St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

5 Pentecost; June 15, 2008

Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7

Matthew 9:35-10:23

EATING LUNCH OUTSIDE THE BOX

Three great lords, shining, glowing, suddenly appear to Abraham where he is resting in his tent with Sarah, by the oaks of Mamre.

Abraham and Sarah are two, tired people, who have come a long journey – from Ur of the Chaldees where the Lord first spoke to Abraham and told him to leave his father's house and his kindred and his country. They did. And it was a long journey. And they had other adventures on the way.

And now, nothing. They were just two, tired people, uncertain of what will happen next, uncertain, perhaps, of whether their incredible commitment to this mysterious God would mean anything. They were just a long way from home, wondering what would happen next.

And these mysterious and glorious strangers arrive.

And Abraham has both this incredible act of duty, and this incredible act of chutzpah, and daring. He knows its his duty to offer hospitality to his guests. And he has the daring to think he can provide a feast worthy of royalty, worthy of angels; so he does. He kills the fatted calf, gets curds from milk, asks Sarah to make bread, lays out the feast, and waits at their side.

They sit and eat, and they give him a blessing – that in about 9 months they will have a son.

Sarah laughs. She doesn't believe them. Abraham had heard the same prophecy a few verses before, by the way, and he too had laughed.

How shall two people at the end of their rope, at the end of their vision, at the end of their strength be blessed?

They'll be blessed anyway. And the name of the child shall be laughter. And when they see him running around the tent, they'll call him laughter, Isaac, not because he will laugh as all little kids will, but because they'll remember how they laughed as all unbelievers will, when they heard God's plans and promises for them. How can such a thing be possible, they had thought; and yet it was.

God was true, and followed through on his promises, even though they did not believe. And the evidence was right there running around the tent. What a great joke. What a great confirmation of God's promises and not of their unbelief – which God's promise overwhelms.

How different that is from what some say of the importance of faith – that if you do not believe, then God will not bless. They did not believe. God blessed anyway. Now they believe.

So Abraham and Sarah – marginalized by the world, at the end of their rope and their vision and their trust – are blessed.

They are blessed because they don't quite know when to quit. They still think they can bless strangers in spite of all that has happened to them. They still try to do it with all the resources at their disposal.

When I was in Afghanistan a number of years ago we visited a family and all they could give us was tea. But they did, and treated us like royalty and treated themselves like ones who could welcome kings.

And it was a royal experience. And God was there because in welcoming strangers, we also welcome God.

So Abraham and Sarah were blessed, and the angels went on.

They were blessed because they thought outside the box – that they were just two, tired travelers, or that they were marginal people who could do nothing more. In feeding the angels, they had lunch outside the box!

Eat lunch outside the box. You'll never know who you'll entertain.

Today is Fathers' Day. So today we think, perhaps, of Abraham, father of 3 faiths, who thought outside the box when everyone else thought he could achieve nothing, and so became the father of 3 faiths.

As I think of Fathers, and what particular duty they might have (even if they share it with others), I think their duty is to think outside the box when others, including themselves, might think they can amount to nothing. It is to welcome the stranger, the new thought, the new idea – knowing as God knows that they are indeed capable of taking it in, indeed capable of being blessed by it, indeed capable of blessing others.

Fathers are capable of blessing, in both senses of that word – blessing and being blessed. So are those who are like fathers.

And so the angels pass on. And 9 months later Abraham is reminded of those whom he was capable of blessing – even though he was at the end of his rope. And both he and Sarah were visibly reminded of how they were both blessed, even though they no longer thought it was possible. Nothing is impossible with God, not even if he was working with poor, ordinary humans like us – especially if we reach out to him in blessing, and have the insufferable arrogance to think we can bless God.

As we bless the graduates today, right after this sermon, let me commend to you that Christian arrogance, that human arrogance, that we can actually bless God, that God actually needs us to take him into our lives and provide him with a home. And then of course the humility to know that when we do that, we too will be immensely richer in ways we cannot fathom, and might not even believe.

And so the angels pass on, blessed.

And Abraham and Sarah continue on. And they and their offspring become blessings to all those around them.

And we, like Abraham and Sarah, also become blessings to all those around us.

How is that possible? How can a human being become a blessing, like an angel? How do we get transformed into such a being?

By such meals as these. We too have come aside for a while. We too come out, on a Sunday morning, and have lunch outside the box.

We too step forth from our tents, our houses, and presume to entertain God. We have the temerity, the daring, the chutzpah to think that if we lay out the silver, and the bread and the wine, that God will show up! That God will bless! Even if we use pottery! Even if we only had a paper cup – but drank it in the company of strangers and friends, and said a prayer, then God would be present.

Such temerity, such daring, even puts Abraham to shame. At least he had the angels at his doorway.

We have nothing, but ourselves, and a promise; a promise from Jesus that it would be true; a promise that we might not believe, for after all, look at us; who are we, tired people at the end of our rope even if we did have visions and dreams once, long ago.

And yet there is the promise. And there (on the altar) is the meal. And there (at the altar rail) is the blessing.

And then we go forth. We become the angels. We become the blessings to others, because we had the temerity, the chutzpah, to believe we were capable ourselves.

And so then we become the stranger! We become the person passing by. We leave the door of this tent, this entrance to heaven, and we go on into the world. We are sent out, two by two, by Christ, ordinary people like Matthew – the Tax Collector – Judas Iscariot – who betrayed him – Simon the Canaanaean – the impure peasant. The Bible pulls no punches when it says how capable, or incapable, Jesus' disciples were.

Sometimes I think a primary proof for the existence of God is the existence of the Church! After all these years, with people just like us, we're still here! God still works – through us! You gotta believe.

God sees a blessing, in us, that we do not see in ourselves; and you know what? God's right. We're wrong. The blessing is there, no matter what we think.

Now we live it out, and give thanks for it, and laugh at our unbelief as our blessing, whatever it is, comes out to play.

And we, ourselves, go out now. We become the stranger now. We are called and sent by Jesus as the stranger now; to go into other houses, other neighborhoods, other homes; and we are called to expect the best of them! We go with Jesus who came to us in a hut in Bethlehem, with the angels who came to us in a tent in the desert, we go – to other strangers whom we do not yet know, and we expect the best from them as Jesus expected the best from us.

Go, he says. Enter a house. “If the house is worthy, let your peace rest upon it.”

You mean we have a peace that can rest upon a house? Yes. We get it from here. We get reoriented by this meal with God, laid out on that altar, eaten at that rail. We get it here, in conversation with God, in the prayers and the hymns and the words.

We get it here, in the fellowship of our fellow Christians, in Coffee Hour.

Then we can go out, reoriented to God's world, blessed with God's Peace at the end of this service, into God's world, to bless his other children.

Yes, we have a peace. We get it from God who graciously gives it to us, and through us, to them; for we are worthy to be fellow-laborers, with him, in his harvest.

And then? Yes they're worthy too. They're children of God. They can receive it, whether or not they are Christians or have ever darkened the door of any religious structure.

They may be at the end of their rope, tired travelers or marginal people who the world may think are capable of achieving nothing at all.

Not so, says God; capable of entertaining angels unawares, capable of reaching out to you, a perfect stranger and of joining you, a perfect stranger, in the work of God, and the blessing of the world.