Jack Hardaway
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Have you ever counted the stars in the sky?
The more we count the more they seem to keep popping up.
Stars defy counting. As if the act of observation changes them, causing them to multiply.
Star light, start bright, the first star I see tonight. I wish I may I wish I might, I wish the wish I wish tonight. If I could just catch that first star.
Granted the night sky isn’t what it used to be, with the haze of city air and the glare of city lights.
But, still, there are those clear crisp nights when the stars catch our attention, they dazzle and dance and twinkle, daring us to count them, to dream and wish.
When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are,
Anything your heart desires,
Will come to you.
Count the stars if you can, the Lord told Abram.
Your future is that bright, that full, that abundant.
A sky full of stars, a reminder and a promise.
A barren world. A barren life.
What comes of that? What kind of world and life grows from that?
Hostility or hospitality. Life ends up revolving around one or the other and the choice.
That is the story of Abraham and Sarah.
In a barren world of hostility, they chose the way of hospitality, not just to neighbors, family, and friends, but to strangers from elsewhere.
After the reading this morning with the vision of all the stars in the sky and a smoking fire in the darkness, three strangers visit with Abraham and Sarah, who turn out to be angels, who turn out to be God. They are fed and welcomed graciously.
A story about counting the endless stars of the sky, and the promise that God brings.
What was a barren world is now a world with blessings beyond counting, lighting up the darkness, all the stars of the night sky.
Then there is the contrasting story, it happens after the reading from this morning, the story of hostility, a barren world that caves in to desperation and preying on the vulnerable.
Those three same divine strangers pay a visit somewhere else, where they are abused and threatened, almost raped but they are rescued by Abraham’s nephew Lot.
Lot is spared, but the story ends not with all the stars in the sky, but fire and brimstone raining down from the heavens, erasing the city from history.
A barren world, with two choices, hospitality or hostility, a sky full of stars or fire raining from the heavens.
We see Herod and Jesus making that choice.
Herod the fox chooses hostility, the predator on the prowl.
Jesus, the mother hen, gathers her brood under her wings, a brood that includes Herod, a brood that includes the fickle people of Jerusalem, who will kill him.
A game of fox and hen, a game of tag that children play, but in this game when the fox tags the hen, the hen wraps her wings around the fox in love.
Hospitality not just to strangers, but to the enemy.
A desperate barren world with two choices.
One ends with the fox covered in feathers and blood smelling of fire and brimstone.
The other ends the same way, blood and feathers but with a sky flooded with stars that keep multiplying.
In both choices the stars beckon us to look up and count, and try again.
A choice.
Have you ever counted the stars in the sky?