Sermon for Proper 6, Year A

Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7

It was the great American, Thomas Paine, who said, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

And among the many trials and tribulations of modern life, there is one that stands out as particularly vexing to the spirit, testing the limits of human endurance to their utmost:
The mandatory software update.

There are times when I’m on the phone saying, “Yes, Mr. Treasurer, I will email that PDF to you right away.”
I open up the laptop, and it says:

Update downloading: 10%.

And it creeps, inch by inch, toward that promised land of 100%.

20%.

And I start to pray.
“Lord Jesus, help me.”

30%.

That makes enough time for a conversation.
“How are you doing? How are the kids? How’s the family? Everybody good?”
“Oh, good. That’s great.”

40%.
50%.

I start praying even harder.
“Jesus, you’ve got to give me peace, because if you give me strength right now, I’m going to need bail money with it.”

60%.
70%.

At this point, I don’t know if I need to call an IT guy or an exorcist, but it’s one of those two.

80%.
90%.
100%.

And then…

Update installing: 10%.

And there’s nothing you can do, right?
Just wait it out.
And eventually, we’ll get there.

Of course, there are other situations in life where that’s true.

When we look around the world, we can see situations of national and global import that seem so far away, we feel like we can’t do anything about them.

Sometimes it’s a little closer to home: people we love going through a crisis of health, relationship, or job. We want to fix it for them, but all we can do is be there for them.

And then there are those times when it gets even closer than that:
It’s the crisis happening within our own bodies and our own minds.

Those are the moments when we really do pray:
“Jesus, help me. I want to be better, but I don’t know how.”

These are the times that try human souls.

Abraham and Sarah, in our first reading today, were in one of those times.
They longed to be parents, but had been unable to conceive.
If you or someone you love has ever been through that crisis of infertility, then you know exactly how painful and disappointing it is to continually get your hopes up and then have them dashed again.

But there was even more to it than that.
This wasn’t just a personal hope of Abraham and Sarah. It was also a larger promise they felt God had given them:

“I will make of you a great nation. Your descendants will outnumber the stars, and all the families of the earth will be blessed through them.”

They believed this.
And yet here they were in their nineties, Abraham pushing one hundred, and still no baby.

So I don’t blame Sarah one bit for laughing when some random stranger shows up on her doorstep and says, “Hey, you’re going to have a baby.” I’d laugh too.

I imagine her saying, “You men just don’t get it, do you? That’s not how this works.”

They were holding on to what was, at this point, a distant hope.
All they could do was wait, hope, pray, and—as we read in the text—laugh about it.
The text doesn’t say this, but I’d bet dollars to donuts they cried about it too.

But here’s the thing:
There was more going on in that moment than either of them realized.
Because these three random strangers were not just anybody.

The text is delightfully ambiguous about who exactly these people are.
Are they angels?
Is it God?
We don’t really know.

But there’s something more happening in this moment.
And that, I think, is the good news for those of us who are living in that territory of unfulfilled promises, like Abraham and Sarah were.
There is more going on in your life, in your heart, and in who you are right now than meets the eye—maybe even more than you yourself realize.

Still, all they could do was wait.
But there was something else they could do.

When these three strangers show up, Abraham and Sarah roll out the red carpet for them.
They are just falling over themselves in this extravagant display of hospitality.

Abraham says, “Let me bring you a little bread.”
But what he actually brings is not a little bread.
It’s a feast of Thanksgiving-level proportions.

They go completely over the top with this hospitality.
And that’s really intentional, because it’s the exact opposite of what happens in the next chapter, when those same visitors go to the town of Sodom and Gomorrah. There they are not met with hospitality, but with an angry mob that wants to take advantage of them, do violence against them, and exploit them.

In the ancient world, hospitality wasn’t just about being nice or being a good host, although those are lovely things.
It was a survival practice.
There was no AAA.
There was no state highway patrol.
Travelers were vulnerable people.
They could be robbed, exploited, even killed, and nobody would know the difference because they were strangers.

Which is why, in the Torah, we have all these laws about being kind to strangers, immigrants, refugees, and people from other places.
Lives depended on it.

That’s why the extravagant welcome that Abraham and Sarah offer these three visitors matters so much.
They could not control what was happening with the unfulfilled promises in their lives or in their world.
What they could choose was who they were going to be in the midst of that waiting.

And they decided:
“We are going to look out for our neighbors, even the ones we don’t know.”
“We are going to roll out the red carpet and welcome them.”
Because you never know: You just might be welcoming God himself.

And I think that holds true for us today.

When we think about the unfulfilled promises in our own lives and in our world, there is so much we cannot change, even though we wish we could.
But we can hold on through it, moment by moment.
We can decide what kind of people we are going to be in this moment.
Am I going to be a person who acts from fear or from love?
Am I going to reach out to strike or to serve?

Who do we choose to be in the midst of the waiting?
That is ours to decide while we await the fulfillment of God’s promises—however, and whenever, God works them out.