Make it Easy

We start a new worship series today called:

What do you really want?

And you know that sounds like one of those questions that are pretty superficial — because on the surface it is: What do you want for dinner? What do you want to do tonight?

Even the next level down can remain on the surface: We want a different job. We want to be married — or at least be in a relationship. Some of us want to retire. Or we want good health.

But even those are still kind of up here — on the top. We want to spend the next several weeks going a little deeper — by exploring some of our essential, god-created desires.

What do we want?

We want to know who we are. What makes us unique. We want to be known by others. We are wired for intimacy. For relationship. We want to be free — Psychologists have found that one of the top 5 fears is loss of autonomy.
 We want to be better. We want to be the people God has created us to be.
 We want kinship — community — connectedness — with all the gritty work that entails.

This is the lineup for the next several weeks — I’m pretty pumped about it — I hope you are too.

Today, since it’s the kickoff to fall programming, and our return to 2 services and all the rest of it — I want to look at a fundamental desire that kind of undergirds these others.

And it’s this: We have a need to be welcomed.

It seems hardwired in us — and meeting that human need was so important to God that welcoming became a divine mandate for the Israelites — so important it was enshrined in the law in Leviticus 19. And still today is a guiding principle of life in the Middle East.

Welcome those around you. It comes right out of our text in Genesis 18 and was so evocative that hundreds of years later the writer of Hebrews returns to this scene to instruct new Christians. Because the new church in the 1st century had the same desires and needs that the Hebrews had in 1600 BCE, And 2,000 years later we still have the same need.

We want to be Welcomed. Received. The Old Norse word used in use before 900 BCE was

In the Greek Orthodox church Abraham is known as the patron saint of hospitality. The one who welcomed well.

You may have seen this image — I have one on my office wall that Ruth Ann Webb gave me years ago. It’s the scene we are reading from Genesis chapter 18.

Genesis 18:1–8

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him.

When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.

Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on — since you have come to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said.’

And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.’

Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

This text is the reason Abraham became known as the saint of hospitality — it’s because of his behavior to three strangers who randomly turn up in the middle of the day. Three visitors arrive, and Abraham’s response to them alters the course of his life (with the prophecy of his son to be born in the next year).

There’s a lot of fascinating stuff going on here — it’s the heat of the day. My brothers who have lived in the Middle East for decades tell me that in their Saudi Arabian factory the heat can get to 120. That tools left in the sun will blister your hands when you pick them up.

It’s the heat when nothing is moving — the desert is still — and this trancelike state where Abraham looks up and sees 3 men ‘standing near’. And with their presence, the narrative moves like a fast car from 0 to 60 in < 3 seconds.
 Vs.2 — When he saw them he RAN to meet them

Vs. 6 He hastened back to the tent! Quickly make some cakes
 Vs. 7 ran to the herd and took a calf….the servant hastened to prepare it.

Abraham went from napping to full-on engaged. He put his heart into welcoming this visitors!

velkominn — and it means literally — a well — arrival. To receive those who come — well. We desire to be welcomed.

And this is the first thing to notice about what it means to welcome well — it means you initiate, you engage, you put your heart into it, you make it easy for them.

I have been struck by how frequently we make it so darn hard for people. I’m not talking about our work worlds — though likely the same pattern holds there — but I’m talking about right here! In church! You know it’s a scary thing — a vulnerable thing — to walk into a church, find a seat and settle in around people you don’t know with perhaps unfamiliar language and curious customs.

It’s a vulnerable thing to open your mouth and sing — isn’t it? How often do most of us sing in front of people? Right? Yet each and every Sunday new folks walk in and they do just that. They show up on the horizon and sit down next to us! How could you make it easy for them? Well for starters we could start pretty small.

Bill Hybels wrote a book, “Just Walk across the room” it was a book all about extending hospitality — doing what Abraham was doing in this text — and it all started with one really basic action: Walk across the room and say hello.

For some of us that is a really painful thing to do — maybe the only thing more painful is to be the one standing there without anybody acknowledging your presence.

My dear brothers and sisters, we’ve got some work to do in this area. I’ve witnessed interactions where we have warmly greeted those we know — and have silently walked by without even a glance at those who were strangers to us. On Sunday morning in this sanctuary building.

I’ve watched while new people have stood alone with a cup of coffee while all around them folks were chatting — this during ‘fellowship time’.

During our staff meeting a few weeks ago we talked about our first months or more at LaSalle. Almost to a person our earliest memories of this wonderful amazing church was about feeling awkward, alone, wishing someone — anyone would just talk with us. Ask us about ourselves. Make us feel included. Even ask us to lunch. To coffee.

You know we think there’s an art in this — like you have to be some raging extrovert to welcome people. “I’m just not like that. I get nervous. I don’t know what to say.” Nah. Respectfully? I just think you have to be somewhat interested in others and be somewhat aware of what they need.

In the heat of the day Abraham sees people on the horizon surmising they are travelers gets them refreshments — water for their feet, something to drink and eat. He knocks himself out…for some strangers.

I’m not suggesting your first step is to kill the fatted calf — But it very well could be learning their name. We can start by walking across the room, but (2) secondly we could do what Abraham does here — we could adjust ourselves to their needs — to them — to who they are, to what they’re interested in.

Let me give you an example of this: Have you ever been around a group of people who just “talk shop” — you know have an inside jargon, or interests just they want to talk about? My husband is a lawyer, we go to a number of social events where many folks at the table are attorneys.

And there are just some really stand out awful evenings for me. One in particular was when my husband was working the patent division. (Now patent work — doesn’t have to be boring. Rich Beem for instance is a patent attorney who is super interesting ) but on this particular night I was seated at a table of 10, 9 of whom were patent attorneys and the person on my right and my left didn’t talk about anything about minutiae — intellectual property minutiae — the entire night.

Welcoming others means we will likely have to change how we talk — we might have to drop the jargon, eliminate the assumptions, and just ask them about themselves.

1. Initiating, 2. Being interested in them, those are two things I’m struck with from this text, but then there’s another thing too — to welcome well, means you don’t ask them to conform to your code. You create a space where they can just be themselves — to make it easy for people means they don’t have to meet our standards, or your expectations to be welcomed by you.

I’ve got an example that has really stayed with me from earlier this year. Some of you know in February I did this 5 day hike across Galilee in Israel before meeting up with the rest of our Middle East group.

I think I mentioned this cliff that I hiked?? (It was harrowing, I have a picture of it if you’d like to see it). Most of my time wasn’t on a cliff, most of the time was spent up to my kneecaps in mud and sheep dung because several hours of every day the trail went through fields that in the spring were very muddy and well used.

Most nights I was staying in hostels. But one night toward the end I was staying in a Jewish Kibbutz — a nice one. It was on a hill a distance from the road and while I walked there I was thinking about how nice it would be to not be surrounded by these agricultural smells everywhere.

So I get there at dusk. I walk into this glass and stone lobby. It’s air conditioned and everything. And the man behind the desk — “I am Solomon!” greets me with this wide smile “Shalom! Welcome to Kibbutz Levy.”

He starts getting me all checked in — you have to hand your passport and they check it in the back and everything — and I’m standing there when I kind of sniff around. And I think, Dang, this is such a nice place! But it still smells like sheep dung. Even in here.

That’s when it hit me. I had brought it in with me. On my pack where I had slipped earlier that day trying to shoot around a ram, in the crevices of my boots: I was Sheep Dung Walking.

But Solomon never let on. He smelled it all right — I could tell that when I walked past one of the Birthright Groups on the way to the elevator. But Solomon’s only concern was just making sure I was welcomed to the community of Kibbutz Levy.

Shame on us when we make it too hard. Shame on us when we lead with what’s wrong with them. What they are wrong about. Shame on us when they have to clean up in order to be part of our world; When they have to prove they are smart enough for us, or politically correct for us, or engaged enough for us. And you ask how do I make others prove it? You make them prove it by not initiating, not engaging, not even changing your language for them.

Well maybe you think — what’s the big deal? My life is so full — so what if I just want to keep my world to those I already know? Yeah.

Well here’s what we miss. Not only do our lives become smaller — as our circle remains this tight set bounded group — but more importantly we miss the blessing of God.

Around the years 56/57, Paul was on his third missionary journey from Asian Minor (middle east) to Greece. He had traveled overland from Ephesus to Corinth where Paul writes what scholars believe to be the only letter he wrote to the Christian church in Rome.

Paul had never visited this church, though he knew some leaders there. The church was mostly made up of Jewish converts — but it was about to go through a rapid transition — a proverbial 0 to 60 — as pagans and slaves and women and gentiles and Greeks were all becoming Christians. It was a new landscape — — there were strangers on the horizon!

And it could have gone in a lot of different directions. And Paul after writing one of the most commanding expositions that the message of Jesus is through grace alone:
 “For the Spirit has set you free from the law of sin and death!

“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!”
 “For I am convinced of this very thing, that nothing shall separate us from the love of god in Christ Jesus.”

After 15 chapters of this — Paul brings this ginormous message of salvation with a closing statement like this:

 “Therefore, Welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed you…

How you treat others reflects how Jesus has treated you.

See: Solomon’s welcome to me was an echo of God’s welcome to me.

Just like Abraham’s welcome to the strangers — who ended up being angels and the Lord himself — was an echo of how God had welcomed him on that night years ago in the Negev desert when he had been told his descendants would be as numerous as the stars.

Abraham’s welcome to the strangers — echoing God’s welcome — brought that prophecy home. The strangers blessed him and within a year the child of the promise, Isaac was born.