Is
Your Heart Open to God?
(communion Sunday)
The
LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting
at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.
Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he
hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant
by". Genesis 18:1-3
These ancient stories from the early chapter of Genesis are fascinating and
raise as many questions as answers.
The first question that I always ask is "how did we get this material?" We
are talking about four thousand years of history which predates Herodotus
who is usually credited with the title "father of history" by about fifteen
hundred years.
Abraham and Sarah live during the twelfth Egyptian dynasty, the same time
as Hamurabi. This is very ancient indeed.
The obvious answer to the question is that it comes to us by oral history
until someone began collecting these oral histories and committing them to
writing.
I hope you are not dissatisfied with the notion of oral history thinking
it to somehow be second-rate historically.
Ancient oral histories do not give us the kind of attention to certain details
that we would commit to a contemporary historical document, but it does not
make them unreliable. We catalogue everything which often makes reading them
like watching CSPAN on T.V. It is totally accurate, but often very
dull as well.
Although we do know that in the meal Sarah prepared for the visitors, she
used three seahs of flour for bread, which is about twenty quarts so that
would be a lot of bread, some fresh veal and served it with milk curds. That
sounds more like the food channel than CSPAN.
But how these were transmitted is because they were emotionally important
and became important as part of the family's history.
I have told you the story of my grandmother's beyond death experience, and
last week I shared her story of homesteading in the early 1900's. You have
your own family stories, that help to define what your family is about--the
incidents from past generations that both capture your imagination and become
the flag poles where you display the family banner.
They are important and so you remember them and you pass them on, generation
to generation.
A few of the details get lost or polished, but they survive with the main
substance intact.
And you can see how this story was absolutely foundational to what Abraham
and Sarah's family were about.
Grandchildren sitting around the fireside would ask over and over again,
"grandpa, tell us again about the time the three strangers came to visit."
"Did they mean us, when they showed you the stars in the sky?"
"Are we going to have that many children?"
And the obvious question, "was one of them really The Lord?....How did you
know?"
I would ask that of Abraham if I should meet him today: "What was it like
meeting the Lord Himself as a guest?"
And I expect what he would tell me would be virtually the same as what I
can read for myself in Genesis...plus a few details like how hot it was that
day, and was he dozing off when he was startled awake by their appearance...things
like that.
But you know, I am almost certain Abraham would ask me the same question:
"And how do you know when you meet
The Lord?" At least that is what reading this again stirred up in me.
Last week I said how amazing it is to me that Abraham and Sarah accepted
God's promise to them when they really knew nothing at all about Him. They
had no scripture to read. They were the first in the line, before Moses and
all the prophets and all the teachers who would follow. What did they know?
In terms of what we would call doctrinal beliefs, they really didn't know
much at all.
And yet when The Lord said they should go to a place He was going to show
them, off they went.
Amazing.
In fact in the opening sentences of chapter eighteen, Abraham and Sarah are
camped under the great trees of Mamre near the town of Hebron, which is still
a city in Israel to this day.
But maybe it is not so amazing. When you think of it, people still respond
to the call of God even when they know practically nothing about the Lord.
The Holy Spirit convinces people that they need to open their hearts to what
God has to do in them and they do.
Often with very little knowledge of the scriptures or what the nature of
this new relationship is all about.
It was miraculous in Abraham's time and it is still miraculous today.
God still calls people first into a relationship of faith, then second into
a relationship of understanding.
We seek to understand because we have faith, but faith usually comes first
as a response to the call of God.
Something else that is noteworthy and has been commented upon for centuries
is the kindness shown by Abraham and Sarah to perfect strangers.
They had what we would call a "gift of hospitality".
They had more than that. There was a genuine kind spirit.
Abraham intervened for others as a matter of course.
He interceded with God when he knew God would destroy Sodom. This allowed
his nephew Lot to escape.
Speaking of Lot, when they decided to go their separate ways, he gave Lot
the best grazing land and took the lesser for his flocks.
That was Abraham.
The book of Micah 6:8 is an often quoted passage and is the passage the Presbyterian
Church in Canada has adopted for the coming year:
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God.
Our motto for the coming year is "to seek justice".
But the second part of that is "to love kindness".
Abraham and Sarah were kind, by nature, and this is something that God responds
to.
I have purchased copies of a book called, "The Conspiracy of Kindness" for
all session members, which I am sure they are avidly reading.
You will hear more about that from me in the months to come.
Kindness is something that gets the attention of both God and man.
It is something Abraham and Sarah knew well--not perfectly because they had
their moments of unkindness, but they knew it well more often than not.
And so should we.
God still speaks to those who know nothing of Him and calls them to faith.
God still responds to the acts of kindness we show day by day.
What does the Lord require of you?
Its not difficult.
Seek justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.
Preached June 15, 2008
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
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