God of the Stranger

God of The Invisible

The God of Abraham - Part 4

Sunday, September 24, 2023
Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7

So Abraham hurried to Sarah at his tent and said, “Hurry! Knead three seahs of the finest flour and make some baked goods!”  Abraham ran to the cattle, took a healthy young calf, and gave it to a young servant, who prepared it quickly.  Then Abraham took butter, milk, and the calf that had been prepared, put the food in front of them, and stood under the tree near them as they ate.

 - Genesis 18:6-8

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Craig J. Sefa

God of the Stranger

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Three strangers are traveling near Abraham’s desert camp in the heat of the day.  He has no idea who they are, or what their intentions might be.  Could they be hostile?  Could they be criminals or escaped slaves?   Could they be outcasts because of a highly contagious disease?  Who knows?  The only thing that matters to Abraham is that God has called him to care for the stranger, just as he was cared for when he himself was a stranger in this new land.

We don’t generally have strangers in need walking by our homes or our churches, so the question is, what does it look like to extend this kind of hospitality today?  In Laura Buchanan’s article on umc.org, “Hospitality tips for the 21st century,” we find just a few suggestions to get us started, especially when it comes to showing hospitality as a church.

1. Make a personal connection

   Sit beside people, ask them how they are.  Learn their story.  Ask questions.  Build relationships… Don’t be aggressive.  Learn about them rather than trying to get them to come to all of your activities.

2. Learn to be a guest 

   People don’t naturally come to church.  We have to go to them in the  community.  Ask yourself, “Who do I hang out with every week?  What do we do together?  Where do I spend a lot of time outside of church?”  What if those  relationships became a form of church?  What if we created community wherever  we go?

3. Find spaces to build relationship

   Evaluate your life, interests, where you find yourself in the community on a regular basis.  Don’t think you already know the community or the people you are talking to.  Come in as a  learner… be a learner of people, a learner of your community.  Let the place and the people teach you.

4. Rethink evangelism

   Simply inviting people to church is not evangelism.  We must listen, love, and serve people.  Find out how to do things together.  Build relationships slowly over time.  When little spiritual openings come up in conversation, you can share your faith. You can offer to pray for people.  You can form little faith communities within your everyday relationships. 

Hospitality is about creating friendships with people who don’t go to church, not just about how we welcome people when they come to church. 

Authenticity is key. 

When our motive is to grow our church, we reek of desperation and we push people away.  When we show up with no agenda except to show love to the other person and to get to know them for who they are, God has a way of showing up, just as God showed up for Abraham.

God of the Invisible

God of The Invisible

The God of Abraham - Part 3

Sunday, September 17, 2023
Genesis 16:1-16, 21:8-21, 17:20-22

So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”

Genesis 16:13

God heard the boy’s cries, and God’s messenger called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “Hagar! What’s wrong? Don’t be afraid. God has heard the boy’s cries over there.  Get up, pick up the boy, and take him by the hand because I will make of him a great nation.”  Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well. She went over, filled the water flask, and gave the boy a drink.  God remained with the boy; he grew up, lived in the desert, and became an expert archer.  

 Genesis 21:17-20

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Craig J. Sefa

God of the Invisible

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As we journey with Abraham and the story of Israel’s beginnings, it is very easy to cast Hagar and Ishmael aside just as Sarah did.  After all, we are worship the God of Abraham, Issac & Jacob, not the God of Ismael.   Hagar and Ismael are not part of our story, or so we think. 

But what if the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob is the God of Ishmael too?  What if the God we worship also cares for those we cast aside because they are different than us?  For centuries Muslims and Christians have been at war, and yet we are all children of Abraham, one nation descended through Isaac and Israel and another through the line of Ishmael. 

Isaac may have been chosen by God as the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham, to birth a nation through whom all the world would be blessed and would come to know the love of their creator, but that choice does not imply any condemnation of Hagar or Ishmael.  They did not do anything wrong.  They and their descendants are not our enemies, nor are they enemies of God.  In fact, Hagar is the first person in our scriptures to “name” God, and the name she uses is “the God who sees.” 

By our modern sensibilities we may want to condemn her as immoral for having a child with a married man, but in her culture, she only did what was demanded of her for the greater good of making sure Abraham had an heir.  She was cast out not because of wrongdoing on her part, but because of Sarah’s jealousy, particularly after the birth of her own miracle baby, Isaac. 

So what does this ancient story of an abandoned single mother and child in the wilderness have to do with us?  Perhaps a lot more than we think, especially considering this abandoned child is our brother.  The fact that God did not abandon Hagar and Ishmael means that we cannot abandon them either. 

Who are the Hagars and Ishmaels cast out in the deserts of our world today?  From a genealogical perspective, that would at least include the Muslim people who descended from Abraham and Ishmael and yet are continually demonized by Christians all over the world. 

More than that, however, we see the face of Hagar & Ishmael in every person who is cast out, who is on the margins, who has lost everything and everyone in their lives.  We see the face of Hagar in those we have overlooked, ignored or even turned our backs on.  We see the face of Ismael in those we do not even know, in the poor and abused and abandoned in our own community who we do not even notice. 

God sees them all.  Do we?

God of Promise & Possibility

God of Promise & Possibility

The God of Abraham - Part 2

Sunday, September 10, 2023
Genesis 17:1-20

When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am El Shaddai.  Walk with me and be trustworthy.  I will make a covenant between us and I will give you many, many descendants.”

Genesis 17:1-2

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Craig J. Sefa

God of Promise & Possibility

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God had promised to make Abram into a great nation, that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars, and that through him all nations of the world would be blessed.  There was only one problem… Abram and his wife were far too old to have children. 

In the ancient near eastern culture, having a male heir was crucial, so Sarai, Abram’s wife, gave her maidservant Hagar to Abram so that she could bear for them the son that she could not have.  By the time we get to chapter 17, Abram’s son Ismael is coming of age as a 13 year old young man.  We’ll come back to Ishmael & Hagar next week, but for now, it is important to remember that according to their culture, Abram did nothing wrong by having a child with Hagar to be his heir.  Though our modern sensibilities consider this immoral, even God does not condemn the morality of Abram and Sarai’s action.

The problem for God, as we see in chapter 17, is not that Abram had a child with his maidservant, but that Ishmael, despite being Abram’s firstborn, is not the child God had promised.  For the Biblical writer, it is not a question of morality or even marital faithfulness.  It is rather a question of Abram taking God’s promises into his own hands and doing things his own way.

13 years have passed.  Abram is 99 years old and preparing his son to one day take responsibility of his great inheritance.  Then God shows up and reminds Abram that the promise has not yet been fulfilled.

“What do you mean, God?  I have Ishmael.  All is well.  Why can’t he inherit your promise?” 

Next week we’ll see that God does not forsake Ishmael.  At the same time, God is working toward a new creation through the faithfulness of Abram’s lineage.  Just as God created all things from a formless void and shaped Adam out of the dust of the ground, so God wants to bring forth his people out of the barrenness of Sarai’s womb.  This is God’s promise to fulfill, not Abram’s. 

The trouble is that while Abram believes God’s promise, he feels he alone is responsible for making it happen.  He is not able to comprehend God’s power to bring new life out of barrenness.  Abram clings to the rational solutions of the flesh over the seemingly impossible work of the Spirit.  He is not trying to be disobedient.  Rather, he is trying to obey in the best way he knows how.  If God says he must have descendants, Abram made sure that would happen in the only logical way available to him.  By verse 17 we find Abram laughing at God.  In chapter 18, we’ll see Sarai do the same. 

I wonder what might be behind this laugh.  Maybe the laugh was simply at the absurdity that he and Sarai should bear children so old, especially given her inability to conceive throughout her life.  Maybe the laugh was to keep from crying over his own desperate frustration that all he invested in Ishmael seemed like it was for nothing.  Maybe it was just a laugh of “You’ve got to be kidding… Now What?!” 

More importantly, I wonder in what ways we are still laughing today as we consider the absurd and impossible promises and possibilities of God for our own life?

God of the Journey

God of the Journey

The God of Abraham - Part 1

Sunday, September 3, 2023
Genesis 12:1-9

The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you.                                                                                     

Genesis 12:1

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Craig J. Sefa

God of the Journey

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5th grade was the worst year of my life. 

I started school almost a month late in the oppressive Florida humidity among swarms of love-bugs (if you know, you know). 

Apart from a few good years at the University of Florida and meeting McKenzie, Florida never really grew on me the way everyone said it would.  It may have been flowing with sweat and mosquitos, but it was a far cry from milk and honey.

As I said, one of the few blessings was my time in Gainesville as a Florida Gator.  I no sooner unloaded the car and said goodbye to my parents and I was off on my bike the rest of the week exploring a new campus, a new town, and the beginning of a new life.  That week before classes I met a group of campus ministry students who opened my heart to a depth of faith and a passion for following Jesus that I had never seen in all my years of going to church.   Little did I know then that this encounter would be just the beginning of my recognizing God’s call on my life.

So what does all this have to do with Abraham, let alone the God of Abraham? 

Like both of the seasons above, Abraham’s story is the story of a journey into a new place, a new season, and a new life.  I have had many such transitions and new seasons along my journey through life and ministry, probably more than most… from college to seminary to a doctoral program to training in Spiritual Direction… from Florida to Kentucky to North Carolina… from youth ministry to college ministry to pastoral ministry to retreat leadership…  and the journey continues.

Unlike that first transition from Baltimore to Orlando in 5th grade, every other move was prompted by something bigger than myself that compelled me to step into the unknown.  In 5th grade, I was told that my parents thought the neighborhood I had called home my entire life was no longer safe enough to raise my baby sister.  In my opinion, almost 1,000 miles seems a bit much to flee from a changing neighborhood. 

The God of Abraham is a God of the Journey, a God of transitions, a God who goes with us in every season of life.  I could not see God in my transition to Florida because I wasn’t looking.  I didn’t want to go.  Looking back, I can see how God used every step toward something greater, even if they were not steps I would have taken willingly.  I’m not saying God couldn’t have done great things had I stayed in Baltimore, or that somehow God made my parents move as some sort of grand plan for my life, but I can say that to my surprise, God showed up, even in Florida, in ways I could have never expected.

Just as my parents fled their neighborhood in Baltimore, I went to the University of Florida in large part to get away from home.  What I didn’t know was that God had already gone ahead of me.  God was already there.  And God has already been present in every place and season since. 

Sometimes we set our own path and we choose our own journey.  Other times life takes us where we do not want to go.  No matter how we got here or where we are going, the God of the journey has never left our side, and never will.