Entertaining Angels

​12th Sunday after Pentecost – C (Proper 17)                        LSB #’s 442:1-2, 5; 845, 813:1-3, 6-7
Text – Hebrews 13:1-2
 
Let brotherly love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
 
ENtErtaiNing angels
 
 
I’ll just say up front,  if you despise cats,  you’re going to struggle with this opening illustration.  A year ago, tomorrow,  Jan & I went for a walk.  In the 100’s of times  we’ve gone on walks,  not once  did we ever encounter a stray cat.  On Labor Day last year,  a stray  entered our lives in an unrelenting manner. 
It was a very scrawny, scraggly cat that kept meowing & butting his head into my leg.  He was clearly desperate.  We tried to continue our walk, but it persistently followed us & never relented in its meow.  Fearing it might be a neighbor’s cat, we stopped at the nearest house, & the woman there reported  they found the cat four days before, but she already had two of them. 
This cat was in the middle of the road  with a potato chip bag tied over its head.   Now, Jan & I like cats anyway,  but that did us in.  There was no way we could simply allow the cat to starve to death.  We began stopping by the abandoned house to feed the cat every morning & evening.  And it was always so hungry  it never stood still enough to look us in the eye. 
We couldn’t take the cat to our house because the 18-pound beast that is ours  would’ve run off that scrawny little cat the instant they met.  What do you do in a nation  where there are an estimated 60-100 million stray cats?   We had to find a home.  Once we got him to the vet, they determined he had worms.  That explained why he always seemed to be starving. 
While feeding him at the abandoned house,  he never looked up because his face was buried in his food bowl.  With Hebrews 13:2 in mind, a couple weeks into this saga, one of us asked him, “Orange Kitty, are you an angel?”  His head popped up  & he looked us straight in the eyes.  His reaction  was perfectly on cue.  I know,  it sounds ludicrous,  & I wouldn’t put a dime behind that assertion.  However,  after about a month,  we did find a home for him where he’s thriving.  The other side of the story  is that his adoptive human family, from China,  was also in desperate need of the kind of joy  & unconditional love  that a pet can offer. 
For Jan & myself,  there is no doubt in our minds  that prior to Labor Day last year,  God Himself had prepared in advance  a good work for us to do.  (Ephesians 2:10)    Whether we were entertaining an angel, by showing hospitality to a stray cat,  we can’t say for certain.   What we can say,  is that we are both amazed & grateful  for how God used us  in showing love to others. 
“Let brotherly love  continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”  (Hebrews 13:1-2 ESV)   Much of our living  is about the routine & normal.  Yet,  sometimes,  God reaches out to us in the most unexpected ways.  It’s not every day  that we encounter strangers  whether man or beast. 
In your day to day life,  you have routines  you go through in order to show love to the people you commonly interact with.  You see them in person,  you text them or even make phone calls with them.  You cook dinners,  or clean the dishes.  You handle the laundry & drive them to appointments.  When showing hospitality to strangers there are no such routines. 
That means, you have to do it on the fly.   The whole time we were caring for the stray cat,  we had questions without answers.   Will this cat be healthy?   Where can we find him a home?  Why did someone  drop him off in the middle of a street?  Is this really God’s will  or are we just suckers  spending our time & money on a hopeless situation? 
We can, & should,  seek God’s will through prayer,  but  He often does not give direct & obvious answers.  Instead, He expects us to try something,  & see where He leads.   After six years of wondering  “Should be a pastor,  or not,”  & never getting a direct & obvious answer from God, I finally applied to seminary.  This is where He led me,  & 31 years after applying to seminary  retirement  is on the horizon.  After growing up in the tiny farming community of Frankentrost, MI,  I have met thousands of strangers along the way.   Many of them are brothers & sisters in Christ.  Many have already joined the great chorus in heaven. 
The rest of us  are on the way.  It’s not an easy road because it leads through the horrific landscape of a world filled with evil.  The suffering being endured in Ukraine  is beyond our comprehension.  Things like the shooting at the Catholic school in Minneapolis  are all too common.  The clear & obvious cause is the sinful heart of mankind. 
Instead of acknowledging the truth of sin,  & pointing to Christ’s death & resurrection as the solution,  some leaders in our culture are ridiculing prayer as pointless & useless.  They demand action,  as if human beings can save themselves.  Their shallow & narrowminded worldview  blinds them to the reality  that only Yahweh can save anyone from sin. 
“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) no matter how that death comes.  Only Jesus is the Way, the Truth & the Life.  (John 14:6)  You & I know that truth,  & we know the Way  because we are alive in Christ.  The book of Hebrews is exhorting us to share that life with others, but we don’t do that by lecturing those who don’t belong to Jesus. 
We learned of His love for us by Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself for you & me.  We share Christ’ life with others by sacrificing of ourselves.  This chapter of Hebrews, however, is not addressed to each of us as individual members of Christ’s body.  Rather, it is addressed to the whole congregation as a priestly fraternity. 
As a church we are to carry this out in ten ways: brotherly love, hospitality, caring for those in prison, respect for marriage, detachment from money, remembering former leaders, rejecting false doctrine, almsgiving, obedience to current leaders & prayer.  In these ways a congregation is to offer well-pleasing service to our heavenly Father.  However, these activities are also the lifeblood of the church & they draw people to Jesus; people who would otherwise not know  of His love for them.  At the end of the Gospel reading, Jesus illustrates it this way:
“But when you give a feast,  invite the poor,  the crippled,  the lame,  the blind,  & you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.  For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”  (Luke 14:13-14 ESV)   That resurrection may seem a long way off to you now,  but it is the certainty of that day, & our reward, that enables us to make sacrifices today. 
Was a scrawny,  scraggly,  starving orange cat worth any time or trouble?  That question will have to be answered by you, if you encounter one.  The point of the sermon is not that everyone should work to rescue cats.  However, the story does illustrate how we as the church should be willing to make sacrifices & endure struggle as God works through us to save the lost. 
Compared to Jesus,  each & everyone of us  is like a scrawny, scraggly & starving stray cat.  Not a one of us is worth the time & the trouble to rescue,  except  that in the next life all God’s children will be glorious, holy & full of life & love for everyone & everything in the new heavens & earth.  No more sin.  No more sorrow.  No more sadness, & no more shooting. 
As V. 14 of the epistle stated, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.”  Today, the Son of God offers us hospitality through His Word,  through Baptism & through Holy Communion.  Through those means,  He erases our sins again & again, in order to make us as white as snow.  And through those means Jesus is working to bring us to heaven.
In His name.  Amen.
 
Where charity & love prevail  there God is ever found;  brought here together by Christ’s love  by love are we thus bound.     Forgive we now each other’s faults  as we our faults confess,  & let us love each other well   in Christian holiness.     Let us recall that in our midst  dwells Christ, His only Son;  as members of His body joined  we are in Him made one.  Amen.  LSB 845:1, 3, 5.