What we need to remember when we read this story in Genesis 18 is that a whopping twenty-four years have now passed since God first promised to build a mighty nation from these two childless senior citizens. But their getting caught up in that was not so easy. Small wonder they were God’s choice to get things rolling in his plan of salvation. The text makes it sound like they pulled this together in a snap and if so, it was their long experience in hospitality that allowed them to make this look easy. He and Sarah had been down this entertaining road before. The speed with which he came up with his meal plan and menu and the ease with which it all came together suggests strongly that this was by no means the first time Abraham had done this for strangers he encountered. Probably this story speaks to Abraham’s good character. But if he intuited this immediately, we are not told. Later by the time you get the promises about Sarah having a child in one year and then the subsequent story of Abraham’s trying to cut a deal to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, it is clear he knows he may be dealing directly with God here. From the looks of Genesis 18, Abraham saw people in need of food and drink and he extended an invitation for them to receive just that. Why did Abraham do this? Why did he, as the saying goes, “do it up brown?” Did he suspect these men were from God? Did he suspect this just was God incognito? Nothing in the text indicates this to be the case, at least not in the moments when Abraham first encountered these travelers. It’s not always easy, which is probably what lies behind the wry saying that hospitality is the knack for making others feel at home even when you wish they were. In hospitality we make room in our lives for others, we create a space for them to live in if only for a time. You put yourself out, as they say, so as to provide something good for your guests. That is how it always is with hospitality. Abraham had to go pick out a calf for the veal course and then it had to be slaughtered, butchered into various cuts, and then of course cooked in some fashion. That’s why I have always wondered how long the three mysterious visitors to Abraham at Mamre sat around while Abraham and Sarah whipped up a small feast for them.

That’s how it goes with entertaining and with putting on a good meal. It took me parts of three days to prep the sauces and do what I could ahead of time and then probably a total of 5 hours on the day of the meal itself. In the end I made a smoked salmon mousse with crackers as an appetizer followed by a salad course, a fish course, a game course, the main course, and a dessert and various sides for each course.

I ordered some venison online and picked up other ingredients in at least three other stores for this and that. The first step was figuring out a menu and then making a plan to secure the ingredients. Recently I made a multi-course gourmet dinner for my parents on the occasion of their 64 th wedding anniversary.

Sermon audio genesis 315