve your hydration and your energy, and you wait the heat out. But the Lord comes calling on Abraham, in the form of three travelers.

Now what would you do in a situation like this? Would you perhaps wonder what three people are doing walking around in the heat of the day, when everyone else is either asleep or staying in the shade? Would you be a little anxious? Would you perhaps hope that their business is urgent enough to keep them walking right on by your tent? Surely you would extend hospitality to them should they come to you, since you are a good ancient Near Eastern person. But you might not leap to your feet to do it.

That of course is exactly what Abraham does. He does not wait for them to approach. He does not amble toward them as a person would in the blazing heat. He runs to the three figures--a 99-year-old man, by the way--he runs to them, bows low before them and asks them to show him the grace of staying and letting him wait upon them. He offers water for their feet--truly an extravagance in a place where simply fetching the water would leave most of us needing a salt pill and a nap. He invites them under the trees. He makes a humble offer of bread, which they accept. But then Abraham runs off to the tent and tells Sarah to make cakes. He picks out a choice calf to be prepared and brings it with curds and milk. And like any good host, he sits and watches while they eat in the shade.

This could hardly be a more different reception than the one I received at the door of official Chicago in the heat of a summer’s day. Or the reception that most of us get in most places we go, apart from the homes of family and friends. In our society, we gain status from the amount of stuff we can hoard up behind locked doors and gated communities. In Abraham’s society, status came from the amount you were able and willing to share with your guests. In our society, we are likely to express extravagance in spending on ourselves or those close to us. In Abraham’s society, you expressed extravagance in giving gifts to those who came to your home.

So what then? We do not live in a hospitality society, but we admire the example of Abraham. Should we then put our homes and businesses at the disposal of the first charlatan who comes by? Should we take down our metal detectors and empty our wallets and rip up our ID badges and hope for the best?

Maybe we should. But that isn’t the point of this story. Hospitality in Abraham’s day wasn’t a one-way street. The host was of course required to give generously of all he had to the traveler. But the traveler was obligated in turn to give gifts from whatever he possessed and to bring news from his own home. Hospitality created a hugely significant relationship. Host and guest were bound together for life, each obliged to the other whenever either one was in need.

Abraham, after all, is being visited here by God. Abraham scurries to offer his best, in the heat of the day. And God, in the form of these three figures, brings good news to Abraham: God will return, and Abraham and Sarah will indeed have the promised son.

So maybe we do not experience the hospitality of Abraham in our cash-only, air-conditioned, security-screened world. But we experience it here. Here, we play the host to God, whom we meet as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and whom we ask to linger here with us. Here we offer the best of our humble gifts. We share our money, we share our voices, we share our time and our labor. We scramble to set up and clean up the holy meal, to welcome our brothers and sisters, to provide music and preaching and clean vestments, to make our humble home into a fitting place to welcome God, even in the heat of the day. And in turn, God plays host to us. God brings good news of forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. God welcomes us to Christ’s own table and Christ’s own feast. God grants us the grace of a new day and a new week in this always-new life of faith.

That is the life to which this story calls us: to see God in those we meet; to be willing both to give and to receive; and to run to welcome those in need, with the light feet of those chosen and blessed by God. Amen.

Rev. Ben Dueholm

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

July 18, 2010