June 6, 2010
The Men at Mamre - Genesis 18:1-14
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI saw a man sitting on our front porch one morning not very long ago as I was pulling into work. I assumed he was just resting there, which is not uncommon for people to do and that’s fine with me. But then I found out that he had actually stayed there all night, on the front porch of our sanctuary, which was not fine with me. We are not a hotel and we are not a camp ground. So I went out to talk to the man. He was a nice man, and said he had come from Mobile, Alabama on his way home to Kentucky. None of that made much sense to me. I never figured out what he was doing in Mobile and why he came through Charlotte on his way to Kentucky.
Be that as it may, I told the man that he was welcome to stay on the porch for a while, that we would be glad to get him some food and water and a bus pass around Charlotte, and that we support Crisis Assistance Ministries which could probably help him even more. He said that was fine and that he would take some water, which he got from the hose on the side of the building, and then he left, and I have not seen him since. I never am sure how to handle those type things, but the biggest question that I have is who was that man? What was his story and why did he stop here? What did he have to do with the rest of my day? What did he have to do with me?
This passage from Genesis 18 is a very rich passage that raises all sorts of interesting questions. God makes this ridiculous offer to Abraham and Sarah, so ridiculous that neither believes it and Sarah even laughs. Yet, if you read further, you’ll see that God does it anyway. God opens this new reality for them whether they like it or not, whether they accept it or not. Abraham and Sarah were barren, you see, and they had been for many years certainly long enough to have accepted it and moved on. Children were way out of the question at this point in their lives, but God, as God often does, had other plans, and fulfilled those plans regardless of conventional wisdom. Why God did not give Sarah and Abraham a child when they were in their normal child-baring years, like in their twenties or thirties, is an interesting question. Why they had to endure the curse of barrenness for so long is another interesting question. Why must there be pain? Why must there be a cross? Why not just go straight to the Resurrection? This passage poses all of those real, wonderful, troubling, and urgent questions.
But the big question that I have today is the same one that I had about that man on our front porch. Who were these three guys who showed up at Abraham’s tent? Where were they from and where were they going? Whatever happened to them? Why were they even in this story? It makes no sense to me. Scripture never even names these men, much less tells us whatever happened to them. I wonder if they were married and had children, and if so what happened to them. We don’t know anything at all about these men. We also don’t know why Abraham was so gracious to them, and in fact even begged for them to stay. He even killed the fatted calf for them, which doesn’t make sense. We hear the word “random” a lot these days, and I normally don’t care for that word, but I can’t think of a better way to describe these three nameless men.
From the outset, they seem like meaningless men who have nothing at all to do with anything else. They’re not even significant enough to be a trivia question. Except that God spoke through them, through these nobodies. We have this rather strange belief in the Church that God shows up in rather strange people. This belief was actually the very last thing that Jesus taught us in Matthew’s Gospel. In fact, in some ways, it’s the pinnacle of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus’ teaching culminates in that famous passage that gives us a lump in our throats but should scare us all to death, “inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, my brothers, my strangers, you have done it unto me.”
That makes these three strangers something other than just strange. Who they are really does matter. Who we are really does matter, too. God works through strange people, and to be honest, we’re pretty strange ourselves. God even through us. So, therefore, we really do matter down here. And what we do really matters. These three nameless men play an essential role in Scripture. They proclaim God’s Word to Abraham and Sarah who may otherwise never have known God’s Word.
We also proclaim God’s Word to people who otherwise may never hear it. What we do and how we live matters very much, not because we’re hot stuff, but because God Almighty speaks through us. We have Vacation Bible School in three weeks. Our Church has three hundred members, so we should have about three hundred people at VBS, right? And that doesn’t even include the children. We have all vowed to show up for our church’s children. It’s as serious as those vows you made at your wedding. I hope you haven’t cheated on your spouse lately, and I hope that we don’t cheat on our children. They need us. God speaks to them through us. If we want them to know anything at all about God, then we better show up. We better take ourselves seriously because it appears that, at the very least, God takes us seriously.
And it also appears that God takes them seriously. Why should I care about that man on our front porch? He may be dead now for all I know, and honestly for all I care. But I’ve got to take him seriously, and I have to take myself seriously, because, at least according to this passage, God takes us both seriously, which actually doesn’t make us strangers at all, but it actually makes us brothers. That’s what God does to us. That’s what Jesus taught us, over and over and over again, isn’t it? That rotten Samaritan whom we hate, whom we’ve always hated, our parents hated his parents, he’s low-down and rotten to the core, and he’s strange… But he just so happens to come trotting down the road one day and sees us all beat up and left for dead on the side of it, and he stops and helps us and saves our lives. Even that low-down, rotten Samaritan is our brother and sister. So how we treat him matters very much, maybe for eternity.
One of the lines in your “Church Information Form” that I read before I got here said that Central Steele Creek was at a crossroads. Now you wrote this thing and your session approved it, and that’s what it said. I think every Church says that, and I honestly didn’t see that much when I first got here, but I do now. The community here has changed drastically in the last ten or so years. I know that you know this, but it will never be what it once was. But we have this new thing, this new future. We don’t know all that much about it, but what we do know is that it involves lots and lots of people, much more than it ever has. And many of those people are new and, at the risk of sounding offensive, strange. And they’ve shown up here, right in our back yard.
Now I believe that our faith calls us first of all to take ourselves seriously. What we say and how we act and what we do makes a huge difference, again not because we’re hot stuff, but because God speaks through us. How we treat the stranger in our midst has an eternal effect on them, not to mention us. And I’m not talking about hell so much as I am about their knowledge of who and whose they are. Just like God spoke truth through these nameless, insignificant strangers, God speaks truth through us. So to that extent, we take ourselves and our words and actions very seriously.
And God also has something to say to us, through them. This was a two-way conversation that God had between Abraham and these strangers. Not only did God speak through Abraham to these three strangers, but God also spoke to Abraham through them. So who are we, then, to disregard them? Maybe I should have invited that man on our front porch that day to my house. He may could have told me a thing or two. That’s what Jesus did. His name was Zacchaeus.
Listen, according to conventional wisdom, we don’t matter all that much. In fact, according to conventional wisdom, history will no more remember us as it will that homeless man camped out on the steps of our sanctuary. But as these nameless strangers indicate, both and they are more important than we might think. God has started a good thing in all of us and I believe that God is dead set on completing it, and on communicating it through us. And, God has started a good thing in them, and if we’ll open ourselves up, we get to be the beneficiaries of God’s completing that, too. God takes them very seriously and God takes us very seriously. So may God give us the grace to do likewise.
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
