The Heart of the Matter

One of my favorite passages in scripture appears in Hebrews 13: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels unawares."

I am interested in the question of what it would be like to bring an angel into your home.

Like all other things holy, angels have suffered from a lot of distorting publicity over the last couple thousand years. We have come to think of them as sweet, ephemeral, winged helpmates who show up on an as-needed basis to ease our back pain, get us a job promotion, or find us a parking space.

This view of angels may lead us to read the passage from Hebrews as saying: hey, invite a stranger into your home and you may get lucky--he may be an angel. If so, he can lend a hand with whatever worries you. He can make your life easier. He can sprinkle pixie dust on your path.

But this is a distorted reading of the passage because it is a distorted understanding of what angels are like and what they do. In the scriptures, the visit of an angel is usually described as a deeply disquieting event. And very often the first thing the angel says is: "Do not be afraid." We would get different reactions and different introductions if angels were like the smiling, pretty little blonde fairies we put on top of Christmas trees.

Furthermore, angels do not show up in the scriptures to do our bidding. They appear as a manifestation of God's will and to get the Lord's work done. That work may align with our hopes and wishes--or it may not.

So it turns out that this passage means the exact opposite of what we may at first think it means. It means that when we open ourselves to those we do not know--those who are unlike us--we may be severely challenged. We may be discomfited. We may be frightened. We may have to reexamine our most basic understandings of who we are and what we are called to do.

But, the scripture says, do it anyway. Why? Because it is our best shot at finding meaning, purpose, and direction in our existence.

William Bowen, the former President of Princeton, once observed that "We do not learn very much when we are surrounded only by the likes of ourselves." To find ourselves in the company of those who differ from us always brings challenges; it forces us to reconsider our established and insular ways of thinking about the world and our fixed notions of how to engage with it. But the experience also brings tremendous promise and unique opportunities to grow and learn--for exactly the same reasons.

Perhaps, the scripture suggests, in our welcoming of others we will discover that we have taken in an angel. We will then be in the presence of one who is different from us in wild and startling and radical ways we cannot imagine. We will feel the very foundation of our life shifting underneath us. And nothing will ever be the same. This happens over and over again in the Bible--someone meets an angel and everything changes.

Of course, this is how it plays out on a lesser scale when we engage with human beings who differ from us. Our understanding deepens. Our perspective widens. Our sense of the complexity and richness of human variety and experience expands. We emerge from the encounter not quite the same.

This is completely unsurprising.

After all, God sent them, too.

But I particularly like this passage from Hebrews when we read it in conjunction with the 25th chapter of the gospel of Matthew.

I'm thinking especially of the verses from Matthew where Jesus tells us that whenever we do anything for "the least" of God's children it is as though we have done it for God Himself.

Tend to the sick. Shelter the homeless. Visit the imprisoned. Take in the lost and forlorn. When we do these things, we do not just entertain God's messengers--we bring God Himself into our presence. And we serve Him.

Read together, these passages leave us with an unmistakable directive: open your door; usher the strangers inside; lift up the fallen and carry them to a better place.

And if you do these things, the Lord says, then you will know my heart.

And I will know yours. 

Amen.