Hebrews 13:2

2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

 

Genesis 18:1-5; 10a

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground. 3 He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. 5 Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.”

 

10 Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.”

 

Thank you all for your feedback so far!

We will not be breaking into small groups or forcing anyone to talk!

It’s perfectly OK for you to just listen and hang back during the talk back time – and online folks – you are welcome to just unmute yourselves and chime in at any time!

I’m going to start with a story, move into some Bible study, and then we will discuss.

This isn’t my story, so I’m changing the names and story a bit to protect the privacy of the innocent.  This is a true story, and it happened about 30 years ago.

Kay,  I’m going to call her Kay, was being abused by her grandfather whom she and her mother lived with because her mother didn’t make enough to afford their own place.  Kay was 16 years old and had a job at the mall and had been thinking a lot about running away, because she was tired of being abused and tired of her mom not listening, and was tired of worrying about being pregnant — because it was that kind of abuse.

One day on Kay’s lunch break, Kay went outside to eat her sandwich and a stranger – another teenaged girl asked her for money.

Kay didn’t have any more money, but she had bought herself a footlong sandwich, planning on saving the other half for dinner, so she offered the strange girl the other half of her sub sandwich, so the girl sat down to eat it next to her.

And the girl began to talk.  

The girl talked about her own abusive family.

The girl talked about running away and ending up on the streets of Portland as a sex worker. 

Kay told the girl about her own life – her abusive grandfather and Kay’s own thoughts about running away.

And the girl looked her right in the eyes, licked the mayo out of the corner of her mouth and said to Kay, 

“Don’t do what I did.  It’s not better on the streets.  Stay at home, just try not to be there much.  Stay in school.  Graduate, then you can get student loans to help you live.”

Kay told me that she looked for that girl the next day and every time she was at the mall for the next several months, but she never saw her again.  When Kay told me her story, years later, Kay said she had come to think of that girl as an angel sent by God to help her.

Before we step into some discussion, I’d like to give you a little bit of Bible study stuff to consider.

The Greek word ???????? (angelous) in Hebrews 13:2 literally translates as “messangers” – but with a contextual flavor of “spiritual messangers”

And the original Greek does not contain the word “strangers” at all.

Here’s Hebrews 13:2 in its original Greek in an interlinear Bible format:

The English translation is in orange, the Kionia Greek is in black, and the blue links are to the word  study of each word.  Personally, I won’t buy interlinear Bible’s anymore, because it’s so much easier to use the free online ones!  Just google:  the scripture address and interlinear and you get this!  So easy!

Hebrews probably wasn’t written by the apostle Paul.  Origen, who lived in the 200’s said that the author of Hebrews “was known only to God.”  But whomever wrote it did have a thorough grounding in the Hebrew Bible and excellent Greek grammar – better than Paul’s!

I took this verse out of context, which I don’t usually do, because it was written into a “laundry list” of instructions for believers – a whole bunch of pretty much unrelated do’s and don’t, so the context of the verses around it isn’t particularly helpful to understanding this verse.

I instead chose to give you the foundational Jewish context of the understanding of hospitality – the story of Abraham welcoming the strangers who turned out to be messengers from God.  

The English translation in the bulletin pretty carefully follows the original Hebrew text, except in the original Hebrew it reads that YHWH appeared to Abram rather than the LORD – which is the usual translation, because Jewish people do not pronounce the name of the LORD out of respect for God.  So there is no mention of angels, messengers or strangers in Genesis – and yet we know from the Rabbinical tradition that this story is considered the Biblical roots for the requirement of hospitality towards strangers, that is then reinforced in the time of Moses in 

33 ‘And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. 34 The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

I had to use the New King James Version to get the word stranger in this passage, because every other translation – including NIV, which is a very conservative translation  translates garim, hager, ger and all of the other grammatical forms of this word “stranger”  as 

Alien

Foreigner 

or

Sojourner

Wycliff used the old English term, “comeling” which means newcomer

But the general idea is that the concept of welcoming strangers isn’t  just about people you don’t know, but people who are from a different place or from a different country – because God asked the Israelites to remember that they way the Egyptians treated the Jews while they were refugees from famine in Egypt, was not OK.

Let me say that in a less complicated way.

The Jews didn’t have a lot of fun in Egypt, so God said, don’t do to your neighbor, what you don’t want your neighbor to do to you!

Or treat strangers in your land the way you would want to be treated if you were a stranger in a strange land.

Because, when we show hospitality to strangers, sometimes we encounter a message from God.

But hospitality is complicated when we are afraid all the time!

Like when that unhoused person came into the side door of the sanctuary on the 9th, during worship just as we were talking about fear and faith!

Is that literally God interrupting our worship to challenge us to practice our faith through hospitality or was that person a threat?

Questions:

1. So what stands out for you in today’s readings, story and Biblical exegesis?  What would you like to talk about?
2. How is hospitality here and now, different than hospitality was there and then?  What factors go into how we practice hospitality differently now?
3. Have you ever encountered a stranger who said what you needed to hear?