Welcoming God

Genesis 22: 1-14
Matthew 10: 40-42

Welcoming God

When you picture a welcoming home, there are certain things you expect for it to be considered a comforting and warm place. For some of us, it may be a fireplace in the living room, or a bunch of knick-knacks everywhere, or perhaps you find open spaces welcoming, and for others it is blankets on the chairs and lots of cushy pillows everywhere. When we think of welcoming people, most of us have the same kind of idea about what makes a person welcoming.

Most of us would agree when I say that people we find welcoming are those that smile when they open the door, they ask you to come in and sit down, they seem glad to see you and then you proceed to have a nice conversation. Perhaps they will ask you if you would like something to drink or eat while you talk. They may show you where the bathroom is or they will tell you to make yourself at home. These are all things that are done to make a person feel comfortable in another person’s home.

In the UCC, we have this idea called extravagant welcome. We feel that Jesus did not turn anyone away, and therefore neither do we. We understand that Jesus was all about welcoming people into his fold, there was never a person he refused to help or accept. Even as he hung suspended by his wrists he cried out for God to forgive his tormenters, “for they know not what they do.” 

The UCC believes that those who welcome others into the church, are giving thanks for what God has done for us. God welcomes, and also feeds the hungry, forgives sins, stands with those who are poor and oppressed, comforts the suffering, and becomes a home for those who wander. In gratitude, faithful Christians welcome strangers. A surprise in the Bible is the way you welcome a stranger expresses how you embrace the very presence of God as we see in Matthew 10.

Perhaps you are wondering why there is a story of Abraham offering up his son Isaac paired with this story of welcome in the book of Matthew. The reason is that faith and hospitality go hand in hand. Our faith comes from Jesus and the way we welcome God into our lives and the way we welcome strangers are linked together. Abraham is called the Father of our Faith because this man believed so strongly in God that he was willing to give up his only son because God had told him to. Let’s look back at Abraham’s story.

Abraham and Sarah were a wealthy, older couple living in what we would call a city today. One day, Abraham hears a voice calling to him and when he responds he finds out that it is God talking to him. God tells him to leave his nice home and friends that he has gathered around him in the last seventy years, and goes into the wilderness. God had a great new place – a new home for Abraham and if he listened, he would give him descendents as numerous as the stars in the sky. He tells his wife and they agree to head to this new place God has called them too. God has issued an extravagant invitation, and Abraham and Sarah have accepted this invitation on faith alone. Faith in God helps him welcome God’s call.

But everywhere they went and everything they did, Sarah was still barren. How can they have descendants as numerous as the sand at the shore if she could not have even one child? Sarah is afraid that they will get to this new place and she will not feel welcome at all, she’s going to be miserable and uncomfortable in this new home because she believed God’s promise and now she feels as if she has been duped.

So Sarah comes up with a plan and has her servant Hagar sleep with Abraham and she becomes pregnant. What Sarah did not realize is how hard it would be to watch her husband exclaim over the growth of the baby in Hagar’s belly or how Hagar would now be treated in some ways as well as Sarah despite her being a servant. I’m sure Sarah probably thought she would adopt the baby and call it hers, but that isn’t what happens. Instead, Sarah’s jealousy over the very plan she devised becomes too much for her to ignore so she threatens Hagar who runs away.

Sarah created an unwelcoming home because she lost faith in God’s promise. She tried to create her own happy ending by twisting God’s promise into something it was never supposed to be and made everyone around her suffer as a result. Thirteen years pass by and a couple men come to visit Abraham and Sarah sat in her tent and fumed because it turned out these men were angels sent to give Abraham a message.

The message was the same one they had been hearing for the last 20 years with no fruit to bear and so Sarah finds herself laughing bitterly in the tent when she hears them speaking. But the angels call her on it and she is left to think about where her lack of faith has gotten her. Sarah no longer felt welcome in her own home because of the things she had done due to her lack of faith in God. Her husband had a son by Hagar and Hagar was contemptuous of Sarah for her barrenness. Her husband was frustrated with Sarah’s lack of faith and she herself felt empty inside. Her disbelief in God’s promise created an unwelcome, unloving and inhospitable atmosphere for them all.

When Sarah does become pregnant and gives birth to Isaac, both Abraham and Sarah are very protective of him. After all they had gone through, after all they had given up and experienced, they wanted nothing to hurt or harm this precious boy. So when God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, the amount of faith it took to go so far as to have the knife held over the boy’s heart – it took more faith than most of us have.

But you see, Abraham never lost faith in God like Sarah did. He believed in what God told him and was rewarded. There he was, his hand holding a knife over the heart of his beloved son and he hears God’s voice calling to him and he replies, “Here I am”. As he has always done, Abraham welcomes the voice of God, he welcomes the messages God gives and he believes and has faith in them. Abraham’s faith in God helps him to welcome, listen, and obey God’s hard requests.

Now Matthew 10 tells us that all who welcome us welcomes Jesus and therefore welcomes God. Those who give welcome to the sick, the poor, the hungry and all those in need will never lose their reward in heaven. As we have seen through Abraham and Sarah’s story, faith in God and our willingness to welcome God’s word and God’s people are linked together. There have been times in your life where you felt unwelcome and unloved. You may have felt like a burden upon those around you. But here in this church and in our denomination, we have made a promise to not do that to anyone who needs us because we know intimately the pain of being unwelcome.

It’s a relief to know that no matter what you wear, how you talk or what you do in your personal life, here in this church you will always be accepted as one of God’s children.

Amen.