The Third Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 8, Year A
June 29, 2014
The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell
You get a choice this morning.
I’m not going to embarrass you by asking you to raise your
hand, but in your mind I want you to consider and choose.
Based on the readings we had this morning, which God do you
choose?
Are you more drawn to the God of Genesis, or the God of
Romans and Matthew?
Do you prefer the God of sacrifice or the God of grace?
Do you want the God who asks for a child or the God content
with the giving of a welcome and a glass of water?
Which God did you choose?
Is anyone brave enough to share his or her choice?
I probably don’t have to take a poll to find out. I’m going to guess you picked Matthew’s God
over the God of Genesis.
Well now that you’ve made your choice, perhaps it is a good
time to remind you that last week it was Matthew that was the hard text with
Jesus’ words of setting family member against family member and taking up one’s
cross to follow Jesus (which, by the way, is the immediate context of today’s
reading).
And it was Genesis that presented a picture of Divine grace
and love as God cared and provided for Hagar and for Abraham’s first son,
Ishmael who had been cast away by Abraham and Sarah and left to die in the
wilderness.
Don’t you hate trick questions?
Of course, the question was a loaded one, and before you go
home to email the bishop so that you can tell him your priest is teaching you to
pick and choose which God you like, let me say emphatically that you don’t
actually get a choice.
The division of God into easy categories often thought of as
the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New, is an ancient heresy,
going back to the early second century and was soundly rejected by the fathers
of the Church.
The God of the Old Testament IS the God of the New.
The God of Genesis IS the God of Matthew and Romans.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob IS the God of St. Paul,
and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So, the hard reality is that we don’t get to pick and
choose. We must take both the texts that
trouble us along with those that are comforting. We are bound by both the texts that seem to
point to an image of God that is harsh and demanding along with those that
speak of a God full of grace and love.
And that is what we get today – two apparently opposing
revelations of God – one that points to a God who desires an unthinkable
sacrifice and one who rewards the seemingly simple act of hospitality.
Last summer I was in the back of the house taking a very
holy nap on a Sunday afternoon when I heard the doorbell ring. A few moments later, I heard Bryn answer the
door. I couldn’t make out exactly what is
being said, but I could hear male voices talking to my wife and then my
children.
As I woke a little more, I hear Bryn introduce these
strangers to Hannah & Gus, and then I heard her say, “Would you like to
come in?”
‘What was she
thinking?,’ I thought to myself, inviting two solicitors into our house,
introducing them to our children, names and all. I had visions of these two men casing out the
house, looking to return a few days later when we were not there – or schemes
that were perhaps even worse.
Frustrated with my wife’s poor judgment, I walked out of the
bedroom ready to save the day only to find two boys dressed in black pants,
white shirt, and black tie. Immediately
I knew, these boys were Mormon missionaries.
I was ashamed, both of my initial lack of confidence in my
wife’s judgment and my knee-jerk reaction to someone who would ring my doorbell
on a Sunday afternoon.
I watched as Bryn offered these two boys a glass of water
and listened to a bit of their story.
(By the way, one of the benefits of telling an evangelist
you are a priest is that it usually puts an end to the high-pressure sales
pitch. Try it sometime; it might help.)
The boys were very kind and grateful for the water on a hot
summer day, stayed only a few minutes, and continued on their journey.
So what do you think? Putting aside any debate about the
Mormon religion, is that what Jesus was talking about? Welcoming two strangers into your home? Offering them a glass of cold water on a hot
day?
Perhaps. Then again,
perhaps not.
There is a fairly wide gap between our notion of hospitality
and that of the ancient world. Hospitality
in the ancient world was not the hospitality that we might offer -even in the
south. It’s not a glass of iced tea in a
rocking chair under the shade of the front porch.
The rules and codes that governed hospitality in ancient
Palestine were rigid and well defined. Hospitality
was a moral issue with very specific roles and obligations. Hospitality required providing shelter, water,
food, and protection to any stranger who sought that hospitality. And all of this in a world in which the vast
majority of people had very little of those things to share. Hospitality was a selfless act of love and of
sacrifice.
To get a sense of what this might involve, think once again
of Abraham. Abraham who prepared a feast
–a whole fatted calf, milk and
cheese, and a lavish amount of bread – for three strangers wandering in the
wilderness. Or consider Rahab who to her
own peril sheltered Joshua and his spies in her home before the battle of
Jericho. Or the widow who made Elijah a
meal from the very last of the provisions that she had for her and her
son. Or the women, Joanna and Suzanna,
who traveled with Jesus and provided for his needs out of their own resources.
This is the biblical understanding of hospitality, and this
is what welcome looks like to Jesus. It
is costly, personal, even perilous to one’s self or the things that you hold
most dear. It can cost you
everything. It is a form of sacrifice.
And as sacrifice implies, it is also a form of worship,
bringing that person into the very presence of God. For Abraham, it was the Lord’s renewal of the
promise of a son, or in today’s story the Lord providing a ram and sparing the
child. For Rahab and her household it
was salvation from the coming destruction of Jericho as well as, being brought
into the fold of God’s chosen people.
For the widow and her son, it was moving from a life of scarcity and
certain death to a life of abundance.
And for the women, it was being in the very presence of salvation,
incarnate in the person of Jesus.
There is much more that could be said about any and all of
these stories, but perhaps now Jesus’ words from last week’s gospel that
immediately precede those from this morning might make a bit more sense. Jesus says, “Those who find their life will
lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Hospitality, sacrifice, worship – all are deeply connected.
God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And
he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son
Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a
burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you."
God desires everything, even if it pushes us to the brink of
danger, because absolutely none of it belongs to me – not the clothes that I
wear or the food that I eat, not the roof over my head or the protection I
enjoy, not even the life that I live or the lives of those that I love. All of these things are grace, literally
gifts from God, and it is only when we begin to recognize this that we can stop
living in fear and anxiety and live lives of gratitude – which is, by the way,
what we do and practice every week in the Eucharist, or Great Thanksgiving.
Yet, to be sure, God does not need sacrifice. We do.
God desires and is pleased by it because through sacrifice we are deeply
formed and changed into who we were always created to be.
To answer “Here I am,” to God’s call to us is to live a life
of sacrifice – to literally set a part of our lives and stuff aside and offer
it to God in a way that is no longer retrievable to us. And by giving it back
to the One to whom it belongs, we cannot help but come into closer contact with
the God we seek.
This is the life of faith of Abraham. This is what Jesus means to loose one’s life
only to find it. This is how we welcome
God’s presence though sacrifice.
And there we will find the God of Genesis and the God of
Matthew. The God of Abraham and the God
of Jesus. Indeed, we will find the one
God, our God, creator of all things in heaven and earth. Amen.
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