Gen 18: 1-15

HOSPITALITY

ILLUS: The Talmud states that faithful Jews must thank God as much for good days as bad

Many churches state, “All welcome!”

Abraham and Sarah practice radical hospitality. Baked bread, killed the calf. Didn’t just do the bare minimum, but invited them into their home and life for a time. This was a matter of life and death for those traveling in the desert.

1 Peter 4:9:
9Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Matthew 25: I was a stranger and you invited me in.

ILLUS: Bare minimum….doing as little as necessary to get an A in a class.

In our busyness, do we truly practice radical hospitality, or do we scrape up leftovers and do the bare minimum?

HURDLES/SURPRISES
ILLUS: Andy Griffith show: surprise party. Barney sees Andy and Helen in the jewelry store sneaking a kiss and tells everyone they are engaged. Aunt Bee redecorates Andy's room for a bride and throws a big surprise party for them.

ILLUS: My father---

Kidnapped, raised by grandparents, never knew mother
Never finished high school, though intelligent
Worked hard to ensure a better life for children
Taught perseverance, determination
Life of faith will throw curveballs at us. Even when it means God’s blessing, there will be hurdles and surprises.

HUMOR
Walking with God takes a sense of humor. It is the beginning of an awesome and scary journey. Sarah laughed. I would too.
Laughter is healthy and necessary to deal with the faith hurdles.

Sarah laughed because God was promising something that every sensible bone in her body thought was impossible. Kind of like it used to be said that breaking the sound barrier was impossible.

ILLUS: Breaking the Sound Barrier (book by Theresa Flint-Borden). Sometimes walking in faith is like breaking the sound barrier.

Here are transcripts from the PBS show, NOVA 10/24/97 (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2412barrier.html)

SIR PETER MASEFIELD: There was a feeling that this was a barrier. It couldn't be overcome, because airplanes would go out of control and nothing could be done to bring them in.

DE BEELER: Well, there were a lot of people that said it was impossible. And that's why they talked about the sonic wall. That means like a brick wall. And a lot of people accepted that.

STACY KEACH (NARRATOR): The day that a plane first flew faster than sound was a milestone in the history of aviation. Many thought it couldn't be done. But great risks were taken, and lives were lost to prove the skeptics wrong.

CAPT. ERIC BROWN: There was a huge amount of vibration juddering through the aircraft. As you got closer to the speed of sound, each bite beyond a certain limit was fraught with the possibility of disaster.

ANN B. CARL: Funny things began to happen inside the cockpit. Dust was flying around. The stick would bang over against my leg, and I tried various things. It was certainly not a pleasant feeling to have the plane out of control. We were just going so fast that I didn't think I could probably get out.

Lots of people tried and just gave up when they were almost there.

STACY KEACH (NARRATOR): Most frightening of all, it became harder and harder to pull the Spitfire out of its dive. The elevator, the movable part of the tail that changes the angle of the dive, wouldn't work, no matter how hard the pilot pulled back on the control stick.

SIR PETER MASEFIELD: Several test pilots, sadly, were lost because the airplane went uncontrollable.
STACY KEACH (NARRATOR): But the risks and sacrifice helped reveal why these World War II fighter planes were going out of control. At slow speeds, the air flowed smoothly over the thick wings. But near the speed of sound, air traveled so fast that it formed shock waves, causing it to break away from the wing surface. The air would become turbulent, disrupting the wing and tail controls. Worse still, the lift generated by the air moved backwards, tipping the plane into an uncontrollable dive.

STACY KEACH (NARRATOR): Yeager was in considerable pain. On the eve of the flight, he had fallen off a horse and broken his ribs.

BRIG. GEN. CHUCK YEAGER: You're in a very dark hole under the B-29, and when you drop clear of the B-29, you're in bright sunlight. When I got above 94% of the speed of sound, the nose begins to come up on the airplane. I just cranked the leading edge up on the horizontal stabilizer to keep the nose down. When we went a little faster, the mach meter went off the scale and when it did, all the buffeting smoothed out, because the supersonic flow went over the whole airplane. And even I knew we had gotten above the speed of sound.

From http://www.acepilots.com/usaaf_yeager2.html:

The X-1 had gone through "the sonic wall" without so much as a bump. As the speed topped out at Mach 1.05, Yeager had the sensation of shooting straight through the top of the sky. The sky turned a deep purple and all at once the stars and the moon came out - the sun shone at the same time. ... He was simply looking out into space. ... He was master of the sky. His was a king's solitude, unique and inviolate, above the dome of the world.
God has amazing, seemingly impossible plans in store for each of us. There is only one requirement as we are faced with the blessings and challenges of God’s plans: are we willing to be faithful? Faithful enough to practice radical hospitality? Faithful enough to hang in there through the hurdles? Faithful enough to laugh at the ridiculousness of the seemingly impossible things that God can and will do with those who surrender to God’s will.

- Renee