Entertaining Angels

Genesis 18:1-10a, Luke 10:38-42

Perhaps they should add to the old entertainment adage, “Never work with children or animals…or angels.”

My first Christmas pageant in West Papua, Indonesia: At the age of 9 I suspected – that being the fairest-skinned child in the class – I was typecast as the angel. The part I really wanted was Mary – i.e. the centre of attention. In the photographs I look less like a joyful herald and more like the angel of death. Enter (left) embarrassed parents.

What goes around, comes around, however. Fifteen years later I had to direct the Yokohama Union Church Christmas pageant in Japan. For some time the angelic little boy playing Joseph had been quietly harassing my – rather feisty it turned out – angel... We came to the final scene. ‘Mary’ was laying her baby doll Jesus in the manger. The congregation were singing ‘Silent Night’ - when “RIGHT!“ said Morgan the angel, “THAT’S IT” and layed into ‘Joseph’ – both of them eventually toppling into the manger Enter (left) embarrassed parents.

In the book of Hebrews, the author adds as a pastoral afterthought, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

This is a very different sense of entertaining angels! And it doesn’t mean every visitor is an angel! (Or has angelic children!) Or that we should be even looking out for angels! The idea is that opening our homes to strangers must be so second nature – so habitual - that odds of an angelic encounter exist!

The thought is based on the Old Testament story we read this morning. Abraham, already an old man, is sitting at the entrance of his tent – the flap open in the heat of the day. And suddenly (“Perhaps I dozed off?” he wonders.) three men are standing in front of him!

He then displays exemplary Near Eastern hospitality.

- He runs to them (not the behaviour of an old man on a hot day – let alone a patriarch!);

- He addresses the one he identifies as the leader as ‘my lord’;

- He offers them water to wash their feet and downplays the meal that he will put before them (similar practice in Japan… ‘tsumarani mono’);

- He stands by them, ready to offer more service, as they eat.

Truly remarkable hospitality! No wonder it was proverbial for the author of Hebrews and his audience. There is a Jewish tradition that Abraham’s tent had four doors - better to let in guests. And a hospitable person is said, ‘to have the doors of Abraham.’

But we mustn’t forget that Abraham opens his doors and lavishes this extraordinary hospitality on strangers - not on friends and family. The word ‘hospitality’ comes from the Latin ‘hostis’ meaning stranger. Hospitality is actually not about being nice to people you know. Hospitality is an alternative to ‘hostility’.

The three visitors who visit Abraham in chapter 18 and Abraham’s nephew, Lot, (in the dubious address of Sodom) in chapter 19, were strangers. Strange strangers at that! So ‘strange’ that the entire male population of Sodom wanted them destroyed just on sight.

For Martha of Bethany, Jesus and his group of mostly Galileans were at best new acquaintances – and yet Luke tells us she ‘welcomed him into her home’. As a female head of household – already an anomaly – this involved loss of reputation. It involved risk.

Opening our homes to entertain strangers is also to entertain risk. But the gospel is a risky business. Have we put ourselves in a place where we may have entertained angels?

A few years ago we heard an incredible travel story from a couple from Melbourne which involved an international terrorist organisation stealing Australian passports… Anyway, this woman and her daughter were robbed by some very nasty people and found themselves in Paris without passports or money and the Australian embassy had closed. They wandered for a few hours, trying hotels that wouldn’t give them a room without credit cards or proof of identity – until they came to a small hotel near the Eiffel Tower where the female manager said, “Don’t worry. When you’ve sorted it out, you can fix me up.” She went on to explain that her family had been Polish refugees – and they knew what it was like to be strangers.

The story takes another amazing twist, for the husband flew into Paris that night, a few days early from his conference. Unable to call his wife at the hotel where they’d planned to meet, he eventually chose a hotel at random. (You can guess!) While checking him in, the manager said, “I think I have your wife and daughter upstairs. They will be glad to see you!”

Perhaps the greatest risk of opening our homes is that divine encounters may disrupt the status quo of our lives – and change our hearts.

For Martha and Mary, and Jesus’ mostly male followers, the encounter with Jesus transformed their understanding of the place of women – not barefoot and tied to the kitchen stove, but sitting and listening at Jesus’ feet, being a disciple.

For Abraham and Sarah opening their home completely disrupted their status quo. They were told they were having baby! And this disruption continues to this day – for the apostle Paul, in Romans 9:9, counts us as Abraham’s descendants. We are the children of God– not through flesh – but by the promise. The promise heard by entertaining angels.

Opening our homes is to open our lives to change. But the gospel is in the business of transformation! There is joy, Luke 15 tells us, among the angels when a sinner repents. Are we in a place where we are entertaining angels?

It’s a risky business. An unpredictable business. But we are commanded to welcome strangers. The Jewish Books of the Law are full of references to not oppressing aliens and strangers – even loving them – “for you,” the refrain is, “were aliens in the land of Egypt”. The listeners were not to repeat that terrible history of alienation but to redeem it. Perhaps we Australians need to redeem our convict legacy of incarceration.

We are also warned in Matthew 25 that our capacity for hospitality decides our fitness for eternity.

For me, however, we welcome strangers because it allows us to act out the grace of God. In all our childishness we get to perform that wonderful pageant of how God – the host par excellence – runs and welcomes us!

By opening our homes and opening our lives we open up heaven.

We entertain angels and find we have become angels, messengers of God’s grace.

Probably most of you know the film Babette’s Feast, based on the novel by Karen Blixen: how two Lutheran sisters one night welcome a stranger; a Parisian woman fleeing (in the opposite direction to the Polish hotel manager) to Western Europe, away from the civil war in France that has taken the lives of her husband and son.

“Babette can cook,” the note she carries says.

For twelve years Babette serves them. Somehow her cooking tastes different. She brings new life into everything she does.

Then one day Babette announces she’s won the French national lottery – 10,000 francs - and asks if she can prepare a special French dinner for them and their Lutheran community.

They agree, with some misgivings – as they have always espoused frugality - misgivings that grow as crates of small birds, cases of champagne and wine, the entire head of a cow, fresh vegetables, truffles, pheasants, ham, and a huge living tortoise arrive.

The meal is extraordinary – if you haven’t seen the film, you must – and it works its magic. Stories are told, secrets are revealed, confessions are made and reconciliation takes place

There are two final scenes in the story. In one the villagers file out of the house and gather around the fountain. They join hands and lustily sing the old songs of faith.

In the other the sisters thank Babette for the meal, anticipating she will soon leave them with the rest of her money. But Babette tells them that she has no money. “But what about the 10,000 francs?” they ask. It is spent, she says, every last franc of it on the meal they have eaten.

Babette’s Feast is a parable of openness that lays the table for a glimpse of heaven.

My prayer is that we will be people with open doors, people with open lives – people who open heaven for a world that needs a home.