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Every religion holds out the hope to the prospective convert that it can mediate a deeper and richer experience of life. In the words of the Johannine Jesus, "That they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10). The problem lies in the fact that God is more ready to give than we are to receive. We have an excellent illustration of this human deficit in the story of Abraham and the Three Guests (Genesis 18:1-15).

The opening verse states that it is "the Lord" who appears to Abraham, mediated by the three men and one speaker who appear later in the narrative, and by the two messengers or angels in chapter 19. The fluidity of actors in the scene is a narrative means of describing both the nearness and the mysterious elusiveness of God.

In the tradition of Easter Orthodox iconography, the three men are represented as the three persons of the Trinity. The initial contrast of the dozing Abraham and the purposefully journeying men, and between Abraham’s frantic preparations and their commanding silence, all this underscores the mysterious nature of the encounter.

But the good news that they bring, that the aged Sarah will bear a son, is received by the prospective mother not with joy but with disbelief:

So Sarah laughed to herself, saying,
"After I have grown old and my husband is old,
shall I have pleasure?"
Genesis 18:12

Sarah’s disbelief turns to fear, when the Lord asks Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh?" (verse 13), and she gets herself in deeper with a lie: "I did not laugh" (verse 15). Actually, Sarah’s laugh points ahead to the name of her son-to-be, Isaac, which comes from the Hebrew verb, "to laugh."

Someone once said to me, "You ought to expect nice things to happen to you," but I must admit that, like many other people, I am often "suprised by joy," to use the title of C.S. Lewis’s book. Last week TIME magazine had a cover article on

Understanding Anxiety:
Now more than ever we are worrying ourselves sick.

So much of the suffering in life is self-inflicted. Paul asks rhetorically,

God who did not spare his own Son,
will he not also give us all things with him?
Romans 8:32

But we, like Sarah, laugh in disbelief. We prefer the unhappiness to which we have grown accustomed to the risk of hoping for a better future.

Our gospel narrates The Sending out of the Twelve (Matthew 9:35-10:8). It is interesting to note that in Matthew’s account, in which he differs from his Marcan source (Mark 6:30), the Twelve never return, which suggests that the mission is still ongoing. Jesus has compassion on the crowds, "because they were harrassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). In his journeying through the cities and villages of Galileee, Jesus combines preaching the gospel with "healing every disease and every infirmity" (verse 35), and when he sends out the Twelve, he bestows his own power to cast out unclean spirits and to heal every disease and every infirmity (10:1). Spiritual and physical healing go together. Nothing is more damaging to human well-being than the pernicious split between soul and body.

The Prayer Book collect for today declares that God has given us "a hearty desire to pray." May God increase our desire for his grace, so that we do not, like Sarah, put an obstacle in the way of the gifts he wishes to give us.

June 16, 2002

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