Strangers.
Someone who isn’t from around here.
Foreigners.
They keep showing up.
They are all over sacred scripture.
They are a preoccupation of biblical morality.
Whether it is from the book of Deuterononomy, “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Or the book of Hebrews, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
Or the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel According to Luke.
Or whether it is today when we go to the early beginnings of the biblical story in the book of Genesis where Abraham shows hospitality to three strangers, unknowingly entertaining two angels and the One Lord Almighty.
Strangers. Hospitality. It is a preoccupation for those who belong to God.
We could say that this is about more than good manners.
But in fact this is actually about the origins and the roots of good manners. Good manners find their origin in the sacred. They are all about hospitality, especially to the helpless and especially to strangers, foreigners and aliens.
Those who attend to God are keenly aware of God’s hospitality, and to be thankful for God providing is to be eager to provide to those in need, especially those who are far from home or who have no home, because Abraham once wandered as a man with no country, and the whole people of Israel once wandered as a
people with no country.
Hospitality is good liturgy. It is an act of worship, reverence, praise and thanksgiving. It is a sacred and holy act, it is hallowed ground.
To withhold hospitality is to engage in profanity and blasphemy, even worse than that it is in southern parlance what is known as common and tacky. Heaven forbid.
Flannery O’Connor once wrote that “Mystery comes to us in manners.” The mystery of the living God is encountered in the act of hospitality.
God isn’t encountered in enclaves of the like minded.
The sacred is met when strangers are welcomed regardless, because that is where God is encountered, and only God can bring us together.
The icon on the bulletin cover and behind the altar has two names.
One name is, “The Trinity”. We bring it out on Trinity Sunday. It is an ancient symbol of the Trinity, three divine beings at table.
The other name is, “The hospitality of Abraham.” Because that is what the icon depicts, the story of Abraham being visited by three strangers and Abraham welcoming them lavishly.
Interesting how an ancient image of both God and Hospitality overlap.
It is a preoccupation of God.
Imagine Abraham sitting in the shade of the sacred oaks, the Oaks of Mamre, waiting for instruction, for insight, for direction.
Imagine three strangers on the way to make their sacred visitation, bringing the promise of children for the barren, and a future of a mighty nation to a man without a country.
Imagine along the way the strangers encounter signs littering the landscape to prosecute and deport illegal aliens.
Imagine the three strangers turning aside and going elsewhere, somewhere more hospitable, less profane.
Imagine Abraham sitting there waiting and waiting never to be visited, never given the blessing, a mighty nation lost, abandoned, never to become.
Hospitality.
The mystery that comes to us with manners.
It is salvation itself.