Faithfulness and Hospitality

 Faithfulness and Hospitality

When God promised Abraham and Sarah that from them would come a multitude, that they would be the parents of nations and of kings, when God made that covenant promise, Abraham and Sarah had already shown faith. In Genesis 17 the promise seems all one way, but as the Apostle Paul pointed out, Abraham's faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” And they had shown it: traveling with Abraham's father up the Euphrates Valley from Ur in Chaldean territory near modern-day Baghdad to somewhere near Mosul or Kirkuk, but then Abraham and Sarah had struck off on their own through the desert and across to Syria, and down through the Judean hills, probably along the Gaza coast and into Egypt, and then back to the land of Canaan, where three angels, Genesis 18 tells us, found them resting with their flocks and herds in the front of their tent under the Oaks of Mamre. The land they travelled through was not deserted: this happened about a thousand years after cultivation began in Tucson - Jericho was half as old as it is now, olive trees that are old now (and still bearing fruit) were only a thousand years old back then. There were no borders, no walls, no iron curtains thirty feet high between countries, but there was desert, and mountains, and rivers, and plains, and people who could be hostile or friendly. And it was in this environment that Abraham and Sarah showed faithfulness, courage - trust in the promise, and hospitality. For their response to the strangers who approached their tent was radical hospitality. Come turn aside to rest, let us give you water and food. And then it was that the three who were one, who were God cloaked indeed in mystery, laid on them their strange promise: you will indeed have children, Sarah will bear a child. We'll be back and you'll see. No wonder Sarah laughed - with surprise but with delight and joy.

Faith was reckoned unto him as righteousness and their hospitality showed it in action.

• Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
• Romans 4:13-25
• Mark 8:31-38
• Psalm 22:22-30
• Genesis 18

After the Second Sunday in Lent, Year B

soul

Looking at the first reading for this coming Sunday, October 25, 2020, I see again that the Shema begins with an admonishment to holiness. Before there is even a command to love God or your neighbor there is the invitation, be holy, for God is holy and you are the people of God. 

Well how about it? What does that mean?

It means love in action. It means knowledge that we can act upon (actionable knowledge) : knowing that God loves us - first - gives us call to respond to that inexorable love with our own inadequate but willing and blessed love in turn.

It means embodied faithfulness. That is, not just words, "Lord, Lord" - but deeds. Love in action. 

Our faith in God, our steadfast love (chesed), is shown in how we live and how we pray and how we treat one another (and ourselves). So to love your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, as Jesus summarizes the law, is to embody that first loyalty in how we choose to live.

 As is pointed out more frequently these days that means not just individual but collective choices, and individual choices that feed the common good. 

Wearing a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic is an action for the common good; it is embraced faithfulness. The mask protects those around me, pretty well, along with the other precautions - social distancing, frequent hand washing, testing and tracing and treating  ... it is not for me alone.

So much for rugged individualism! We need to work together, with God and our neighbor, for the love of God and neighbor and self... that is how embodied faithfulness works.