Genesis
18:1-16
August 31, 2014
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. 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. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with
you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your
feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. 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.” And Abraham hastened into
the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice
flour, knead it, and make cakes.” Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf,
tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then
he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before
them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in
the tent.” Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your
wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance
behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to
be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying,
“After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” The
Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a
child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set
time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” But
Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes,
you did laugh.”
Then the men set out from there, and they looked toward Sodom; and
Abraham went with them to set them on their way.
Have you ever taken a Rorschach test? You’ve seen them
before. It’s the inkblot test where you look at an inkblot, and tell the
psychologist what you see. What you see becomes a window into your deeper ways
of thinking. For example, if you see violent shapes, it indicates that you may
have pathological tendencies. If you see sexual images, that may reveal something
else. If you see bunnies, it may mean that you love Bugs Bunny. What you see reveals
something about you.
In a lot of ways, our passage for today is like a
biblical Rorschach test. When people read this passage, they tend to read into
it what they believe makes the most sense, despite the fact that it doesn’t
quite make sense. It’s the fact that it doesn’t quite make sense that I love the
most about the passage. The passage is a perfect example of how the Bible was
really written, rather than how we try to make it have been written.
Read the first part of the passage again and see if you
can find anything odd about it: “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. 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. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your
servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves
under the tree.”
What did you notice odd about it? You may not have
noticed much because you fixed it while reading it. We often fix the creation
stories. We want so badly for there to be one consistent creation story, so we
merge chapter one of Genesis with chapters two and three. But they can’t quite
be merged. There so much that can’t be merged, but I’ll give you just one
example. In chapter one, God creates the human last. It says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our
image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the
earth.’” Humans (with no number of humans given, by the way—might have been
two or a thousand) are created after plants, animals, and everything else.
Go to the Garden of Eden version in chapter two. God
creates the garden, but apparently it has no plants. God then creates the first
human—just one—and places that human in the garden. Afterwards God creates the
plants for food and to be tended to by the human. Then God creates the animals
as companions to the first human. It is only after they fail to be adequate
companions that God puts the human into a deep sleep, takes out a rib, and
creates another human—making the two male and female. These two stories are NOT
the same stories. But we don’t like the discrepancy because we want the
creation story to be one historical story. So we fix the stories and merge them
together, making it seem like they are one story. We try to fix the Bible, even
when it doesn’t try to fix itself. Those who put the book of Genesis together
were clearly aware that there were two stories, but they believed that it was
okay to have two stories because each one revealed something different about
God, about the nature of life, and about humans. The Bible didn’t try to fix
itself, but we do.
Much of the Bible is like that. We get different versions
of the same stories, not because the Bible doesn’t have truth. It’s because the
Bible is trying to reveal deeper truths than just history, and it knows that
sometimes sharing different perspectives reveals deeper truths.
Our passage is about Abraham meeting God, but God doesn’t
quite look like what we expect God to look like. Read the beginning of our
passage again: “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. He looked up and saw three men standing near him.” Don’t try to
fix the story and answer this question: what does God look like?
Some fix it to suggest that Abraham meets God and two
angels. If you saw the recent Bible miniseries, that’s what they did. They
showed a vague God along with an Asian angel and an African-American
(African-Celestial?) angel. Others fix the story by ignoring the fact that
Abraham sees three men, and they just focus on the fact that Abraham addresses
God as one person. So they picture it as Abraham just talking with one man—God.
But that’s fixing the story, too.
The way the story is written in the Bible is
intentionally mysterious. Read it again. It shows God as a Trinity. Clearly
there are three men, but Abraham addresses them as one man. Abraham knows that
God is one, but also three.
I believe that this story is the first revelation about
one of the most essential beliefs of Christianity, and one that makes the least
sense both to Christians and non-Christians. But it’s also what I love about
this story: it doesn’t quite make sense, but it also reveals something of the mysterious
nature of God. It’s this mystery that is behind the whole idea of the Trinity. The
Trinity is meant to help us form a full relationship with God as God is, rather
than as we want God to be.
The Trinity is a spiritual and theological belief that is
mean to help us lift back the veil of God’s mystery, and to help us experience
God in different ways that give us a fuller relationship with God. But It’s
also a difficult concept about God to explain. In our passage it isn’t
explained. God just appears to Abraham as three men, but somehow Abraham
recognizes those three as one God.
So my task, for the rest of this sermon, is to help you
get a clearer understanding of the Trinity, not so that you can become a
theological whiz, but so that you can form a deeper relationship with God. And
I’m going to explain the Trinity through three scripture passages. The Trinity
isn’t a belief about God as being three gods. It is a belief about God whom we
experience and form a relationship with in three different ways—three different
persons of God. God is manifested in these three ways, but God never loses the
reality of being one God.
The first is a passage from the first chapter of Genesis:
In the beginning when God created the
heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the
face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then
God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light
was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
This passage clearly refers to the God we tend to know
best—God as Father or Creator. This is the God we think of as being in heaven,
but also God who we believe created everything. We have a sense that this is
God who is beyond us, who transcends time and space, and who resides in heaven,
but who also created the universe.
By the way, I need to point out that there is a bit of a
poor translation in this passage. Where you see it written that, “a wind from God swept over the face of
the waters,” the word “wind” is mistranslated. The original Hebrew word is
“nephesh,” and while it does mean “wind,” the more accurate translation is that
is also means “spirit.” It should read, “a
Spirit from God swept over the face of the waters.” At any rate, this
passage reminds us that we can have a relationship with God who is beyond us, created
us, and loves us like a parent.
The second passage comes from Paul’s letter to the
Colossians: “[Jesus] is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven
and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for
him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
It’s an amazing passage from Colossian 1:15-7. Paul is moving way beyond our
typical debates about Jesus—about whether he was just a man, a prophet, or God.
Paul is saying that Jesus wasn’t just the man from 2000 years ago, but Jesus is the incarnation of
God in the world. He says that in Jesus “all
things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible.”
He is saying that Jesus is the power of God in creation. This has amazing
implications. It says that we can have a relationship with the Jesus of the
Bible, but that we can also experience and connect with Christ who is in each
other, who is within us, who is in all of creation. We experience something of
Jesus in sunsets, on mountaintops, at the beach, when contemplating a leaf,
when planting and tending a garden, and anytime we connect with God through
God’s creation. This is way beyond our normal understanding of Jesus, and it
changes the nature of our debates about Jesus. It says that we can connect with
God, and form a relationship with God as God is present in everything. This is
the Christ who is in us and in each other and in life.
Let me share one final passage from John 20:21-23. John
tells us, “When [Jesus] had said this, he
breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the
sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are
retained.” Jesus is breathing onto the disciples his own Spirit, the Spirit
of God. This is the Spirit that swept over the waters in the opening of the
Bible. This is the Spirit that surrounds us, fills us, and is everywhere. This
is the omnipresent God who is involved in our lives making amazing things
happen. We can have a relationship with God as Holy Spirit, who isn’t just
beyond and within us, but who is in everything.
What you see in the whole belief about the Trinity is
that we are meant to have a deep relationship with God as God is in everything.
The Trinity isn’t meant to be a theological concept we just agree to because we
are good Christians. The Trinity is a relationship with God who is “above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians
4:6).
Who Abraham met under the oaks of Mamre was God who is
beyond anything we can understand, but who wants to be involved in all of live.
This is God who loves us completely, who wants a deep relationship with us, but
who also transcends our ability to understand.
I don’t know the extent to which we need to understand
the intricacies of the Trinity. But do know that when we accept the idea of the
Trinity, it allows us to form a deep relationship with God based on God as God
is rather than who we want God to be.
Amen.
