The Fine Art of Sitting
Genesis 18:1-15; Luke 10:38-42

July 22, 2001
Two lost arts find their way back to us: the art of sitting and the art of hospitality. Sitting can take place outside of hospitality, but there is no hospitality without some proper sitting.
The two stories read head in very different directions as far as the conversations and actions go. Yet both involve the fundamentals of Near Eastern hospitality and result in a lot of sitting around with some amazing conversation and resolutions.
Many cultures have put a premium on the obligation of hospitality. The word used in Biblical times was literally "the love of strangers." Perhaps that's why we are reticent to be very hospitable today, because we are afraid of strangers. Beware of strangers is the message I have heard from my youth, and one that is still actively preached in most households.
Perhaps that's why I was absolutely astounded when in my first pastoral charge out of seminary I went to visit an elderly couple in a small coal mining town on the edge of Appalachia. They had been in church a few times, although I was still new there. I arrived unintentionally around lunch time and upon entering they offered me a sandwich and a chair. After about ten minutes of general conversation about the weather, one of them looked at me and asked, "Who are you?" A few months later, visiting another older couple, exactly the same scenario played itself out with the same question at the end. As a young minister, it was a little overwhelming to see the Biblical story being lived out right before me. I was a stranger and they let me in.
It was around noon, the heat of the day, that Abraham received his visitors. Abraham emits a kind of nervous dread about the visit. Certainly, once he saw the three men standing near him, he was a man in anxious motion, running here and there, gathering water and meat and bread to serve to his unexpected guests.
The author of Genesis has let us in on the situation from the start: it is the Lord who visits Abraham and apparently took on the form of three men - early Christian writers were convinced this was the Trinity - who never were seen approaching Abraham's tent at the oaks of Mamre from a distance, but were just there. Abraham knew nobody but mad dogs, Englishmen, and God ventured out in the sweltering middle part of the day. The first two were not the case, so it had to be God somehow.
Abraham knew he had to be hospitable - and was frantic and anxious and full of orders to everyone. Then he had to sit and listen to the strangers, but with his anxiety that was hard. Sarah, however, found it easy to listen off stage in the tent, and easier to laugh.
Women were supposed to keep out of the way, but the three men knew who she was by name and asked for her. "In due season" was their operative phrase. They would return in a year and she would have a son - no matter she was 90 and Abraham 100. This would not be an immaculate conception; it would happen "in due season" - the proper nine months. With God, all things are possible, even nature itself.
These guys weren't joking, however, and they wanted to be taken seriously. Now Sarah too felt that edgy fear, "I did not laugh," she pretended. "Oh yes, you did laugh." This is not funny.
There is an uncanny parallel to this story in Luke's Gospel, right after Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus enters a town where a woman named Martha welcomes him into his home. She has a certain sister Mary, but Martha appears to be the one in charge. We only know about their brother Lazarus from the Gospel of John, so the fact that two women were independent is a statement in and of itself. From the perspective of Luke, the sisters are being hospitable to a form of God as well: one of those three men who visited Abraham and Sarah.
Christians have long fallen to the temptation of making the sisters symbolize opposite lifestyles - Martha is the doer, Mary the pray-er. Martha is the secular person, while Mary is the prototype of all contemplative monks and nuns. The latter have chosen "the better portion."
If there is to be hospitality, if strangers are to be received and loved, then both are needed. Hospitality does require paying attention to the physical needs of a guest; it also requires paying attention to the guest.
Martha's dilemma is not her busyness, but her anxiety and distraction. She could not focus on her tasks and certainly could not focus upon her guest. It is impossible to sit properly when you are anxious and distracted.
All those wonderful Marthas in our churches are not to be devalued. There is a need for pots and pans, baking, and cool drinks and a hospitable environment. That is not what Jesus admonished Martha for, not for being a doer and a worker, but that she had missed the opportunity for "the better portion."
The better portion is paying attention to the stranger. Even the most Martha-like hosts must at last sit down with Mary and listen to what their guest may say. One of the purposes of hospitality is the recognition that every stranger is a human being who can enrich your life if you only have ears to hear and the patience to sit at their feet. And there is always the possibility that this stranger, this "other," might be a form of God - Jesus himself, the three men of the one Lord, perhaps one of God's messengers who will utter in a still small voice a word which will bring you life.
To sit well is not just being a good couch potato. There is an active suppression of your own ego and your own need to speak in order that you may listen in on the stranger's soul. It is nothing short of wondrous and awesome what you can hear. Pain, yes, despair, perhaps. Yet hope and even wisdom can emerge, for you are paying attention to a soul fashioned in the image of God. God will speak and become present in a stranger as well as a friend, if you accept the better portion and sit and listen.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan