June 11, 12, 2005

The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

If a picture is worth a thousand words, you have already had your sermon in spades. That tableau was a rich visual treat; we will never think of Sarah and Abraham in quite the same way, I warrant. In fact, probably few of us thought much about them to begin with, so perhaps we can say now we might think about them.

They are our great-grandparents in faith; the roots of our family tree. Adam and Eve are after all ficticious; there is reason to believe that Sarah and Abraham were real people. And this has always struck me as the kind of story that Abraham might have told their son Isaac who in turn might have told his children. “Do you remember, Sarah, the time God came as three strangers and promised that we would have a son and you laughed? And yet here he is;  Isaac, our boy.”  And they would remind Isaac that his very name means God laughs, which perhaps means Sarah was not so out of line laughing at the idea that she would bear a child in her old age, after all.

It is always interesting to speculate about what we are not told. What kind of conversation happened between Abraham and Sarah after the three strangers left. Were they overjoyed at the Good News and full of faith that it would happen?  Or was Abraham upset with Sarah for laughing at God, for shaming him in front of the divine.

Did he hug her or hit her?

We don’t know; we only know that the promise was fulfilled, and the child was born.

We also know that neither Sarah nor Abraham were perfect people, as Bill alluded last Sunday in his sermon. Sarah tended toward jealousy and control and Abraham tended toward cowardice and status seeking, esp. when he pretended to the king of Egypt that Sarah was his sister and not his wife. But that is another story.

This is the story of hospitality:  hospitality of Abraham and Sarah for God in their midst, and then the hospitality of Sarah providing a womb room for Isaac.

If you have looked at the icon of the trinity that is currently near the columbarium, you will see the representation of these three divine messengers, seated around the table, Abraham and Sarah’s table. This is one of the most popular icons in the world, done by the Russian iconographer Rublev. When I was in Russia I found a variation on this icon that included Sarah and Abraham standing between the angels. I wanted to bring it back; but it was an old icon and could not be taken out of the country legally. But I liked the idea of the requisite family picture taken with the company for the photo album.

Abraham and Sarah were willing to offer hospitality to total strangers, knowing how important it was to survival in the desert that such food and drink be offered whether one knew the recipients or not. It was a matter of life and death. But by proving to be hospitable to three dusty tired, thirsty and hungry men, they ministered to God. These three men or angels are considered to be the Divine Holy One. The messenger or angel is the same as the one who sent them. Hence in the book of Hebrews the early church is admonished to be hospitable to strangers for some have entertained angels unaware.

Or as one small child misheard this, “Some have entertained angels in their underwear.”

So they provided holy hospitality to the Holy One, and in turn, Sarah was given another opportunity to provide hospitality—to the chosen one, Isaac. Is there anything that is more gracious, that calls for more giving, than to turn one’s very body over to the development of a child within it?  This is truly hospitality.

On May 31 we celebrated the Feast of the Visitation—or perhaps we didn’t celebrate it, but we could have because it is on the calendar. This is the meeting of Mary, bearing Jesus, running to the hill country to greet her kinswoman Elizabeth, also bearing a child at the behest of God. And the two women embrace and the child in Elizabeth ’s womb leaps. This is of course John the Baptist, the forerunner.

Joyce Rupp, an Iowa poet and a nun, wrote the following about this meeting:

The two of you, meeting at the door,
weeping and laughing at the same time,
each one gasping at the other’s fertility.  

And leaping between and among you,
those two frisky fetuses, yet to be born,
the prophet and the One to be proclaimed.

Did they feel the love of your hospitality?
Did they swim and sway with your voice?
Did they listen with tiny, eager ears to all

that passed between the two of you
in the days and weeks that swiftly passed,
growing and feeding on your rich love?

I don’t know which I’d have wanted more,
to be in one of those glorious filled wombs
or in the house of that woman-blessed place.

The womb is the first place we encounter holy hospitality; hopefully the second is the love between our parents fleshed out in a home that provides space and safety for us to grow. And hopefully a close third is the church, where we are recognized and treasured for the gift from God that each of us is.

Hospitality has always been an important part of being a church community. Whether it is to the stranger or to the ones who feel that they have always been there, it is still holy hospitality that we all need and want.

Today we had the honor of having a Welcome Brunch for people who are new to Christ Church . Some of them have cast their lot with ours, had us baptize their babies; others are still waiting to know that this is the place they belong. We hope that they will always find the Christ Church community a place that honors the Christ within them and enables them to find their gifts and their ministry in the world. I hope that for all of us.

In the Gospel for today we are told that when the disciples went out into the communities of Israel , if they did not find a welcome in a home, they were to shake the dust off their feet as they left that house or town. And great would be the judgment upon those who failed to receive them.

And how could I fail to mention Matthew 25 where Jesus says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”  Welcoming is an important part of our ministry, within this church community and within the community beyond our walls. There are many strangers in a world that is increasingly mobile and disconnected.

I’d like to go back to Abraham and Sarah for a few minutes—back to our ancestors, the ones who started us all off. First Couple, we might call them. They must have had something going for them that God chose them. I would like to think that they had a mutuality, a kindness, an understanding in their relationship with each other.

That is because when God calls couples into partnership with one another, that is what we hope for them. It is the month of June, when many couples are married. In our marriage service we have no subordination clauses any more. They went out a generation or so ago. The man is not to be obeyed, not to be considered head over the woman. All couples, in order to provide hospitality to the image of God in one another and to the children they might have, are asked to take the same vows, pledging equality, pledging honor and respect and the cherishing of the other. There is no toleration of control of one over the other or of abuse of any kind—physical or emotional.

I sometimes think the church has not been very pro-active about teaching this care of spouses for one another or very helpful in identifying and supporting spouses who have been abused. How many times have you heard a preacher stand up and say that no man should ever hit or abuse a woman in any way and that women who are suffering abuse from a partner should come to them for help?  One out of four women are abused by a partner sometime in her life; we in the church need to be aware and ready to assist in these times of need.

And what do we teach our young people other than that they will want to get married in the church?  Do we teach them that all marriages are ministry teams, with spouses or partners with equal authority and responsibility and due equal respect?  That the family is the smallest Christian community, and one where acts of hospitality each and every day are to be exercised and offered with love and mutuality?

Home is where our children learn most about the love of God; the church cannot pretend to do the whole job; it is what children observe from their parents’ treatment of each other and of them that teaches them that God’s love is real and that the world is a hospitable place with room for them in it.

God started all this understanding of family as a place of ministry and hospitality with the visitation of Sarah and Abraham and continued it in the birth of Jesus. It is our birthrite and our privilege to live and pass on.

                                                                        Amen.