Angels Unawares & Pride
13th Sunday after TrinityEcclus 10.12-18 Heb 13.1-8, 15-16; Lk 14.1, 7-14
“Be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb.13.2)
I remember how shocked I was when first I stayed with a vicar friend and his large family. I went into the bathroom to freshen up before preaching and he shouted up the stairs as I was going in - “Use any of the toothbrushes”.
Well, I suppose I had eaten other people’s apple cores, shared cutlery in college when I couldn’t be bothered to go and get another spoon, why not use someone else’s toothbrush? Well, a lot of reasons actually...
From his point of view, it was just being hospitable. Personally, I keep all those toothbrushes we get on transatlantic flights for guests. It makes me feel mildly better about my carbon footprint.
My guestroom is in constant use. It’s the laundry that gets me down most. I always smell the bed before visitors arrive to see whether I need to change the sheets - I find a squirt of aftershave gives the impression of recent laundering.
And visitors are like the number 74 buses: they always arrive in packs and never when you want one.
A lonely evening when you’ve finished the Times crossword and there is nothing but snooker on TV and such a mound of work in the office that it gives you vertigo just looking at it; and there isn’t a caller in sight.
But wait till you’re in a ‘work’ mood; or watching the Eurovision Song Contest with a group of friends and a bottle of Ribena, and the doorbell doesn’t stop. The definition of hospitality flashes through your mind: the art of making people feel at home when you wish they were!
Another problem is that I always seem to arrange for multiple guests to arrive when I am in Nottingham or some other far-flung corner of the Empire. This can be an advantage as the guests often entertain each other, make the beds, clean the flat, do the washing up, and have a meal ready for you when you get home.
But there have been times when a punk friend, with more piercings than a colander, turns up at the same time as a professor from an American Bible College; or a sensitive, vegetarian, teetotaller has to let in your semi-drunk nephew who has bought a Bucket of Kentucky Fried with him. There's blood on the doormat when you arrive home and the prospect of a long and difficult evening.
Hospitality is a sort of antidote to pride, which is why the two themes run together in our readings today. Jesus upbraids his host by pointing out that table fellowship is a place for self-giving, not self-exaltation.
And he reminds the guests themselves that humility should be their guiding principle and not pride.
It is a difficult path to follow with sincerity. We all know how false humility grates. Like the Regius Professor who chose not to join in the Vice-Chancellor’s procession; and when asked by a proctor why he was sitting in a pew at the back replied: “Just a little ostentatious humility.”
Self-centredness and its outward display, pride, are the constant enemies of personal growth and maturity, but the angels are there to provoke us and to protect us from ourselves. “Be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb.13.2)
Or as Peter puts it in his epistle: “Use hospitality one to another, without grudging.” (1 Pet 4.7)
In the context of the first century church, this was a very practical and necessary aspect of applied Christian love. Wayside inns were notorious throughout the Roman world and we are not talking Cotswold bed-&-breakfast here. Indeed it was incumbent on both Jews and Greeks to entertain strangers.
Zeus Xenios (Zeus patron of strangers) supposedly masqueraded as a wayfarer and then gave special blessings to those who entertained him – this was probably in the writer’s mind when he penned the verse. (The Greeks, by the way, listed humility amongst the vices!)
For the Jewish Christians to whom this letter was addressed, they would recall Abraham and the angels he entertained at the oaks of Mamre (remember Rubleyev’s famous icon); or Tobit or Gideon or Minoah.
But of course it’s a tricky thing, entertaining strangers, both now as it was then. So there were those who pretended to be Christians in order to receive free board and lodging. It was such a common practice that Lucian wrote a droll satire about it in The Death of Proteus Peregrinus.
The Didache was a first century Christian teaching manual and it gave some down to earth guidelines on offering hospitality: “Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord, but he must not stay more than one day, or two if it is absolutely necessary; if he stays three days he is a false prophet.”
This was also why our Lord told his disciples when they went on their preaching tours, to receive hospitality at the first house that offered it; not to move around the town when they found a house with a better cellar and a Jacuzzi.
Well how do we fulfil this injunction to offer hospitality, apart from the obvious way of never letting a priest pay for a drink?
In church on a Sunday it is straightforward but often neglected - we always have visitors and although the way to the church hall is an easy trip (at least on the way there), it is sometimes a daunting journey into the unknown and mildly threatening for a stranger.
And that’s true just in going to the back to pick up a glass – especially if they are on their own. Let’s not leave others to do it. And let’s not be afraid of saying welcome to someone who it turns out has been coming for longer than you have.
We must always strive to include others, even when they may not be those with whom we would choose to be stranded on a desert island.
Hospitality is a great gift. Hospitality to strangers is a greater gift, but one that tempers our pride and self-absorption.
So in our homes or wherever we entertain, we should not spend all our time with just our comfortable coterie. If we are fortunate enough to have the conviviality of friends, we must sometimes broaden our horizons to welcome, if not the stranger, then at least the relatively unknown. I find that although they are sometimes a burden, guests greatly enrich my own life and often the lives of their improbable fellow guests.
Our Lord himself shows us hospitality whenever we meet around this Table. Despite our unworthiness he deems us happy who are called to this supper. As we follow his example, his angels wait to surprise and bless us, and to take us further along the path of genuine humility.
“Be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb 13.2)
