Loving strangers: even when it's every tent for one's self

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

This is the perfect Biblical story for a day in which we are imagining what intergenerational relationships look like because you don’t get much more inter-generational than one-hundred-year-old-ish first-time parents.

I mean, if you get past the miracle of giving birth at 90 years old, which admittedly is a huge stumbling block, it’s natural to wonder what it would be like for a couple of people in their 100s to raise a child. I’m pushing 30 and some days it feels difficult.

More than that, this is a story of radical hospitality. Welcoming three strangers—three foreigners—lays the groundwork for Abraham to receive the promise of an heir. These men who stand as God before him, and whom Abraham serves without any indication of reward, become agents of grace who offer Abraham an impossible gift. Does Abraham receive the promise of Isaac because of he treated the Lord in the right way? We don’t know. But we do know that he quite literally lives out the reality of Hebrews 13:2, which )warns not to “neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

The morals for us are many. Obviously we are called to be hospitable to strangers and to take care of the needy, and this is ever starker given the context. Abraham and Sarah are on their own. There is no nation. Israel, you might remember, is the name given to the grandson of Abraham and Sarah. There are no Hebrews; no ethnic brothers and sisters. This is the beginning of all that. Before Abraham and Sarah it was every tent to themselves.

And yet, here they are practicing a radical kind of hospitality.

Service is a joy and those who think differently haven't tried it

Scripture: John 13:1-17

            I was given orders this week to make this as short a sermon as possible [since we're showing off a baby at church and that's going to take some time]. But part of my job is to not always give you exactly what you want but what you need to hear, so consider this your Lenten discipline for the day—that can wait. Although, come to think of it, this whole baby thing does kind of color everything I read here—like I can no longer read Jesus saying “Not all of you are clean” without resisting the urge to point at Natalie, because I know different.

Eli: A priest in need of the cross

Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-21

            There are worse fates in life than to be born a pastor’s kid, but then again there are many better fates, too. I’m not one—a pastor’s kid—but I’ve seen them firsthand, and since I’m kind of going to have one myself soon I’ve been thinking about this some lately. Pastor’s kids, by no fault of their own, are held to an entirely different standards from other children; this is true of police kids and teacher’s kids, too, to different degrees. Because of this, these kids either rise up to that standard to become good, but often sheltered, children; or they fail to rise up to that standard and go the other way, doing pretty much anything they can to distance themselves from that responsibility unfairly entrusted to them.

            This is not a new problem. Eli, the priest in today’s scripture, has two of the worst pastor’s kids you can imagine. The two of them were doing the B.C. equivalent of spray painting the sanctuary, smoking behind the bleachers, and stealing mom and dad’s car. They went the “other” way, and for it Eli and his family are cursed.

This is basically a parent’s worst nightmare.