Transcript
From Genesis: “The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day.” O Lord, may thy word be my word, and if thy word is not my word, let thy people be cunning enough to see the same. Amen.
We were living in Scarsdale, New York when our son Gabriel came home from school with a request from Mrs Sherman, his second grade home room teacher. “Would you send Gabriel to school tomorrow with a photograph that he could cut up to create an art work? He’ll use it to depict his answer to the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”
Let’s project a photograph of that art work onto the screen. You can see Gabriel‘s face. That’s milk and bread on the grocery store checkout counter. What did he want to be when he grew up? Sales clerk. We had the art mounted, matted, and framed. We gave it to him in Boston when he graduated from Business School. It moves my blood. Because when we asked him why he wanted to be a sales clerk in a grocery store, he said, “What could be more important than giving people food?!”
Abraham and Sarah get that.
Sometimes in ancient Israel when God appeared to people he appeared as a fiery pillar of glory cloud by which he manifested himself as when leading Israel out of bondage in Egypt with some help from a man holding a stick. Here in our text, God appears indistinguishable from human beings. Eight times in Genesis 18 and 19 the LORD and his angels are called ‘men’ because that’s what they appear to be.
Our text begins by saying “The LORD appeared,” but Abraham doesn’t know that yet. All he sees is three men standing there. Eight times in the verses they’re called men, though later on they’re identified as angels, the two attendants. And eight times the person who speaks with Abraham is called the LORD or Yahweh in Hebrew.
When Abraham saw these men he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them, and he bowed low to the ground. His hospitality is spontaneous and irrepressible. And then he says, “If I have found favor in your eyes my lord do not pass your servant by.” He’s saying that it would be an honor to him to give them food and drink. He’s hallowing these men with hospitality.
Martin Buber wrote, “Everything is waiting to be hallowed by you.” If I had a weekly planner I might write that across the top of it each week. The primary task of the day is to do a bit of hallowing.
That’s what Amber and Jack Franicevich did for Victoria and me the other night, having us over for a Carolina low country boil with Amber’s father Don and her sister Liz.
The Choir came over for dinner the other night. They helped us do some hallowing together.
A bit of hallowing is what Rusty Smith did yesterday morning, building a beautiful sandbox at the Rectory for my granddaughter Gemma.
Hallowing is what Mary Dudas and her friend Greg were doing last evening. Their kindness is the reason we met. They were driving east on Lancaster Ave when they saw a golden retriever walking alongside this busy four-lane road down near the Ford Dealer. They stopped and befriended Ms Hazel Franicevich, putting her in the front seat of their car. With assistance from Officer Hagan of the Willistown Township police (who rang our doorbell asking, “Does anyone here own a golden retriever?”), the three of them made sure Hazel was brought to safety, back into the East Rectory.
In the foyer of the West Rectory Victoria and I have an array of artwork hanging on the walls, including an ink and watercolor piece by Jack B Yeats, brother of the poet William Butler Yeats. It pictures a man walking with a stick through a simple Irish farm. Below that picture there’s this old Gaelic rune:
I saw a stranger yestreen;
I put food in the eating place,
drink in the drinking place,
music in the listening place;
and in the sacred name of the Triune
he blessed myself and my house,
my cattle and my dear ones.
And the lark said in her song:
often, often, often,
goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.
often, often, often,
goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.
At the center of our life together, family Good Sam, there is a bath (the Baptism Font) and a meal (the Altar). At the heart of our life together we offer a lavish, eternal hospitality to whoever comes by our tent.
The Church feeds others not by being full, satisfied, and complacent, but by being hungry for mercy, hungry to bring the world in for repair, hungry for Him, for peace to this house.
And with that hospitality there’s laughter. That’s where this story is going. We read, ‘They said to Abraham, ‘Where is your wife Sarah?’ And he said, ‘There, in the tent.’ Then one said, ‘I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.”
Sarah had heard this before. She used to believe it, but she doesn’t anymore. She’s so old now she can hardly remember going through what we call these days menopause. The Bible expresses it in a beautiful way. “The way of a woman had ceased with her.” There was not a chance on earth she would ever give birth now.
She’d heard this promise and it didn’t happen for her. I wonder if you’ve heard God promise you something and it hasn’t happened for you. And so, when this stranger came and said that she would bear a son, Sarah laughed. Her laugh had a hard edge to it, the laugh of sarcasm.
But then she got morning sickness. She felt flutters in her womb. And when the boy was born she laughed out loud. She named him Isaac, laughter. She wanted everyone to laugh with her.*
The Bible says that no matter how many promises God has made — promises of forgiveness, promises of healing, promises of God's provision and direction, promises of perseverance—whatever promises God has made to be with us in all these trials, they are Yes in Christ Jesus.** And when you believe that, sometimes you just have to laugh.
Jesus has promised you a resurrection. That’s a promise nearly impossible to believe. And you’ve heard it before.
I have more than a hunch, with Marty Irons I’ll call it a holy hunch, that with Sarah, with Mary, our mothers in the faith, we'll spend the rest of eternity enjoying God’s hospitality. And we’ll be laughing about the time when we were unable to believe God would make good on his promises. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
* To read about Sarah and laughter, I want to take you by the elbow with what one of my teachers wrote about it: https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2018/10/25/sarah
** “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God.” (2 Corinthians 1. 20)
