Fifth Sunday after Trinity 2022

 

Sermon not preached in person, due to having Covid-19

Genesis 18:1-10a and Colossians 1:15-28 and Luke 10:38-42

Writing to ‘the saints in Colossae,’ Paul says: if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. For everything of God has delighted in making Jesus its permanent resting place. Who God is, is fully revealed to us in who Jesus is. What God is like is fully revealed to us in what Jesus is like. And, moreover, this Jesus has chosen to make his resting place the church: being among his sisters and brothers.

In his account of Jesus, Luke tells us that Jesus had sent out seventy (or seventy-two) disciples ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. They had returned to him, and they appear to be travelling onward together as one group. The implication is that Martha has recently welcomed two disciples into her home and is now welcoming more than seventy guests! No wonder she is ‘worried and distracted by many things’…

In the record of Abraham, we hear of a time when God, walking with two companions, appeared to be about to pass by Abraham’s tent, on his way. Abraham approaches and says, ‘My Lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant.’ Abraham wishes to minister rest and refreshment to the Lord, washing their feet and breaking bread together, and after that he may pass on his way. The Lord receives Abraham’s hospitality, and promises to return, and that his return will be to celebrate with Abraham and Sarah the birth of her son. This is the son already promised to them by God, a promise that had remained unfulfilled until now, a promise on which all the other promises of God hung.

In other words, Abraham’s salvation depends on these ‘others’ (who are a manifestation of God and God’s companions) to whom he shows hospitality.

Two-thousand years later, Martha is acting as a daughter of Abraham. She comes out of her home and asks Jesus and his companions to turn aside from their way, their journey, and experience rest and relaxation in her home. And yet she herself experiences anxiety: will her hospitality be acceptable? Will it stretch to meeting the needs of so many?

If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

God moves at human walking pace. You might think that is a concession to our limitations, but if we are created in the likeness of God, it is not a concession but a revelation. God moves at an average pace of three miles an hour. Interestingly, for the average height human, the horizon is never more than around three miles away, wherever you are on earth. Wherever you are, the span of what you can take in is bounded by divine pace.

God never walks alone. God walks with friends. This was God’s intention from the beginning, when God walked with the human in the garden in the cool of the evening. God is not always where we expect God to be, nor with whom, but God is never alone. And those friends might seem unlikely fellows to onlookers: God visits Abraham accompanied by a counsel for the defence and a counsel for the prosecution, natural opponents to one another; Jesus travels with a ragtag crew. The purpose of this walking together—ultimately to the cross, and beyond—is reconciliation.

God comes in hope of hospitality. Indeed, God prepares the way for this very thing, and moves among us with this very intention in mind. To be with those who will welcome God, and every possibility that comes with God, is not a set-back in God’s schedule; time that must be made up elsewhere. It is the schedule: the mystery by which peacemakers are shown to be children of God.

God is not worried or distracted. Jesus is the calming, non-anxious presence, the still-point at the centre of all the activity undertaken, and directed by, Martha. God does not judge her performance, nor fret that she will disappoint expectations, nor lose patience. Not with Martha, nor with Mary. God draws them—first Mary, then Martha—to Jesus, and, in Jesus, to one another. To what really matters. To being present to one another in the present moment.

God reconciles all that has fallen into division. This is the fruit of all that Jesus is the first fruit of, for all creation.

God’s commitment to us is permanent. The home of Martha and Mary, and their brother Lazarus, becomes a home-from-home for Jesus; they become sisters and brother to him; which neither the death of Lazarus nor the death of Jesus can break apart. This is what God has done: has made a permanent home among us, as one of us, in Jesus, and us in him. Despite all our urgency, our restlessness, our resentments, he remains true: moving at walking pace, never alone, in hope of hospitality, without worry or distraction, reconciling all things to God, with us forever.

If you believe that, if God exists, he, she or it is too busy with more urgent or important matters to take an interest in you, think again. God is not a politician on the election campaign trail, nor a president in the war room trying to second-guess and pre-empt rivals and enemies. God has all the time in the world for you and wants to spend that time with you. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.