Hidden and Mysterious Dimensions
Ordinary Sunday 16, 22nd July, 2001
The Rev'd Dr Colin Holden
Assistant Priest and Archivist, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
The Lord appeared to Abraham by the terebinths of Mamre. As
Abraham was sitting at the opening of his tent in the heat of the day, he
looked up and saw three men standing in front of him . . .
(Genesis 18:1-2)
For a change, it is this morning's Old Testament reading, with its
description of the mysterious encounter between Abraham and three strangers
to whom he provides hospitality, and not the Gospel for the day, on which I
intend to focus my attention.
It has been the subject of at least one major work of art, the icon by the
15th century Russian monk Andrei Rublev. It has received attention from
Christian theologians in the fourth and fifth centuries, who interpreted this
incident as a foreshadowing of God's revelation of Himself as Trinity.
Rublev's icon was in part a tribute to, and a reflection on, the Trinitarian
theology of the Russian saint, Sergei of Radonez; it became part of the
iconostasis next to the saint's tomb in the cathedral of the Trinity at Zagorsk.
Today, I want to leave those kind of interpretations to one side, and focus
on the incident as recounted in Genesis. Abraham and Sarai offer the best in
food to what to all appearances are three human travellers. In doing so, they
fulfil a basic custom common among many cultures living off the land, especially
those balanced between fertile land and desert. The customary law of a number
of such cultures demanded that until a stranger demonstrated that he was an
enemy by offering an insult or performing some hostile action, he should be
so treated, and then sent on his way. But as this situation is retold in
Genesis, the situation is seen to be one in which, though they are unaware of
it at the time, Abraham and Sarai are entertaining God in their midst. As the
strangers depart, they speak as one to Abraham, with an awareness of his and
Sarai's future that doesn't make Abraham recognise the nature of his visitors.
As it reflected on the Genesis text, Jewish tradition explained that though
the strangers appeared to be three human beings, they were God Himself,
appearing in the angelic form of an apparently human body, a way of
communicating with Abraham in his human frailty and limitation without
overwhelming him. It was this situation which the writer of the letter to
the Hebrews had in mind when he wrote: 'Let brotherly love continue. Be not
forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels
unawares'. (Hebrews 13:1) This writer clearly interpreted it as an
illustration of the nature of human experience. Hidden and mysterious
dimensions – both special and extraordinary – may not at first be
obvious, but may nevertheless be there behind what appears to be daily routine
or polite formalities. The entertaining of strangers, the offering of customary
hospitality, may be just that; but it may be a situation in which God Himself
is encountered.
If this very positive interpretation of the possibilities of the special
and extraordinary is a basic part of the interpretation of the Old Testament
reading, what of the Gospel? As most of us realise, the creators of the
lectionary we use generally chose the Old Testament reading for each Sunday because it offers some kind of parallel to the Gospel. In many cases the
parallels are helpful and well-drawn. Occasionally, as here, they are based on
a superficial resemblance, rather than genuinely shared ground. Beyond the
situation of the serving up of a meal, this morning's Gospel and the reading
from Genesis share little else. Indeed, the commonest (though not necessarily
the most soundly-based) interpretation of the Gospel reading comes close to
contradicting the significance of the meal shared by Abraham and his three
guests. I am referring to the longstanding interpretation of the Gospel which
understands Martha as someone whose anxiety over the meal is a sign that she
doesn't quite have her priorities right: in contrast with Mary, whose lack of
participation in the domestic situation is treated as a sign that she is
spiritually focussed. When this gospel is interpreted in this way (and I am
not convinced that this is a really valid and sustainable interpretation), it
comes close to denying the capacity of the ordinary round as a situation in
which we can have a meaningful encounter with God. Instead, the further away
from the kitchen sink we are, the more exposed to God we are likely to be.
Domestic duties are the preserve of the less spiritual, who are incapable of
lifting their focus to a higher plane.
Now I will leave offering what I consider to be a sustainable interpretation
of this Gospel for another occasion. Suffice it to say that I think it is about
something like balance between action and contemplation, not a placing of one
against the other. To return to the Genesis encounter between Abraham and his
guests.
In this customary act of hospitality, a piece of de rigueur desert
politeness to three people who, on the face of it, appear randomly and vanish
back into the desert, never to be encountered again: on the surface, there is
an element of randomness. This random dimension is an important element in this
story as Genesis tells it; these were wanderers whom Abraham could hardly
expect to meet again. Not strangers in the night, but strangers by day.
While we don't live in a situation with any geographic or cultural
resemblance to Abraham's, a degree of the random – the flow of events
without apparently discernible pattern, even a sense of something like chaos
– is something we do know. There can appear to be a great deal of the
random about the present moment, and not only the present moment in isolation,
but a whole series of moments. Often, they do not build up to an apparently
meaningful pattern. If anything, for those who have some sense of the
possibility of meaning, sometimes the best way to describe our state is not to
claim that we know the secret of meaning, but to go on with a sense of waiting
– for what? For some, the lack of apparent order or certainty offers no
great threat. For others, it offers a major challenge, especially for those who
by temperament prefer things in tight structures; those who need their people
in tidy queues of the patient and well behaved, and who need events to follow
similar tidy patterns. Whatever our temperament, the temptation remains the
same: because many of these seemingly random moments and situations don't
appear to be opportunities for anything beyond the routine, or bearers of deep
meaning and purpose, we treat them as such – as disconnected points of no
worth, going nowhere. As long as we do that, it is unlikely that they will
ever be anything more.
Yet apparent randomness may bear more positive interpretations. For
physicists, and scientists in some other disciplines, there is an
acknowledgement that the building blocks of matter may behave with
considerable variation, rather than along the rigid and unbending lines
envisaged by earlier scientists; but that a range of varied, seemingly random
behaviour can exist side by side with the presence of overall broader patterns.
Purpose and intelligence may even lie behind the behind apparent randomness.
If Abraham's hospitality to unknown travellers is really an example of the
presence of a very high level of meaning and purpose in a seemingly chance
encounter, a thing of the moment, this is not an insight limited to Genesis.
The possibility that all apparently random moments are fraught with the
possibility of being something far more significant is very much the stress of
a remarkable 18th century French spiritual writer who underwent something of a
rediscovery in the 1960s and 70s, Jean Pierre de Caussade. The phrase 'the
sacrament of the present moment' summed up much of his insight. In the opening
of his work, usually translated as Self-Abandonment to the Divine Providence,
he described the great figures of the Old (and New) Testament in this way:
All they knew was that each moment brought its appointed task,
faithfully to be accomplished. This was enough for the spiritually minded of
those days. All their attention was focussed on the present, minute by minute;
like the hands of a clock that marks the minutes of each hour covering the
distance along which it has to travel. Constantly prompted by divine impulsion,
they found themselves imperceptibly turned toward the next task that God had
ready for them at each hour of the day.
The references to the movement of the hour hand on the clock and to
appointed tasks can suggest a picture of obsessive-compulsive types seeking
to fill every 'unforgiving minute' with activities clearly identified as God's
will. I do not think that de Caussade really envisaged anything as mechanical,
let alone neurotic. Rather, he was picturing them as people who had only the
present moment in which to encounter God – and did so. To use my
terminology, they had only the apparently random moments and events of the
present. But by seizing them as potentially positive, a different content was
revealed to them. Nor is this kind of emphasis absent from classical Anglican
thought. John Keble was very close to this in his rather pedestrian lines 'The
trivial round the common task will furnish all we need to ask'. Pedestrian
they might be in expression, but they envisage something less than pedestrian
emerging from the familiar rounds of the here and now, challenging in their
lack of challenge.
In the end, the apparently random will remain so if we seek nothing more
from it, and believe that encounter with God, and the possibility of meaning
and purpose, is postponed indefinitely to some unspecified and unattainable
future point. The present is the only moment we have, no matter how random its
relationship with every other event and point in time. When that very
randomness is embraced, behind the ordinary, just as it was for Abraham
seated with his guests, the extraordinary is manifest: the capacity for
encounter with God.
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