12.06.05 - Entertaining Strangers

Every now and then after the youth group have used their room in the bell tower, somebody forgets to turn off the light. The light can burn for a few days and nights before someone gets around to going up and turning it off. I don??t worry about it too much, figuring it is a bit like leaving the light on in the church foyer at night. We decided in 1998 to do this. The point of leaving the church??s front doors open, and having glass doors was to get rid of the impression given by closed solid wooden doors of "not today, thanks, we??re closed." And having the foyer lit at night was to give a kind of friendly, welcoming impression. "Open all hours" it could be saying ?± not without some truth. Most weekdays there are only some nine hours out of twenty-four when no-one is on site. A friend commenting about the light shining through windows half-way up the tower through the night once said to me, "Hey, you guys are tough. I see from the light in the tower at night you??ve had God working overtime."

The nameless historian from the time of King Solomon in the tenth century BCE, who pulled together oral histories of the Hebrew people, had God working at a time when everyone else was resting. This historian created the first great epic history of the Hebrew people, going right back into its semi-mythical roots. It was he who brought together stories about the ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of the Hebrew people that had been told and retold over some eight or nine hundred years before this historian wrote them down. The story of Abraham and Sarah encamped at Mamre, which is not far from Hebron in the south of modern Israel, is part of this historian??s work. According to his history, God literally walks into this encampment where Abraham is sitting in the shadows at his tent??s entrance, and probably everyone else is also sheltering and resting from the midday??s heat.

According to this ancient story, God walks in as one of three travellers. That there is something out of the ordinary about these three men, and that something mysterious is happening, is conveyed immediately when the story-teller has Abraham bowing "down to the ground" and addressing the three strangers as "my lord" the singular is used even though there are three travellers), and also by referring to himself in the third person ?± "your servant", rather than "I". It is formal language and formal behaviour. The listener or reader who is told in the story??s first sentence that God was appearing to Abraham might well think Abraham himself had already discerned that this was God even before God spoke to him. Actually, nowhere in the story is God??s identity actually declared. It is all taken as an assumption that one of the travellers is God when the story quotes God ("the LORD") speaking to Abraham or Sarah.

Abraham offers the three strangers "a little water" to wash their feet, the opportunity to rest from the noonday heat before continuing their journey, and "a little bread" to refresh them. When they accept, the preparations are much more elaborate than the offer ?± the inhabitants of the encampment are immediately set to work producing bread and cooking a calf. The ensuing meal is as formal and elaborate as Abraham??s greeting had been, with Abraham the host waiting on the strangers as they ate.

This engaging story repeated generation after generation for some nine hundred years before being written down in the tenth century BCE may have been told and retold in order to explain the origin of the name Isaac, meaning "laugh" or "laughter". Both the story of the three strangers at Mamre and the story further on in chapter 21 about the birth of Isaac play with the word for "laughter". Sarah, who is said to be ninety and to have been through menopause ?± coyly described in the text as "it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women" ?± eavesdrops on the conversation at the meal. When she hears one of the strangers say that she will bear Abraham a son, she laughs to herself. God, being God, hears her laugh, asks why she laughed. Sarah denies laughing, God contradicts her. In the later narrative about the birth of Isaac, Sarah affirms her laughter ?± now not the laughter of incredulity, but the laughter of happiness in childbirth.

The whole scene, followed by the scene where Abraham stands with God overlooking the plain where Sodom was situated and argues with God over God??s plan to destroy Sodom, is unique in the Hebrew scriptures. Nowhere else is there such a level of anthropomorphism ?± that is, such a level of human form and behaviour being attributed to God. It seems that for the historian who wrote it down, this story is of singular importance. The importance is that although the story of Abraham had begun with the promise that he would be the ancestor of many people, he still does not have a legitimate son through whom the promise could be fulfilled. The age of both Sarah and Abraham is such that, as Sarah ruefully acknowledged as she listened behind the tent walls to the conversation, a son and heir was an impossibility.

"Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" was God??s rejoinder. The importance of the story for the historian was not the origin of Isaac??s name, but the fact of Isaac??s impending conception and birth, sealing the continuity originally promised by God to Abraham. For the writer of this epic history of the Hebrew people some three thousand years ago, the story had to be told of God??s faithfulness to the divine promise.

Second only to the story of God??s faithfulness to Abraham is the story of Abraham??s faithfulness to God. While the promise of a son is the primary purpose of the story, the narrator prefaces it with the story of Abraham??s suitability as the object of the promise through performing in exemplary fashion the most basic of God??s requirements of human beings ?± showing hospitality to the three strangers.

In ancient times, such as around four thousand years ago when the people lived who became the patriarchs and matriarch??s of Israel??s memory, there were few codes of conduct or rules of morality. It was still very much a society where the fundamental rule was the survival of the fittest. One??s loyalties were simply to the family and its larger collective, the clan or tribe. But there was one acknowledged virtue common to all ?± the law of hospitality. The sacredness of the guest spoke about love, not only for one??s tribe or family, but was the beginning of an understanding of the later commandment of love for neighbour. "Hospitality," writes one commentator, is therefore the display and preservation before (others) of one??s piety, simply one??s piety." (1)

Of course, the law of hospitality was not always observed, as our ancient historian went on to demonstrate in the story of Sodom and the attempt to violate the two guests ?± who had just been Abraham??s guests along with God ?± staying overnight in Lot??s house in Sodom. The sin of Sodom, as the Old Testament makes clear in later references to Sodom, was nothing to do with sexuality and sexual behaviour as such. The sin of Sodom was the violation of the most basic rule of all ?± the sacredness of the guest. It was the grave sin of inhospitality.

That brings me back to the light burning in the tower, and glass front doors with the light in the street-facing foyer. Hospitality lies at the heart of the Bible, and the heart of the Gospel. There was probably no greater admonition to the people of Israel than the frequently repeated law of hospitality. Except when it was totally misunderstood, the Hebrew sense of being a "special (elected or chosen) people never meant that being Jewish was by definition exclusive. Again and again the prophets and lawgivers of Israel exhorted their people to exercise hospitality toward "the stranger". In fact, this was a test of Israel??s faith ?± just as it had been a test of Abraham??s faith when he welcomed rather than drove away three strangers in the desert. The later Hebrew people always knew that they, too, had once been "strangers in the land of Egypt", to mention only one of their many exiles, and strangers also to God.

The theme gets taken up in practice in the New Testament, where Jesus for instance constantly exercises what we might call a ministry of hospitality by the way he welcomes and includes anybody and everybody, from the respectable elite to despised outsiders. Paul too, in his letters, picks up the theme, saying in effect to his readers that you have been received, welcomed, by Christ, and therefore have been given what it takes to receive, to welcome, others ?± so go and do just that. (2)

For many years we at St Lukes have used the word "inclusive" as an expression of who we are as a faith community. A parallel and perhaps richer word is "hospitable" or "hospitality". Like all key concepts of biblical faith, hospitality is a relational concept. It is about being in relationship even with strangers as Abraham was in relationship with his mysterious three visitors. Hospitality honours the ?´otherness?? of others, even strangers, because the really important thing is to relate to ?± to receive, to welcome ?± the others for who they are, not as someone to be absorbed into my prearranged, predetermined world view. The biblical exhortation is to welcome others, not smother them. This means, among other things, "Let them be themselves! Don??t try to overcome the distance between you and them by robbing them of their difference."

Our St Lukes window-dressing, by leaving the church foyer light on at night, with the occasional addition of a light in the tower being left on as well, is a little way of saying "Welcome! You are welcome," to the stranger passing by. Admittedly there is no one to let them in at, say, 2am, but it aims to be a subliminal message for more civilised hours.

In this day and age with on the one hand varieties of forceful, coercive evangelism which offers an exclusive God and an exclusive faith, and on the other a huge resistance to this kind of evangelism by people of no faith and by people of other world faiths, what can the progressive Christian offer? In the "So what" series currently running on Wednesday nights where we examine some implications of our liberal / progressive faith, I introduced the concept of "invitational evangelism". I could just as easily use the term "hospitality evangelism". This form of evangelism is a listening evangelism; it witnesses to its faith by hearing, not by overwhelming with words; it is caring and hospitable, not to make someone more like us or to think what we think, but to create an atmosphere for honest dialogue. It is an evangelism which honours the "otherness" of the other, including their own faith journey and faith convictions, as different as they may be from ours.

In other words, our faith is to be lived, not spoken. Our faith is to be experienced and offered as hospitality, not as persuasion. Our faith sets tables, arranges food, and waits upon others, refreshing them in their weariness from the journey, nourishing them with strength to continue. And our faith waits and listens, for we never know when God will see our light on and arrive as a stranger, wanting to tell us something astonishing, even unbelievable, perhaps even laughable, but something for our own good and for the good of those who come after us.