16th Sunday – Year C (July 18th)

16th Sunday – Year C (July 18th)
Readings: Genesis 18:1-10a
Psalm 15:2-5
Colossians 1:24-28
Luke 10:38-42
One of the most beautiful images for what God does for us is that of “hospitality”, that great African and Near Eastern virtue which is both our proper response to God’s generosity, and a fitting icon of that generosity. It is dramatically acted out in our first and third readings, next Sunday.

The first reading is the very charming tale of Abraham entertaining God with a youthful enthusiasm quite remarkable in one whom we know from the previous chapter to be ninety-nine years old. God appears to him in the shape of three men, but there is no indication that Abraham has tumbled to it that this is a divine visitation. As the story is told, Abraham is just doing what any tent-dweller will do when guests appear. For Abraham the arrival of the visitors is a blessing and a privilege rather than (as it would be for city-dwellers) an inconvenience. So he begs them not to pass him by, has water brought for washing their feet, gets them to make themselves comfortable under his favourite tree, and then invites them to have some bread and “strengthen your heart”. He then rushes around giving orders to his wife and servant, and in apparently no time at all the best beef is served up, not for him, but for his guests. And he gets a reward, in the unlikely shape of the promise of a son within the year. “I” (it is now only one person, we notice) “shall certainly return to you at this time, and behold: a son for Sarah!”

The psalm also talks of hospitality, in a sense, but here it is the hospitality of God, “YHWH, who shall stay in your tent, and who shall live on your holy mountain?” The answer comes “the one who walks with perfection and who does justice” (which certainly includes Abraham), “and who speaks integrity in his heart…who does not accept a bribe against the innocent…he shall never be moved for ever.”

The second reading for next Sunday is not really about hospitality; but it is speaking of the mysterious generosity of God. Paul is able to say, perhaps a little enigmatically, “now I rejoice in my sufferings on your behalf, and I fill up what is lacking in the tribulations of Christ in my flesh on behalf of his body, which is the Church”. This is not quite hospitality, but it does represent a very strong sense of all belonging together in Christ, which is not all that far from Abraham’s eager generosity. And it goes deeper, for Paul speaks of God’s “mystery, hidden from the ages”, a mystery that he describes as “the wealth of his glory of this mystery among the Gentiles”. And that, for a good Jew like Paul, is a very startling thing, that everyone belongs.

And so to the gospel for next Sunday, which is clearly about hospitality – but whose? At one level, it is true, the hospitality is clearly that of Martha, who accepts Jesus into her home. But it is also the hospitality of Jesus, who thinks that it is permissible and proper to be with women and to talk to them about the things of God; like the three men in our first reading, Jesus actually honours the house of the two sisters simply by being there and not worrying about ritual impurity. Jesus is, Luke tells us, on the journey, and we already know that it will take him to Jerusalem and death; furthermore, he has just had an aggressive encounter with the lawyer that provoked the deeply subversive story of the Good Samaritan. The tone here is far gentler (Luke is, in the end, a very gentle gospel); but it is also subversive, for the last thing that we should expect is that a woman would give hospitality. And not just one, but two; for Martha has a sister, Mary, who “sat at the feet of the Lord, and listened to his word”, and inevitably we remember that other Mary, in the second chapter of Luke’s gospel, who “kept all these things in her heart”. There is drama, however, and tension, for Martha has allowed the hospitality to be a drain on her; and she flips, and starts giving orders to the Lord (this is hospitality gone horribly wrong), “don’t you care that my sister” (she can’t bring herself even to utter her name) “has abandoned me to serve? Tell her to help!” Jesus is incredibly gentle in the face of this aggression, the repetition of her name (“Martha, Martha”) robbing his reply of all venom; and he says that Mary’s portion “shall not be taken from her”. Who is giving hospitality to whom?