What Can Hurt You Most in These Days? This Can. Here's How You Get Free.

Did you ever hear that term “stranger danger?”  Folks use it to warn kids about talking to strangers.  By the way, it turns out kids face greater danger from people they know than a random stranger. Go figure. But now stranger danger has a whole new meaning to me.

Every time I go to the grocery store and reach past someone to pick up an item or just get a little too close for comfort to a person in the aisle, I wonder.  Could they have it?  Could they give me the Covid? Heck, they’re probably thinking the same thing about me.  It’s so weird.  Every person you meet could carry this invisible thing that could kill you or if nothing else, make you really, really sick.  So, we do what we can to be careful.  We even steer clear of neighbors we know when we meet them on the sidewalk.   Heck, these days, anyone could be a danger. 

And in a world like that, fear can easily assume too much power, take too much control.  Yet, here’s the problem.  Again and again God warns how dangerous fear can be.  In fact, God gives no other command more than simply the words, “Do not fear.”   As a wise rabbi once said; “You must accept that fear is not only harmful but evil, not only unhelpful but deeply destructive.”  (Rabbi Shmuley Boteach).  But in a world that can feel pretty scary, how do you not let fear harm you like that?  How do you protect it from even destroying you?  In this stunning story, God shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Genesis 18:1-21

In this story, God shows you a simple yet profound truth.  The more you move past fear, the more blessing comes.   And the more you let fear take control, the more you open the path not simply to harm but even to your own destruction.

Do you think that the first time God went undercover happened when God came in Jesus?  No way.   God did it before, including in these words you just read.  Right at the beginning of the story, God tells you something stunning.  When these three men show up outside Abraham’s tent, God isn’t just sending some angels down.  No, in these three tired strangers, God himself has shown up, standing right on Abraham’s doorstep   Christians have seen in this story even the first hint of God as the Trinity.   In fact, A famous Russian icon of God that celebrates this very story has an image that hints at just that.    

But Abraham doesn’t know that.  As far as he knows, these three strangers are just that, three strangers.   Now before we get into what Abraham does, it’s important to know one thing. In those days, no one went on vacation.   No one took a few days off to go visit Uncle Bob in Babylon.   If you left home, it typically meant something bad.   Famine had struck the land, and you had to go search for food.  Invaders had taken your town or city, and you had to flee.   That meant.  If someone showed up at your door, they were fleeing trouble.  And so, generally people helped.  They provided something to help the travelers along their way.   After all, you never knew when you might need that help.  

Yet, what Abraham does goes way beyond the norm.  First, he not only welcomes them, he bows before them, even calls them “Lord” (which is kind of ironic since they are the Lord).  But then he goes further, he literally kills the fatted calf.  He provides them a meal fit for a king.  Now we know that these three are God in disguise, but Abraham doesn’t know that. 

Not only that, three men traveling alone doesn’t sound like a family fleeing hardship.  No, these guys could have been criminals, scouts for a raiding party.  Abraham had a lot of wealth, sheep, goats, cattle.  But Abraham doesn’t hesitate to lay out a lavish spread, to welcome them with open arms.   For him, the call to share, to care matters more than anything else, including any fear he has.  And as a result, he ends up welcoming, a blessing he and Sarah had yearned for their entire lives, a child.    

For God has shown up to tell them, even though they are old, so old the idea of a child is laughable (as Sarah shows us) that it is going to happen.  A baby is on the way.  As God says it so well, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”

But then God’s conversation takes a shift, a shift to something much darker, to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  And that’s where we ended the story, but the story didn’t end there for Abraham.  No, Abraham tries to save the cities.  Yes, he knows his nephew, Lot, lives there.  But he doesn’t ask God just to save his family members.  No, Abraham tries to save everyone, folks in two cities, he doesn’t even know.  He even starts haggling with God over it.  Talk about no fear!  And He gets God to make a bargain.  If God finds only ten people who are righteous between both these cities, God will save them.

And that’s where the stunning contrast between these two stories becomes clear.  For God does send angels to Sodom and Gomorrah, to look for the righteous.  But here’s the tragedy. God can’t find them.  And why?  Sodom and Gomorrah are captured by fear.     

The story goes like this.  Abraham’s nephew, Lot sees two strangers/angels arrive.  Like, Abraham, he welcomes the strangers into his home.  But Lot’s adopted city doesn’t feel the same.  No, they fear.   Who are these strangers?  Maybe they’re scouts from an enemy city.  Whoever they are, they don’t belong here.  So, the men of the city decide to gang rape them.  They think.   If we humiliate, brutalize them, then kill them, then wherever they come from, they’ll know.  You don’t mess with Sodom and Gomorrah.      

Now, Lot does try to save the strangers. But then Sodom’s fear turns on him. The folks of Sodom say.  “Hold on a second.  Lot’s an alien.  He’s not one of us, either.  Let’s kill him.”   Now, that doesn’t happen.  Instead the angels zap the folks outside with blindness.  So, they can’t even find Lot’s door.   And then, Lot gets it.  These aren’t strangers. They’re angels.  And Sodom and Gomorrah just failed God’s test.  The next day Lot and his family flee. And God destroys the cities, cities that now lie in what is now called the Dead Sea.   

Do you see the irony?    Sodom and Gomorrah’s fear, fear that led them to violence and brutality, ends up destroying them, even making them a byword for evil and depravity ever since.   The rabbi is right.  Fear, at least fear like this, it’s evil. 

But as much as I wanna bash Sodom and Gomorrah, I can’t.  Sure, I haven’t engaged in the brutality they did.  But out of fear, I have distrusted strangers for no reason whatsoever.   Out of fear, I have seen danger in people simply because they looked different than me.  I have let fear too often drive how I see the world and those around me.  And it has hurt me.  It has hurt others. Can you honestly not say the same?  Who hasn’t let fear drive them into a dark place? 

And that’s why this story gives me hope, because it points me to this table.  Now, you might be thinking.  What? What does this story have to do with Communion?

Don’t you see?  When Abraham bargained with God, he reversed the way everyone in his day saw guilt.   If one person in your family did wrong, it tainted your whole family.  The guilt of one stained the many. But here, Abraham says. Why can’t the righteousness of the few save the many, even save them all?   And God agrees. And in that, God is pointing you to God's most profound act of love.

For in Jesus, God did become the one who saved them all.   He, the righteous one, came to us as a stranger.   And captured by fear we turned him away. We even killed him.  But our fear did not destroy him.  No, Instead, his love saved us.    In Jesus, the one did save the many.  The one, this One saved us all.   His love defeated, even destroyed our fear.   And the more you let that love in, the more it will free you from the fear.  The more it will open you to the blessing God yearns to give.  For there is no fear in that love.  Indeed, God’s perfect love casts it out, and will in the end destroy it forever.     So, where are you captured by fear today? Where do you need God’s love to free you?  Let the love of this God free you, this God that has saved us all, now and forever.