Today’s readings offer us a glimpse of Middle Eastern hospitality. Abraham and Sarah offer food, drink and shade to their visitors, unknowingly entertaining three angels of the Lord, who in return promise them the blessing of a child. In today’s reading we do not hear the ending of the story – that Sarah laughed at the thought of herself and her husband, way past childbearing age, heaving a son. The following year, however, they were indeed blessed with a son.
Martha and Mary also receive a divine visitor, in the person of Jesus. Martha offers what might be described as the traditional type of hospitality for the women of the household – to cook and prepare and serve. Mary offers the hospitality of her undivided attention to the Lord, kneeling at the Master’s feet and drinking in His words – arguably, in that time and culture, the position of a male. Yet Jesus defends Mary’s actions as “the better part.†She in fact offers a more profound hospitality to Jesus. Martha fails to choose the one form of hospitality that is needed – to give the Lord one’s time and attention. In fact, Martha actually breaks the rules of hospitality much more than Mary does, as she asks the guest – Jesus – to get involved in a family dispute. It is Mary, who offers genuine hospitality and in so doing receives the blessing of the Lord’s teaching – a life-giving message.
The scriptures show us time and again hew people who offer hospitality to God find themselves on the receiving end of God’s hospitality – like Abraham and Sarah, Mary and Martha, and so many others. We give different names to the hospitality of God – salvation, eternal life, wholeness, healing, redemption, forgivenss, holiness. Always, when we make room for God in our lives – in prayer, in service of others, in faithfulness to our calling – we find ourselves transformed by that encounter.
The good news is that it is God’s very self who – in so many small and countless ways – is the visitor in our daily lives. If we welcome God, then we are inevitably changed. We become more compassionate, more willing to serve, more ready to turn away from our sin, more gentle, more open to life, more able to listen, to pray, to love. In short, we become more like the God we welcome. By offering God hospitality, we are drawn into God’s hospitality – the Lord makes his home in us and we find ourselves at home in the Lord. Such hospitality is not simply sacred, it is life-giving both for us and for those we meet.