Does anyone want to hazard a guess at the age of the oldest woman on record to give birth in recent times? Well, it was a lady in India who was 74 years old when she had a baby in September 2019. Her husband was 82.
I hope I’m not being indiscrete, but I happen to know that a few of you here today are in their 80’s or 90’s. So, if I was to tell one of you ladies in that age bracket that you’re pregnant, then I wonder what your reply would be? I can quite imagine that some of your comments would be unprintable… and there might be some ‘looks’ from those who know you best.
Long-awaited
Today we have that rather surprising but wonderful story of the three visitors who come to bring startling news to Abraham and Sarah. Well, more to Sarah actually. The news is that within a year, the 89-year-old Sarah will become pregnant and have that long-awaited, long-promised child.
We don’t get to hear her tone of voice – but we’re told in the verses that follow ours that Sarah laughs. Is it a giggle or a snigger? A laugh of surprise and pleasure? Or a snort of incredulity and derision? We don’t know. I’ll leave you to think about which of those is most likely if you were in her place!
But this wasn’t the first time the promise about a child had been made. By her reaction you wonder perhaps if Abraham hadn’t told her about the previous time, which is related a chapter earlier?… It was Abraham’s turn to laugh then. Had it seemed so unlikely that he didn’t want to pass on such foolishness? At their time of life had he not wanted to raise her expectations only for them to be shattered?
So, was God making sure the message was really delivered this time? I can imagine Sarah giving Abraham a ‘look’ when she realised that she was the only one laughing at such nonsense. Do we sometimes filter out God’s word and only pass on what we think people need to hear – or what we think is safe for them to hear?
Focus on the guests
Often the visitors are portrayed as angels or even the Holy Trinity and the conversation between the lead character and Abraham only really makes sense if it’s Yahweh. Last time I was here I talked about the icon by Rublev, called ‘The Trinity’, or sometimes ‘the Hospitality of Abraham’, which depicts the scene. One of the many telling things that marks the icon out is that it focusses on the guests and not the hosts. Abraham and Sarah are nowhere to be seen. And, indeed, the question can be asked – who is hosting who?
But it’s called ‘the Hospitality of Abraham’. Not ‘the Hospitality of Abraham and Sarah’. And I think we need to stand up for Sarah and right a wrong here.
Credit where it’s due. In good Middle Eastern tradition, Abraham falls over himself to be welcoming to the strangers. It’s the middle of the day, it’s hot and he’s running around like a 3-year-old. It’s even more remarkable when you remember that he’s actually 99-years-old, so Archie’s age, and had been lying there recovering from just circumcising himself…
And I think we need to reflect on how welcoming we are when we have visitors. Do we disrupt our routine and perhaps even cause ourselves a certain level of discomfort? Or do we just expect them to fit in with whatever we happen to be doing?
Extra-ordinary
But back to Genesis and Sarah is part of this hospitality too. They’re a team. It’s a poor reflection on us that she’s so often overlooked in this scene.
Between Sarah and Abraham their hospitality to their guests is extra-ordinary. We don’t tend to consider the spread of food that they put on together but it’s of truly heroic, epic proportions. Because Sarah makes bread from 3 selahs or 3 measures of flour. A measure is about 12 pounds. So that’s 36 pounds of flour – roughly 36 loaves of bread. For just three guests…
On top of that there’s curds and milk – and a whole calf, tender and good. For just three of them… because Abraham stands back to let them eat.
Maybe the three guests stayed there eating for a week before dropping the bombshell about the impending pregnancy? Or maybe Sarah was giving them something extra to put in their backpacks for their journey onwards? Perhaps the couple realised they had divine beings in their presence and assumed they had really big appetites? It was over the top in its generosity.
Abundance
And we often think of the extravagance and abundance that God shows us. There’s the wedding at Cana with the water into wine – where 6 stone jars of 30 gallons each works out at 1100 bottles! Or there’s Jesus’ feeding of the thousands with 12 baskets of food left over. Then the catch of fish that almost broke the nets.
There’s also the parable told by Jesus in Luke where the Kingdom of God is like the woman who hides yeast in the dough. And yes, it’s also 3 measures. 36 pounds. Exactly the same quantity that Sarah used. Perhaps Jesus had Sarah in mind when he told the parable?
So, isn’t it refreshing to see a story where we are being extravagant back, even if Abraham and Sarah are perhaps unaware of exactly who it is that they’re entertaining at this stage? And shortly after in Genesis we read of the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, where we’re told that their real undoing was their absence of hospitality.
There’s a Jewish legend that Sarah’s tent was always open to visitors, that her dough miraculously increased and that the presence of God in a pillar of cloud rested over the entrance. Indeed, there’s a fable that God so loved the hospitality of Sarah and the smell of her cooking, that the Tabernacle that he later established with Moses in the desert was to remind him of her tent. The Tabernacle was to be a place where God could always be a next-door neighbour to the children of Israel as they wandered through Sinai.
Listened first
It’s perhaps not too surprising that our reading is paired with Mary and Martha entertaining Jesus at their home in Bethany. Martha is doing an ‘Abraham & Sarah’, running around trying to get a meal together. Mary is being a disciple, quietly sat at Jesus feet. Jesus here doesn’t seem too concerned about being fed. He’s more bothered about being listened to, about delivering a message. But maybe, being part of the Trinity, he’s still making his way through those 36 loaves that Sarah made…?
If you think ahead though, in some Gospel’s it’s Mary who shows that wildly over-the-top but intimate gesture, pouring a pint of perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiping them with her hair, a week before his crucifixion. She somehow understood what was to happen, even when no-one else seemed to.
So, I wonder if one aspect of hospitality is being open to someone else’s agenda and not your own? Martha was busy ‘doing’ when Jesus visited. Mary listened and much later was extravagant in her response. But she listened first. Do we, I wonder?
Unstinting
In Luke’s Gospel, it’s from Bethany that Jesus finally ascends into heaven. Perhaps he chose to go to his heavenly home from a place where he’d been made to feel so at home on earth?
So, maybe we need to think about how we can be unstinting in our welcome and in how we entertain visitors? How to be extravagant in making them feel at home. But to be quiet and listen to them too.
Who knows what surprising news we might hear from any strangers that drop by? What fresh insights they might have for us. And we may be astonished if we knew the real identity of our new next-door neighbour…
Stranger on the bus
But then I think hospitality is a bit more than welcoming people that come to us. As we saw in the parable of the Good Samaritan last week, hospitality is more an attitude of mind, a way of thinking about the world and of those that we encounter, wherever we may be.
In 1995, American singer Joan Osborne released a single called ‘One of Us’. Its chorus was: ‘What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us. Just a stranger on the bus. Tryin’ to make His way home?’
In the incarnation, God did indeed become one of us. I wonder what difference it would make to the generosity with how we lived our lives if we always looked for and recognised something of the Christ in everyone and anyone that we met – on the bus, in the supermarket, or, perhaps, even sat in the pew next to us. Amen
‘The Practice of Hospitality’ was delivered by Ian Banks at St John and St Mark’s on 20th July 2025. It was based on Genesis 18:1-10a and Luke 10:38-42.