StJB July 18th   Sermon by Revd Janet Williams
Readings: Gen 18:1-10a Col 1: 15-28 Luke 10: 38-end 

God of Abraham, show us how we may see you. Amen

Imagine the scene: you are in open country, an aging couple with a few servants and some livestock well worth stealing, resting in the welcome shade of some oak trees. Suddenly out of the haze of the day three men appear. Your heart begins to beat faster: do they come in peace, or are they a threat? There is no law and order here, just men and women vulnerable to one another; strangers might be enemies, raiders, bandits. Will you run to arm yourself, to take up whatever defensive position you can find?  Perhaps such a response will provoke them to attack you, even if that is not their intention. 

Utterly aware of the danger, you choose to take the risk: with your heart in your mouth, trying to hide the shaking in your knees, you walk towards them, press your hands together in greeting, bow your head, and bid them welcome.  In the time-honoured way of the men of the desert regions, you offer them hospitality and refreshment: if they accept your food and drink, there will be a bond between you and neither will attack the other. You will be safe.

Your gamble pays off: the dangerous strangers become your guests. They sit and eat as you stand a little way off, giving them space, but taking their measure, listening in to their conversation, watching how they are with one another when their eyes meet, when their fingers touch in passing bread and meat.

Now the moment comes, the moment so impossible to put into words that the Genesis storytellers left it unsaid, a gap in their story for the hearer to stumble over, a tear in the fabric of the text for us to look through. In the shimmering heat haze something has shifted, the seated men are still there but you see them as something else – as if you are looking more deeply than before, seeing reality sideways or inside out, but at this moment there is no doubt: you are seeing God. If you had not noticed, would the Lord have blessed you with the news of a son? 

The Hebrew Bible records several such moments when time and space crack open to disclose the heart of the cosmos, the divine presence itself – in a burning bush, for example, or a voice calling out a name in the middle of the night.  And all the stories are there to remind us of the possibility of such disclosures, if we can be still and attentive as Abraham was, if we pitch our tents in holy places such as Mamre, and rest in the shade to await what may come, if we practise taking risks and welcoming the unexpected.

At its heart, this glorious and mysterious story is something to do with relationship. In taking the risk of offering fellowship to a stranger, Abraham opens a window into the nature of God, and God dwells for a while with him. This God comes already in relationship – not as a sole figure, but as three who share conversation, communion, purpose, and Abraham for a while is drawn into that relationship. So if we were to come to this story with a question, ‘How may I see God?’, one of the answers being suggested is, in relationship. In the risk of hospitality to strangers, in the easy familiarity of travelling companions, in meals shared in risky places. And you will see God in such relationships if you can develop the habit of looking prayerfully, looking for the cracks in things that will enable you to see the divine within and beyond.

There’s a similar thing going on in the Colossians reading you heard.  Genesis says that God created the whole universe by his word, by speaking; and the early Christians are claiming that Jesus himself was and is that creating word. And therefore Christ is in all things, at their heart, making it possible for them to exist at all and to be what they are. Christ did not begin to live with that Bethlehem birth in Herod’s reign, but has been and is throughout all time. Now, how did they get to make that sort of claim?  I can’t imagine any other way than by having the sort of Abraham experience we’ve been contemplating. I think what we’re hearing is the claim that when you look at anything at all with prayerful attention, you can find a chink in it and through it see Christ.  And it’s about relationship again, as Colossians says ‘in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace’.  So, if we can glimpse Christ in things we will be brought into that divine relationship, the love of God for God and for all beings, to see God’s love, to feel God’s love, to be God’s love.

There’s much material here for prayer and silent contemplation, but too much sermonizing would spoil it - so let’s direct our attention to where we sit this morning, and ask ourselves what are the chinks we can find here, the openings into sacred presence? It might be anything at all – a mote of dust floating in a shaft of light, the gesture of a neighbour in the pew – anything at all if you meet it with prayerful attention. 

But that knowing how to look is tricky, and can take a lifetime to master.  And if, like me, you are a little shortsighted, and if it helps to have things printed large to make them visible, there are some good places to start by looking.  In the sharing of the peace, in the breaking of the bread and in our coming together to share in God’s family meal, you might catch something of what Abraham saw at Mamre.  And in a few minutes, Barry and Carolyn will stand up to give thanks for 25 years of marriage and Karen will sing for them and for us. Here are people some of us know well, and others of us less well. Those of you who come regularly will have heard Barry, Carl and Karen sing, and will have joined in our prayers when we remember Alan every week and ask God’s blessing on him.  Even if you don’t know this family well, you can guess that 25 years of married life has brought a whole range of joys and heartaches, times of struggle and times of delight. In Barry and Carolyn’s steadfastness, in the fruitfulness and hospitality of their family home, in their loving care of one another and of friends and neighbours, is there a chink through which we can see Christ?  Barry, Carolyn, family and friends, in relationships of hospitality and painful risk-taking and in giving birth and caring for one another and in love, may you catch a glimpse of God himself as Abraham did; thank you for coming today to share your celebration with us, enabling us to pray with and for you and to see Christ in and through you.