Genesis 18:1-15
Saint Matthew 9:35-10:8
It never ceases to amaze and sometimes sadden me to see what societies and individuals do when they are in the midst of a crises.
Heartbreakingly our current tendency is to get angry and to divide up into groups of people who are for us or against us; like us and not like us; people whom we agree with and people we don’t agree with. It’s like forming a circular firing squad.
This is especially unwise when we are engaged in a three front battle. And, as any good general will tell you, fighting a war on two fronts is difficult enough but fighting it on three is well nigh impossible.
On the first front we are fighting a global pandemic of major proportions with over half-a-million dead worldwide and embarrassingly 110,000 of them from the United States.
One the second we are still battling against racial prejudice that has always – whether we wish to admit it or not – played a huge and ugly role in our society.
And the third is our anemic economy with the unemployment rate hovering around 13 percent but still “21 million Americans remain unemployed with a jobless rate higher than any other time since 1940.”1
None of us have ever seen anything like this. But there are two words that stand out from today’s rather lengthy readings that may be able to help us as we try to navigate the treacherous waters that really do threaten our ship of state.
The first word is hospitality.
That is what Abraham showed the three men as he sat under the oak trees at Mamre communing with God.
Hebrew is a very interesting language because it doesn’t have any punctuation marks. No commas, or periods, or semi-colons. It is like reading one giant run-on sentence.
So here is what scholars believe was happening on that fateful day. Abraham was in deep conversation with God and he looks up to see three total strangers standing nearby. At this point, and this is very important men and women, very important, he ends his devotions, stops communing with the LORD, God, Almighty and runs to the three total strangers and begs them to stay.
His chat with the LORD is placed on hold as he hurries to get water for the men’s tired feet and orders up some food. He’s not offering his guests, whose names he doesn’t even know, leftover from the refrigerator, he is setting a feast before them. There is fresh baked bread made from the finest wheat. The is a nice, plump calf that is prepared. And there is fresh milk to wash it all down with. It’s a feast fit for Abraham’s best friends served to three guys he just met.
All of this commotion comes at a very low point for Abraham and his wife Sarah.
Longer ago than he cares to remember God had come to him with a command and a promise. In the seventy-fifth year of his life he had heard these words from the lips of the Lord.
God had told Abram, “Leave your own country behind you, and your own people, and go to the land I will guide you to. If you do, I will cause you to become the father of a great nation; I will bless you and make your name famous, and you will be a blessing to many others.”3
Abraham thought this great nation business meant the Sarah and he would have children, lots and lots of children, but so far they had none. Time was fleeting! The days have turned into months which have turned into years and still there are no offspring.
But that is what the three men have come to tell him. These biblical pediatricians announce that Sarah is pregnant. The couple is going to have a baby. Paint the nursery! There is a child on the way.
One of them said, “I’m coming back about this time next year. When I arrive, your wife Sarah will have a son.”
Sarah was listening at the tent opening, just behind the men and she heard what the visitor had said. Abraham and Sarah were old by this time, very old. Sarah was far past the age for having babies. Sarah laughed within herself, “An old woman like me? Get pregnant? With this old man of a husband?”3
The guests join in the laughter saying to Sarah’s doubts: “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?”4
There is joy all around and God even gets in on the joke by suggesting that the baby be named Isaac which in Hebrew means laughter.
All this joy and blessing began with a little hospitality. A wonderful God who arrives in the depths of our despair is exactly what we need and it can be ours when we show hospitality to strangers, people who are different than us.
That is what Jesus was showing when he looked out on the crowds in his day and “had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”5 If that isn’t a perfect description of us I don’t know what is.
We can see ourselves helpless to do anything about the soaring unemployment rates, inadequate and sometimes grossly unfair social safety nets.
We can see ourselves helpless in the face of riots and hopeless as we watch not just one black life but many black lives not just taken but taken far too soon.
We can see ourselves harassed by all the information that bombards us from so many sides that we don’t know what is true or not true anymore.
We may think hospitality and compassion are two simplistic for such a time as this.
In a world as broken and fragmented as ours, a simple act of kindness, a welcome to a stranger, a little genuine hospitality can be more than a little dangerous.
We might have second thoughts about stopping to offer directions to a lost traveler. “Don’t they have an app on their phone that they can use?” we might wonder even if all they need to know is that they have to go “two blocks down and one block over.”
Who would have thought that shaking another person’s hand or giving them a hug would be considered an act of genuine peril.
God isn’t calling us to be more than we can be.
When Jesus send his disciples out he does so armed only with “hospitality” and “compassion.”
Pretty simple stuff! We can do that! And here’s how.
On April 15 of 1947 a 28 year old started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was a little old to be a rookie in the majors but he had been busy doing other things like continuing his education at UCLA until 1941 where he lettered in four sports.
From 1942 until 1944 he served as a second lieutenant in the United States Army where charged but acquitted in 1944 for refusing to give up his seat and move to the back of a segregated bus.
He spent some time with the Montreal Royals who trained in Florida where his will was sorely tested. He was jeered as racial epithets were hurled from the crowd. Some of his team mates objected to having him in the locker room and on the bus to say nothing of being on the field with him. He and his family even received death threats.
When he was called up to the Dodgers some members of the team were so adamant that they threatened not to play. Leo Durocher, whose loyalty to the new guy was never questioned, told them that he would trade all of them for one of him.6
It is believed that things came to a head in a series against Boston in 1948. Jackie Robinson would write:
In Boston during a period when the heckling pressure seemed unbearable, some of the players began to heckle Reese. They were riding him about being a Southerner and playing ball with a black man. Pee Wee didn’t answer them. Without a glance in their direction, he left his position and walked over to me. He put his hand on my shoulder and began talking to me. His words weren’t important. I don’t even remember what he said. It was the gesture of comradeship and support that counted.7
Sports columnist Joe Posnaskie, who named this one of the sixty greatest moments in baseball reflected: “Doing the right thing against the tide, even in the smallest way, is hard. It is uncommon.
Why is it so rare for humans to show such basic affection for one another? Is it a feat worthy of statues for humans to just stand up for one another, to comfort one another, to defend one another in difficult times?”8
The answer is bigger than baseball. It is as big as life.
I don’t know all of it but I do know that getting there requires the two characteristics Abraham and Jesus showed us today: Hospitality and Compassion.
Let’s try it like Pee Wee Reese did and see if it works.
_________
1. Katia Dmetrieva, “U.S. Hiring Rebounds, Defying Forecasts for Surge in Joblessness,” Bloomberg.com (Bloomberg), accessed June 12, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-05/u-s-jobless-rate-unexpectedly-fell-in-may-as-hiring-rebounded.
2. Genesis 12:1-2. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible. (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)]
3. Eugene H. Peterson, “Genesis 18:10-19,” in The Message. (Carol Stream,Illinois: NAVPRESS Publishing Group, 2013).
4. Genesis 18:14. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
5. St. Matthew 9:36. (NRSV)
6. “Jackie Robinson,” January 16, 2020, https://www.biography.com/athlete/jackie-robinson.
7. Joe Posnanski, “60 Moments: No. 31, Pee Wee Reese Puts His Arm around Jackie Robinson,” The Athletic. June 4, 2020, https://theathletic.com/1846283/2020/05/31/60-moments-no-31-pee-wee-reese-puts-his-arm-around-jackie-robinson/?source=user_shared_article.
8. Ibid.
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