As surely as god lives, I must tell you that we in our Western culture fail at hospitality. It isn't because we don't try, but it seems is mostly due to convenience. One of the things this congregation is currently working on is the gift of hospitality, but until I went to Tanzania, hospitality was really more of a concept rather than something I had ever fully experienced or even offered.
As you may recall, a few months ago I invited myself into your homes for a meal as I challenged you to do something Christ did in order to help you experience what it means to have Christ live in you more fully than you already knew. Truthfully, I have no idea who took up that challenge, but for the people who took me into their homes, one of the byproducts it produced was hospitality. Now, the next time you are a guest in someone else's home, take notice of all the things your host does for you.
Usually a good meal is the center of such hospitality. If you are staying the night, fresh linens and clean towels are usually also a crucial ingredient in being a good host. I say these things to you because while I spent the month of July in Tanzania, two things happened which opened my eyes to the meaning of hospitality. The first thing which happened was that on my first night there, I opened my Bible to the first page and began to read. Normally I prefer to read the Gospels because I love reading the parables, but because the friend I was staying with had told me to prepare for a lot of dust, a little free association reminded me that God created Adam from dust, and so I began reading from Genesis.
Reading the Hebrew Scriptures from Africa gave these words new life for me. Stories about flocks of animals were no longer stories when you're walking down the dusty road and have to wait to pass because a young boy is shepherding 30 goats past you. Or in the city where I was staying, Mbeya, which is in a valley between two mountains, every morning when I would go for a walk, I would look at the mountains in amazement, not just because of their beauty, but because the top third was covered in a thick cloud. When you look at it, you cannot help but think this is what Mt. Sinai looked like when Moses went up to meet with God.
Then when I came to Genesis 18, my eyes were opened again to something we might normally overlook. The parts of Genesis 18 which we didn't read today deals with the three visitors telling Abraham that his Wife would have a son within a year, and Sarah, who is hiding and listening in on the conversation, laughs.
So many sermons focus on the faith, or lack there of, of Sarah. They go on and on and on about how she laughed about conceiving a child due to the fact that she was 80 years old. But today, we did not listen to that part of the story because we need to focus on the hospitality which Abraham and Sarah displayed in their old age.
In our culture of convenience, we tend to show hospitality of food by sharing where we obtained our food from. You might say, "I got these steaks from Wegmans" to show your generosity. Of if you really like the person, you might say "I got this cake from L&M" (a famous local bakery). But in the time of Abraham and Sarah, and still to a large degree in Tanzania, hospitality is shown in a different way.
For example, instead of buying Prime Rib, you would buy a live chicken, carry it home, and then prepare it for your guest that night. Not only would you give your guest a room to sleep in, but that usually means kicking someone out of their room while you are there, so that they might sleep on the floor so you can rest. If you're staying for a longer amount of time, you might offer to put your guest's clothes in the laundry, but in Tanzania, it means an hour of scrubbing dirty clothes in a bucket of dirty water on your hands and knees and then hanging them up to dry. Here we might offer a shower with our fluffiest towels, and there it means boiling a pot of water so that you can get all the dust off your body with warm water. I'm not sharing these things with you in order to make you feel bad about how we do hospitality in our own culture, but to let you know the magnitude of the hospitality found in Scripture.
When Abraham saw the three strangers, he and his family went above and beyond what was required. Just a quick side note. In Swahili, the word they have for stranger, mgeni (m●gay●nee) is the exact same word as guest.
Abraham brought water to his guests so that they might wash their hands and feet, (remind you of Jesus?) had Sarah bake bread using 6 gallons of flour. He also had a calf prepared for the 3 strangers and brought them milk and curds. This is truly a feast! Just to get a bit of perspective, this is approximately the amount of bread that Sarah baked for just one of the guests (at this point, I revealed 12 loaves of bread and passed them around the congregation. Everyone took a chunk and passed it around. There was pleanty left over from the 65+ people there). If you wanted to make the equivalent amount of pancakes, that would be about 192 pancakes per person.
For anyone wondering why Sarah and the servants did most of the work, while Abraham merely got the water, let me tell you a quick story. The first week I was with my friend and host, he took me around the dusty city and we visited some of his friends and other pastors. A pastor's salary is about $175 a month, which boils down to about $5 per day. When we would go visiting someone else's house, after we exchanged greetings, the women of the house would leave and go and buy the guests and the men of the house a soda as well as prepare a small snack, of which the cost was well over 10% of a day's wages. During that time the man of house would engage us in conversation, and when the food was prepared, he would pour water over our hands to cleanse them both before and after the meal. It amazed me that the same traditions which can be found in the earliest parts of the Bible are still carried out today, even if we replace milk and curds with Coke. These small feasts of hospitality are amazing events which lead us to showing grace, love and humility to our guests.
Listen again to the words from 1 Peter 4:7-11."The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sin. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift they have received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in various forms. If one speaks, they should do so as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God should be praised through Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I do not know if I will ever have the privilege of preaching to you again, so please take what I say now to you to heart… If you are to help transform the world into that which Jesus Christ calls us, you must love each other deeply. You must offer hospitality to one another not out of duty but out of joy. Use the gifts which you have been blessed with to serve others. And in all these things, praise and glorify our Lord. When you do these things, God will take care of the rest. Amen.
