Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Hospitality was important to the biblical peoples, be they Jews or Arabs. Hospitality is important for every nomadic tribe. Their lives depend, literally, on the hospitality and protection of strangers. The meal of course is the high point of hospitality. When the biblical writers wanted to convey God's relationship with his people, they resorted to the image of the Lord dining with his people. This image is repeated over and over again in the bible, culminating of course in the Last Supper. God mixes with the human race through the ordinary events of their lives. His interest extends to the trivialities that are traded over every dinner table. God is in there, involved with his people, laughing and crying with them, singing their songs.
The story of the angel who wanders the world in the disguise of a poor traveller is very common in Middle Eastern folklore. It is essentially a fairy tale. In its simplest form it runs as follows: the stranger knocks at the door, hungry and thirsty. The householder is moved by the plight of the stranger and prepares a meal for him. When the stranger has finished eating, he casts off his disguise and reveals himself to be an angel. Typically then, the angel or the fairy promises to repay the host's hospitality in a lavish manner, in a way that is totally out of proportion to the original favour. The writer of the Book of Genesis works this fairytale into his narrative. In this instance, the extravagant promise of the angel focuses on Sarah, the barren wife of the host. "I shall visit you again next year without fail and your wife will then have a son."
In ancient Israel, just as in present-day Arab culture, men and women did not dine together. As we see in our first reading, Sarah remains in the tent preparing the meal while the men sit down outside eating. This is the cultural context into which Jesus intrudes. According to the Old Testament, God's communicates with the human race through the male of the species. In today's Old Testament extract, God speaks only to Abraham. And only when the male has eaten his fill does the stranger make polite enquiries about Sarah. But he never actually meets her or communicates with her in any direct way.
How different is the God revealed in Jesus. There are no males whatsoever on the scene here. His dealings are exclusively with women. He is presented dining with one of them and instructing the other one in the Law of Israel. So he shatters two taboos. Women were not instructed in the law by Rabbis because women could not according to the law be a teacher or a disciple or a witness. So he has broken through the cultural taboos of his own day in two important points at least. The male/female barriers erected in the Old Testament are here shattered by Jesus. The gospel of Jesus is intended for men and women. In his own lifetime at least, women seem to have been more central to his ministry than men. I'm sure this behaviour scandalised many, many good pious people.
The God we are dealing with is a God who shatters barriers, a God who will not be contained within the narrow boundaries we construct. He will not be constrained within our Churches; he will not be confined or defined by our cultural boundaries. He is a rich and glorious mystery, as St. Paul tells us in our second reading. Our best response to his mysterious presence is to serve him in others as Martha did, or to remain silent in his presence as Mary did. But the one thing we should never do is to try and control him or reduce him to manageable proportions. He works in our world in mysterious ways and, if we have the eyes and ears for it, we will see and hear him in most unexpected places and people. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews wrote: "Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels." Or, as St. Paul put it in today's second reading: "the mystery is simply Christ among you, your hope of glory."