June 18, 2023
Pentecost + 3
Friends,
Abraham is an old man. Sarah is an old woman. They are wealthy. They own a tent and a herd of cattle, and they have servants. But they are also childless though long ago reconciled to that truth.
One day there came to Abraham the Holy One In-Three-Travelers.
Abraham offered the Holy One In-Three-Travelers bread and water but in due course set before them a fine spread with a centre-piece roast and all the trimmings served by the help. Abraham always under-promised and over-delivered. It was a quirk of hospitality. What did they talk about while the help cooked the roast? Don’t know. That’s not part of the story. Why didn’t Sarah get to sit in with the guests? Well, that does matter, but the story isn’t about that either.
Suffice to say, Abraham was always a little off-the-wall and over-the-top extravagant when hosting guests. Was it because he knew that this was the Holy One, the Ancient of Days, the Holy One In-Thee-Travelers? Or, maybe that’s just the way he was. But everything about this story is a little off-the-wall and over-the-top extravagant.
Holy One In-Three-Travelers asked after Sarah. It was nice of the Holy One to ask. “She’s in the tent.” “I’ll return to you,” offered the Holy One In-Three-Travelers as a non-sequitur, “and she will be pregnant, and it will be a boy.” Abraham, mouth open and eyes wide as saucers, didn’t say anything. At least, that’s not part of our story either.
Sarah was listening in. Menopause was a long, long time ago and sex, well, that was in the rear-view mirror. This, even before there were rear-view mirrors. And so she laughs to herself at what One In-Three-Travelers said, but a little too loudly. Her laughter escaped the tent.
One In-Three-Travelers asked Abraham, and not Sarah, strangely, “What’s with the laugh? Is anything too wonderful for the Holy One? We’ll be back, and she’ll deliver.”
But Sarah blurted out “I didn’t laugh”. “Oh yes, you did laugh, said the Holy One In-Three.”
And it came to pass as the Holy One, the Ancient of Days, the One In-Thee-Travelers, had promised.
Now, Abraham must have been a hundred years old when Isaac was born. And Sarah laughed all the more thereafter as would those who heard their story.” A new adventure had begun.
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In today’s Gospel, Jesus invites a dozen people on a journey. They are to be ambassadors for God’s realm come-near. And Jesus gives them marching orders and amazing powers but not so amazing as to preclude their being run out of town. Shaking the dust off their boots will be a significant and familiar experience for the Twelve so Jesus warns of that fact. And that it will be tough slogging and that they would be abused by the powers that be. These things must have all been very real in Matthew’s world that he dwells so on Jesus’ reaction to them.
When I’m in my better self, I think of the Christian journey, our journey, as having more in common with Abraham and Sarah than with the deputation of Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, the other James, Thaddaeus, the other Simon and Judas. The gospel commission is just a little bit … angry or heavy or something. Jesus is out of sorts. What’s with “like lambs to the slaughter”. That’s a word of encouragement … not! Jesus is bothered. Jesus is grumpy. There is a sort of pulling and hauling, in his word, between a commitment to the cause and a warning of the consequences. It’s going to be awful. Go for it.
By contrast, I love the story of Abraham and Sarah and of their extravagance being met with an extravagance of a different sort. Nine months of carrying; nine hours of labour and lull; nine minutes of delivery; and extravagant new life. New life is always an extravagance. Always a bet against the worst of things. Even in our age, it’s a bet against climate collapse; a bet against Putin; a bet against darkness and the worst of doom and gloom.
It’s the sort of extravagance that Jesus, in the Gospel of John, promised: “I have come that you might have life and life in all its abundance.” Fullness. Sufficiency. Abundance is welcomed extravagance of a sort. Is it not?
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The other day, a newcomer to our neighbourhood was caught while her dog on a lead was scratching up our newly flung mulch. The dog was a rescue. A lovely golden colour, hybrid and injured. You could tell. And she was embarrassed. The woman that is. The dog was not. And she apologized profusely. Said I “Don’t worry; don’t worry; don’t worry. Dogs gotta do what dogs gotta do. All good.” I’m not sure I entirely meant it. We have all manner of dogs in our neighbourhood, dogs of every size, shape and description, and people to match, proof of the Holy One’s sense of humour. They wandered off and later in the day she pulled up alongside me and handed me a box of chocolate truffles through the open window of her car. I was gobsmacked. And off she went. Barbara tells me that they were very good chocolate truffles. But it seemed to me a little off-the-wall and over-the-top extravagant. But I was happy in that.
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Early into the last century, my Great Aunt Eva, my grandmama’s sister, who was trained as a nurse, found herself sewing up wounded woodsmen, tending returned vets, setting broken bones, and doing all sorts of things a doctor might have done. But our family’s village was an hour from town and from the hospital and doctors in the very best of weather. In bad weather, the road could be impassable. And so, Aunt Eva also delivered a lot of babies. On one call, the woman, expecting her first, experienced a stillness, a calm before her final push. So Aunt Eva reached for a pan and some flour and soda and made a pan of biscuit, in the interval, in the oven of the wood stove. At length she delivered the baby and went on her way. The next time that she was called to the same house, labour went a little more quickly and she was barely there when the child came. Eva did her nursely stuff and was about to take her leave when the father handed her the empty baking pan. And so, Eva baked a pan of biscuit before she left. Now that story has nourished our family for the better part of a hundred years. And I’m not exactly sure where the extravagance is, in that story. But I know it’s there somewhere. And it does feel like life in all its abundance.
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There is something about extravagance in the cracks of our readings, this week. Or seeking after extravagance or maybe offering extravagance. In Paul’s letter to the Church at Rome, which, as usual, is a bit of a slog, he speaks of Christians who find peace with God ultimately in a hope that does not disappoint. I like the idea of a hope that does not disappoint. There is something extravagant about that because life is full of hopes that do disappoint. We live and move and have our being surrounded by a great deal of disappointment.
In the Gospel reading, it’s pretty clear that Matthew has seen his share of bad stuff in his own world, and he can’t help but be reminded of the hardships and privations of the first disciples and apostles.
It may well be that extravagance is something worth cultivating in our community, here at Saint John’s. We’re being asked by our congregational leaders to consider what sort of community we might be and become, here in the centre of the city. I think we could do a lot worse than be known as a place of extravagance in our hospitality, in our offering of ourselves, here, for the good of the community and the welfare of the city. But also a sort of extravagant willingness to bake a pan of biscuit in the lull, or at the end of labour, simply because we can. Insofar as it depends upon us, our job is to say yes and to figure out what a pan of biscuit looks like.
This world is an astonishing place. That’s my read although I have no other worlds with which to compare it. But there is so much possibility here: the possibility of new life, even, this late in our journey here. How might we suss that out? How might we identify and measure the possibilities? How might we seek partners in our endeavours?
I’m grateful that our congregational leaders are inviting us into conversation about these sorts of things. I like the idea of greeting our world with openness to new possibilities and making room for a little, or a lot, of extravagance.
Silence
May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in God’s sight. And let the church say “Amen.” R/ Amen.
André Lavergne, CWA (The Rev.)
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener