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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Maybe there are strangers who would change our lives all around us all the time. Our tents are simply drawn too tightly to notice them. Perhaps the lesson here isn't compassion, it's curiosity. What are we letting walk by us out of sight every day? Two weeks ago, we kicked off season 13 together.
Jeremy Duncan:Last week, we launched Commons Church in Marbleau together. It has been a busy, but a wonderful start to the fall season here at Commons. We've also found ourselves engaged in a new season to start the year and a new series having some conversations about how we can learn to listen. And so far, we've talked about how to listen to our hearts. We have talked about how we learn to listen to our neighbors.
Jeremy Duncan:Today, we're gonna talk about listening to the stranger. But for me, last week was an interesting sermon because we were talking about a passage that I have read probably a thousand times before. One that honestly, I wasn't sure I had anything particularly new to say about. And yet, as I sat with it and listened to it, one more time I found myself all of again fascinated by something I hadn't noticed in the text before. You see in the setup to the parable of the Good Samaritan, there's this lawyer that summarizes the law this way.
Jeremy Duncan:Basically, love God, love people. By the way, not a bad little catchphrase, but specifically he quotes Deuteronomy six five and Leviticus nineteen eighteen, which are a fantastic summary of the law. And in fact, I've always paid attention to the fact that that answer is almost exactly the same as what Jesus gives in Mark 12. So this is undoubtedly a good answer. But this week, it was the almost exactly bit that caught my attention.
Jeremy Duncan:Because it's not exactly what Jesus says. It's close. In fact, it's so close I'd never even noticed the difference before. But if you put Jesus' words in Mark 12 alongside the lawyer's words in Luke 10, what you'll notice is that Jesus begins one verse earlier. It's hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, Deuteronomy four.
Jeremy Duncan:So love your Lord your God well, Deuteronomy six five, and love your neighbor as yourself, Leviticus nineteen eighteen. For Jesus, all the law boils down to the same two ideas, love God, love people, but all of that starts with our listening. And I'm now convinced that this is key to the whole story that Jesus tells Because instead of giving the man an answer to his question, instead of lecturing him on what he missed, he offers him, really all of us, the chance to do what we skip over all the time, a chance to really listen. And when we do, think what we realize is that sometimes our questions are starting in the wrong place. The lawyer wants to know who is my neighbor?
Jeremy Duncan:And he wants a predefined category that he can apply when he meets someone to determine his obligations toward them. Jesus tells a story that reminds us, actually we can't answer that. He can't even answer that for us, at least not yet. Because a neighbor is not part of a predefined category, something we can use to exclude or include anyone. Neighbor is a post talk acknowledgment of all the stories we have allowed ourselves to properly hear.
Jeremy Duncan:The stories that we have let change us, and the stories we've allowed to impact us, the stories that we have allowed to become part of the story that we tell about ourselves. That's what defines a neighbor for us. When a person across from us becomes more than an abstract idea, they become human. And that only happens when we learn to listen to them. Today, we get to learn to listen to the stranger.
Jeremy Duncan:But first, let's pray. Our God who speaks and who listens, would you help us quiet our hearts again just enough to hear you again today? In scripture, in the people and the voices we trust, perhaps in the strangers whose stories we have yet to learn from. Would you loosen the walls that we build around ourselves and grant us new curiosity to listen where we have at times been too quick to jump to conclusions. And then, where we find ourselves making room for the unexpected.
Jeremy Duncan:And we trust that we will surprisingly find your presence waiting in the ordinary moments of our lives. Let our attention to one another open our hearts to all the ways that you're speaking even now. And might you teach us to love you well even as we're learning to love each other as ourselves. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan:Okay. We've listened to our hearts and we have listened to our neighbors. Today, we're learning to listen to the stranger. And for that, we'll talk about strangers and divine names, mysterious visitors, and paused conversations. But first, I have this thing with both of my kids where whenever they're being super weird, which kids do a lot, I will say to them, you're such a stranger.
Jeremy Duncan:And my daughter will often say back, but dad, I'm not a stranger. You know me. And then I will say, don't call me butt dad. And she will laugh, and then she'll call me butt dad for the rest of the day. Right now, we're at the age where my 13 year old thinks my dad jokes are very unfunny.
Jeremy Duncan:My six year old thinks they are hilarious. But stranger still is this interesting category when you've got really young kids. Right? Like, I want my kids to be kind and curious and open to all kinds of people from all kinds of different experiences from us. But I also want my kids to be wary of strangers if I'm not around.
Jeremy Duncan:And that's an interesting tension for young minds to hold. Thing is, I think it goes for all of us at some level. We want to be open. We want to be curious. I think we all want to meet new people and make new friends.
Jeremy Duncan:But then, we also desperately need those relationships where we are already known. And we're starting from a deep pool of trust where our stories have already become enmeshed in the way that we spoke about last week. And last week, that's really what our conversation was about. How can we move toward the stranger, listen to their story, and allow it to change us as they become a neighbor? Today though, I wanna talk about how the stranger in their strangeness also teaches us something about God.
Jeremy Duncan:And to do that, I wanna look at an odd little story all the way back in the book of Genesis. Starts this way. Genesis 18 verse one. The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. Now, the word Lord here, all in capital letters.
Jeremy Duncan:That is the divine name for God. And sometimes that is suggested as Yahweh. Truth is we don't really know how it was pronounced because the Hebrew people would not say the name out loud. What they would always read or say was Adonai when they came across the name, and Adonai is the Hebrew word for Lord. And so whenever you see Lord all in capital letters in your Bible, that's an indication that it's actually the divine name you're encountering there in the text.
Jeremy Duncan:And that makes this a pretty interesting moment. God just shows up to talk with Abraham one day. First of all, that's pretty neat. In appearance or in person appearances from God are kind of rare in scripture. So good on Abraham for getting one of those.
Jeremy Duncan:But also, I kind of love the context here. Right? Like, we did a series on Abraham last fall. We didn't cover this story, but we did cover a lot of big moments in his life. There's the call to leave his homeland and travel toward the promised land.
Jeremy Duncan:There is the miraculous promise and birth of his son Isaac. His encounter with Egyptian kings in conflicts with greedy cousins. A lot happens in this guy's lifetime. And yet, the moment when God decides to show up and talk, is just one afternoon while he's sitting in the shade enjoying the breeze. If you ever get the idea that God thinks differently about what moments matter most, maybe this will remind you.
Jeremy Duncan:I guess in one sense you could say that God thinks all moments matter. When you're not constrained by a very limited attention span, you actually can be fully present to all moments. But I think that's our problem as well. We sometimes attach outsized importance to the moments that feel special to us. When as far as God is concerned, any moment can be the moment we encounter the divine directly, even when we're we're just sitting in the shade.
Jeremy Duncan:Remember that. The next time you have a moment to just sit and enjoy the breeze or go for a walk or linger in bed for nine minutes longer because you hit the snooze button. Moments don't have to be special to be sacred. In fact, I was I think about this moment and it makes me wonder about the chapter earlier where God makes this promise to Abraham that he and his wife Sarah will have a child in their old age. That's something they've always wanted.
Jeremy Duncan:And Abraham is so excited about that, that at 99 years old he decides to circumcise himself. And everyone that works for him, by the way. I offer no commentary on that decision, only to say that moment there could not conjure up an appearance from God. Sitting in his tent in the heat of the day does. Sometimes, honestly, if we just stop trying to manufacture the divine, maybe we would notice God all around us anyway.
Jeremy Duncan:Who knows? Anyway, verse two. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When they saw him, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. He said, if I found favor in your eyes, my Lord, do not pass your servant by.
Jeremy Duncan:Let a little water be brought and then you may all wash your feet and rest under the tree. Let me get you something to eat so you can be refreshed and then go on your way now that you've come to your servant. Very well, they answered. Do as you say. And this is to put it plainly here, a very confusing passage.
Jeremy Duncan:Traditionally, we have understood these three strangers as a type of theophany. And that is just a big theological word that we use to describe a physical appearance of God within the story. And of course, that stems from the divine name that's used in verse one. This encounter is very much a conversation with Yahweh in some sense. The next logical question though is well, who are these three men?
Jeremy Duncan:And over the years, Christians, for obvious reasons, have often read trinity into this moment. Through a Christian lens, this is father and son and spirit all collectively being referred to with the divine name. This is God speaking to Abraham. Now, that's not an unreasonable interpretation. For Christians, we believe that the only way we can ever fully see and understand God is through Jesus.
Jeremy Duncan:Therefore, we do at times interpret Old Testament passages differently than our Jewish neighbors. In fact, one of my favorite icons is a famous fifteenth century painting by Andrei Rublev. It's called the Trinity. And it depicts this meeting here between Abraham and God under the yoke of Mamre. In Rublev's image though, it's father, son, and spirit seated around the table with the final seat open to us, the audience to sit and eat.
Jeremy Duncan:In other words, in Rublev's imagination, Abraham's hospitality becomes our invitation to come and sit with God. It's beautiful stuff. It is worth noting, however, that that is also certainly not what the original writer of this story had in mind. Like, Trinity was not on the radar at the time. That is a much later concept and it's a specifically Christian idea.
Jeremy Duncan:And so, reading it back into Genesis can be a little anachronistic. However, there are some linguistic complications that cloud the original intent of the author. Verse one. Abraham has an encounter with the Lord, singular. Verse two.
Jeremy Duncan:He looks up and sees three men, plural. Verse three, he asks the Lord not to pass by, singular again. And then he offers them hospitality. Again, we're back to plural pronouns. So, what exactly is going on in this scene in a Hebrew imagination?
Jeremy Duncan:Well, the most likely explanation for this is that originally this story is an image of what we call the divine council. And that essentially means this is God and God's entourage. That's how very early parts of the Hebrew Bible conceptualize God. So you see this at the start of Genesis when God says, let us make humans in our image. That's not a bunch of gods.
Jeremy Duncan:That's the God explaining the plan to those that surround God in the heavens. And, you see this in early poems like Psalm 82 where the poet writes, God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. There's one big g God, but that God's not alone in heaven. God is surrounded by another layer of creation that seems to preexist or at least run parallel to the human story. Now over time, that concept of God evolves throughout the Hebrew scriptures and the divine council idea kind of falls away as monotheism becomes a very central pillar for the Hebrew people.
Jeremy Duncan:And what we see is that those lower case gods, the Elohim that we read about in Psalm 82, they start being talked about more as angels or malach, a lot more as the scriptures unfold. But considering this is Genesis 18, it's pretty near the start. And Abraham very directly refers to these visitors with the divine name, it's likely that this is some form of that imagination of divine counsel that's being invoked here. These three men are Yahweh and well, two of Yahweh's closest friends. There is a third consideration though, and that is the logistics of speaking to God face to face in the Hebrew scriptures.
Jeremy Duncan:See in Exodus, the very next book of the Bible, we find out actually nobody can talk to God face to face and live to tell the tale. So Moses has to see God in a burning bush, And it's why when Moses is like, no. No. I gotta push harder. That's not enough.
Jeremy Duncan:I need to see you. God offers to let Moses see God's hind parts, which is probably a way of saying, look, you can see where I just was, but you can't see me. It's not a way of seeing you can see me from the backside. Either way, we're still stuck with this idea that you can't actually see God face to face and get out of there alive. And so in later Hebrew scriptures, when God wants to show up and intervene and talk to someone, we often find this character called the angel of the Lord, all caps, or the angel of Yahweh appearing in God's stead.
Jeremy Duncan:And throughout the scriptures, whenever this particular angel shows up, people speak to this character as if it were God. The character makes pronouncements on behalf of God. The angel of the Lord is even directly referred to using just the divine name like we see here. And that makes a lot of sense of the etymology of the word angel. In Hebrew it is malach, but all of our angelic speculation aside, really all that word just means is messenger.
Jeremy Duncan:And in the ancient world, a world without letters and emails and video conferencing, a message from the king carried the authority of the king. So, speaking to a messenger from the king was in essence speaking to the throne. So, it's also possible to think of this encounter in Genesis 18 as an early conceptual almost proto appearance of the angel of the Lord. It's a messenger of God that speaks on behalf of God and now appears to Abraham. So, are at least three options for how to think about what's happening in this moment.
Jeremy Duncan:There's a Christian reading that sees this trio representing the trinity. There is an ancient reading that imagines God and God's entourage showing up with Abraham. There's a theological reading that points toward the angel of the Lord, a very personal and specific messenger that carries a message on behalf of God for Abraham. What's interesting though is that no matter which you choose, the text refuses to draw us a nice clean line between where the stranger ends and where God begins. Any way you slice it, this story is about meeting the strangeness of the divine with unplanned hospitality.
Jeremy Duncan:And in fact, there's a very ancient midrash in a book called Genesis Rabbah that riffs on the idea that where in English, we read that Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent. The plainest reading of the Hebrew word, Patak, suggests simply the opening of his tent. And since the text tells us that explicitly he's sitting under that tent in the heat of the day, maybe the most logical reading is that he has all the sides of his tent rolled up so the breeze can blow through. It's all just open. Meaning, Abraham can enjoy the shade and watch for visitors in 360 degrees.
Jeremy Duncan:That means this story is not just about God's approach, it's also about Abraham's posture that makes it possible for him to notice it. The opening of his walls that allows him to see what's around and that's an interesting contrast to last week's conversation. There Jesus tells a story that confronts us with the stranger. Right? Puts us in the position of the Samaritan who comes to where a man is lying in the ditch.
Jeremy Duncan:He doesn't have a choice whether to see it or not. The choice is how he allows himself to respond. But if the rabbis are right, then maybe this story is the opposite story, a counterpart story. Maybe there are strangers who would change our lives all around us all the time. Our tents are simply drawn too tightly to notice them.
Jeremy Duncan:Perhaps the lesson here isn't compassion, it's curiosity. What are we letting walk by us out of sight every day? There is another option for this whole story though. One that in some ways kind of blows it all up and forces us to start from the ground. One that I find particularly compelling in the context of how we learn to listen.
Jeremy Duncan:It's one I'd never read before, but I came across it in the Talmud, Shabbat one twenty seven a. In there, there's this fascinating ancient interpretation that reads this story with a completely different eye. Says the Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting under these open tent in the heat of the day. In this interpretation, it reads this verse not as a summary of the story that's about to happen, but simply as the first scene of the tale. One day, Abraham and God were sitting in the shade chatting.
Jeremy Duncan:And again, I love that that's not the remarkable part of the story. Right? Like that's just the setup. What if sitting in the shade with God was the default starting point for all of your stories? But then, at some point during that conversation with God, Abraham looked up and what did he see but three men standing nearby.
Jeremy Duncan:So he went to greet them. But as he got up, he turned back to God and said, look, if I found favor in your eyes, my Lord, don't leave. I'll be right back. I just need to welcome these strangers. So turning his attention back to the guests, he said, let me bring some water so you can wash your feet and rest under the tree with us.
Jeremy Duncan:I'll get you something to eat so you can be refreshed before you go on your way. It's interesting because I'd never come across this reading before, but it's kind of startling when you think about it. The rabbis are suggesting that maybe welcoming a stranger is more important than even remaining in the presence of God. This is the line from the Talmud. Greater is hospitality toward guests than receiving the divine presence.
Jeremy Duncan:Think about that. Abraham is sitting with God, the single most important conversation of his life, and he says, to God, mind you, hold that thought. I think we've got company. And yet, all of a sudden, those translation complexities kind of melt away for a moment. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:Like, who is Abraham speaking to? Why does he switch between plural and singular pronouns? Well, because there are two different conversations going on. All of it is resolved. At least it is for a moment.
Jeremy Duncan:Because here's the genius of the rabbis. They're not rounding off the hard edge of the story. They're delaying the punchline so that it can really land. See, maybe Abraham asks God to wait so he can welcome the stranger. And then he eats with them.
Jeremy Duncan:He talks with them. But then by verse ten, one of them is now making promises on behalf of God. Surely, I will return to you this time next year, and Sarah, your wife, will have a son. Then just three verses after that, the text is using the divine name for the stranger. This time we read, the Lord said to Abraham, why did your wife Sarah laugh at this?
Jeremy Duncan:Is anything too hard for me? I promise, I'll return at the appointed time next year and she will have a son. You just wait and see. Read in full, what you have here is the rabbis imagining Abraham excusing himself from a conversation with God to go and welcome strangers, only to find himself walking straight back into the promises of the same God he had just asked to wait. And that's the trick.
Jeremy Duncan:He doesn't lose the conversation by getting up to welcome the stranger. He finds himself now at the very heart of what God had always been wanting to say to him. God was there all along sitting in the tent with Abraham and yet also, at the same time there in a different way, in the voice of the stranger who was welcomed without hesitation. Is it at all possible that you and I can get so fixated on listening to God to the exclusion of those around us that sometimes we actually miss the ways in which the divine is speaking to us right now in the voices that we're not paying attention to. Is it at all possible that right now God is wanting to say something to you, and he's just waiting for you to say, hold on.
Jeremy Duncan:I'll be right back. There's someone else that needs my attention. And if you and I could just find the guts to do that, we might uncover a whole new world through which God is speaking to us today. This is why I'm starting to believe that learning to listen to the strangers in our lives is actually a spiritual practice. God is far stranger than we realize.
Jeremy Duncan:And I don't mean that strange as in distant from us, but I do mean strange as in different from us. Not our category, not our tribe or experience, not our echo reflected back. God is, as I say to my daughter when she's being weird, a stranger. And that means that if God only ever sounds like me, if my God always speaks in my accent, then perhaps I have grasped something of the profound familiarity of neighbor in my relationship with God. But maybe I have lost the beautiful mystery of stranger when it comes to the divine.
Jeremy Duncan:Which is why sometimes a God that shows up on the road dusty and unannounced is the God who calls me away from the conversation I'm already having to enter into the one that I didn't see coming. A new conversation with a God who is wonderfully strange, who speaks in plural and singular all at the same time, a God who's here and there all at once. A God who reminds me that every single stranger who sits across from me carries a little bit of God that I have not seen yet. Maybe another way of suffering that I haven't experienced. Perhaps another way of hoping that I haven't uncovered yet.
Jeremy Duncan:Sometimes another way of laughing at promises that sometimes seem too good to be true. That's how this story ends. But the thing is, that strange God that I meet in the stranger is more real than the one that I can contain and explain and fit within the expectations of my language. Which is sometimes why I think the more I think I know God, the more I have to fight to remain constantly curious to the possibility that my next conversation might be the one that helps me meet the God I don't know yet. And if that's true, then maybe the practice is simple.
Jeremy Duncan:It's just this, to roll up the sides of our tents, to teach ourselves how to be curious in 360 degrees, to understand that not every new conversation with a stranger will be God. Some of them will just be lunch. But every now and then, we will welcome a stranger to our table, and we will find ourselves walking straight back into a conversation with God. Because the divine is far stranger than we think, and at the same time, a lot closer than we imagine. And sometimes God is already sitting in the shade with us, and God is waiting for us to look up and see what conversation comes next.
Jeremy Duncan:Let's pray. God, we're so grateful for the ways that you are familiar. The ways that we can lean into our relationship with you to feel safe and loved, to know that you are a friend and a neighbor. All of these different images of you that draw us in and tight. But at the same time, would you help us never forget the beauty and the mystery of the stranger?
Jeremy Duncan:The God who is far different from us. The God who is calling us to become in something different than we are today. The God that we will never be able to make sense of until we are willing to listen to the stories and the perspectives, the views that come from outside what makes us. That we slowly begin to trust then that every person we encounter, neighbor or stranger, carries the image of God. And that in that as we listen, we might actually learn something of you.
Jeremy Duncan:Would you keep us curious and open? Help us roll up the sides of our tent and look for conversations in 360 degrees from angles and perspectives that we would not have seen on our own. And in that, may our imagination of you slowly become larger and larger until it envelops our whole view of the world. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing at Commons, you can head to our website anytime, commons dot church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials CommonsChurch, and you can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we're posting content regularly for the community. So, thanks for tuning in, have a great week!