Offering Hospitality to God

North Hill, September 4, 2010
With thanks to Scott Arany for the title and central idea of this sermon.


About 4000 years ago, if you had been sitting with Abraham in the shade outside the door of his tent, you could have seen out there, out beyond the shade of the oak grove, shimmering heat waves dancing above the dry grass.

Out there, out under the hard-blazing sun, Abraham's herders tended goats and sheep and camels. Their work increases your appreciation for the shade.

Suddenly Abraham gets up, staring into the distance. You turn and follow his eyes. You can barely make out figures on the road in the distance. Their shapes distorted and wiggling in the heat waves. Three travelers, you finally make out, headed this direction.

When they got close, Abraham steps out into the sun and walks to greet them. He bows. “If I have found favor in your eyes, gentlemen, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought so you can wash your feet and rest in the shade. Let me get you something to eat so you can be refreshed and then be on your way. I'm so delighted you have come to me.”

The men agreed. A servant brought water and they washed their feet. Then they sat back in the shade while Abraham gave directions for dinner. When dinner was finally ready an hour or two later, Abraham himself served them, making sure their plates stayed full.

At one point in the dinner, the leader of the three visitors asked Abraham, “Where's your wife Sarah?”

“In the tent.” Abraham said.

Then Abraham's visitor informed him, “About this time next year your wife will have a son.”

Sarah, listening in the tent, laughed into her sleeve. The very idea, she thought. Now? When both of us are over the hill and I'm thirty years past menopause? Me have a baby? I don't think so.

The visitor asked Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord? It will happen next year just as I said.”

Sarah stuck her head out of the tent and protested. “I didn't laugh,” she pouted.

I imagine at that, the visitor himself laughed. “Oh yes you did. Don't try denying it.”

At some point in this conversation Abraham must have have realized his visitors were not ordinary men. Maybe he thought the leader was a prophet or priest. Maybe he guessed they were angels.

Wouldn't that be cool, to serve dinner to three visitors and then realize you had just served dinner to angels or a prophet or a priest with high spiritual power?

Abraham's story gets better.

The visitors got up to leave. Abraham got up to walk with them a bit and see them on their way. They hadn't gone far when the leader sent his two companions on down the road and turned to talk with Abraham. In this conversation, Abraham discovers the full identity of his guest.

The guest was not a prophet or a priest or an angel. It was God. God had stopped by Abraham's tent in the oak grove of Mamre. It was God, Abraham had welcomed with his hospitality. Abraham had just spent a couple of hours visiting . . . WITH GOD!!!!!!


A favorite Adventist definition of prayer comes from Ellen White: “Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend.”

Can I paraphrase this? Prayer is like sitting down to dinner with God. Prayer is like Abraham walking out to God and urging him, “Won't you please come in and stop awhile? Can I get you some water for your feet and some food for your belly? And we'll talk. Okay?”

This is not all there is to prayer, of course. Over the next few weeks we'll consider several different metaphors and pictures the Bible uses to help us understand prayer. Today, imagine prayer as inviting God to step in out of the sun, to join you in the shade for a leisurely dinner.

Prayer is offering hospitality to God.

The same can be said for our time together here on Sabbath morning. What is worship? One way to think of worship is it is offering hospitality to God. Through our music and scripture reading, through our care for this comfortable place, through our Bible study our fellowship with each other, we are offering hospitality to God. We are saying, “Welcome. Won't you come and spend some time with us? Won't you sit with us? Keep us company for awhile?”

And God says yes.

Here at North Hill we cap off our hospitality by sharing food together after the service. On the first Sabbath of most months, a full dinner, shared potluck style. On most other Sabbaths, snacks and beverage. In these meals we are offering hospitality to the visitors and to one another. Of course. We are also offering hospitality to God. We are reminded of the words in Hebrews 13:1-2. “Keep on loving the brothers and sisters in the church. And do not neglect to entertain strangers because by so doing some people have entertained angels.”

We might editorialize: And some people have even entertained God!

Worship as entertaining God. Is that a helpful picture for you?

Here at church we seek to provide truthful information about God and spiritual life. But if information was all you needed, you could probably find it on the internet.

We try to create a friendly environment where people can fellowship with each other. That's an important part of church life. We feel the importance, and the New Testament explicitly talks about how crucial this connection with other people of faith is. But if connecting with people socially was all we needed, we could do that at work, at school, in the neighborhood. We could join clubs or organizations.

The irreplaceable reason for coming to worship is to meet God. We want to rub the shoulders with God, to hang with God. We offer hospitality to God. Those who plan the service aim to create an environment where God is welcome and we are welcome to visit with each other and God.

Abraham's dinner with God has echoes in other places in the Bible. In Exodus 24, not long after God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, he invited Moses and Aaron and his sons and seventy of the elders of Israel to come up on Mt Sinai to visit with God. Their visit ends with a feast on the mountain. The Elders and God sharing table fellowship!

Jesus ended his three years of ministry and fellowship with his 12 disciples by sharing a meal with them. A meal that we now remember by celebrating the Lord's supper.

Then in Revelation 3, Jesus says, “I am knocking at the door. If anyone will open the door, I will come in and we will share dinner.”

What do you do when you go out to dinner? You just take time together. The conversation doesn't have to “go” anywhere. There's no agenda. The purpose of sharing the meal is ot share time together, to share life.

This is the first purpose of prayer and worship.

Neither praying nor coming to public worship will automatically make all the aches and pains in our lives go away. But when we spend good time with God the very real challenges and difficulties shrink. Their significance in our lives begins to diminish.

Entertaining God, connecting with God in prayer and worship may not solve our marriage difficulties or fix our unemployment. Still spending time with God in prayer and worship gives us strength and wisdom for living.

We come to church, we spend time in prayer with high expectations that God will show up and keep company with us in a special way.

Jesus promised, “Where two or three are gathered, there I will be in the middle.” Matthew 18:20.

Notice that Jesus is eager to show up. He is knocking on the door. He promises, if you show up in my name, I will be there. We are not begging and pleading, hoping Jesus might stoop to join us for a couple of minutes. Instead we are planning our hospitality, knowing Jesus is eager for time with us.

So I want to encourage you to take some time, regularly, to offer hospitality to Jesus, to God. If you eat breakfast by yourself, don't turn on the TV. Don't read a newspaper or book. Instead share your meal with Jesus. Savor each bite and in your mind hold converse with God.

Invite God to keep you company while you eat. This is part of what saying “the blessing” at meal time is about. As you practice attending to God over the next few weeks, you will find that you are more aware of his presence. Invite God to keep you company through your days.

Learn to “Practice the Presence of God.” It will heighten your sense of gratitude and thus your joy. Hopefully, it will make you more responsive to the leading of God's Spirit. This is the bedrock of mature prayer. It is the heart of what we are about when we come together for worship.