Carla was on an overnight train
because her plane wouldn’t take off. She was trying to get to New Orleans for
an audition. Her career as an actress
was taking off. She had already landed a
small role on a sit-com. Her schedule
was crazy, living in New York City. She
hardly ate and barely slept. Her agent
said that the must read for this part. She decided to take a train from New
York City to New Orleans. She could catch up on email, study the script. It would give her enough time to get
everything done.
At first, she spent all her time
on her iphone, texting friends, checking emails, Facebook. Then something
unexplainable happened to her phone. It just started malfunctioning. Oh, no!
I don’t have time for this! She thought.
She turned it off and when she tried to restart the phone it just was
dead. DEAD. Nothing.
What was she supposed to do for 28
more hours? Sleep? There was this baby across the aisle that was
crying and driving her crazy so she looked over. A young man seemed to be
caring for the baby and a little boy all alone. Was there a mother? The dad looked tired.
Carla listened to the baby cry a
little longer and then tried making silly faces at the baby. And it stopped crying, reaching out its arms
to her. “Can I hold her?” she asked the
weary dad. He seemed grateful.
Carla played with the baby, who wanted
to chew on her hair. Soon the little boy
came over, curious about his sister’s new friend. Slowly, Carla came to know the little
family. By evening, the baby and the
little boy had fallen asleep and she found herself talking to this young father. As the train rolled on through the night, he
told her how his wife had been hit by a car and how he was doing the best he
could and it was like a space opened up in her heart. Her busy life was just shoved aside and she
was present with this man as he opened his life to her. And she was changed.
They fell in love that night on
the train. Years later, she would tell
her children that she would never have met their father if her iPhone hadn’t died.
In Jesus’ time, the most
precious commodity was food. You never knew when your next meal would be
served. Fish had to be caught. Bread
made from scratch. Even water was
scarce. So the best thing in the whole
world was a wedding banquet. The bride’s
family would pull out all the stops, there would be meat, wine, bread, dates,
and the feast could last for days.
When you went to a wedding
banquet, the seats of honor were served food first. So to sit in a place of honor was like a guarantee
that you would get to eat. And in a land
where food was that scarce, that was a big deal. Everyone wanted to sit up close and be served
first. And Jesus gave the radical
message to his followers that instead of trying to sit in the front, they
should sit in the back and maybe they would be invited up. Anticipate that
those who have not yet come are more important than you are, he said. Make room for them. Make room for the stranger.
Eating meals today is not a big
deal. We all have food in this
country. But what we are running short
of is time. Technology is making us feel
as if we do not have enough time. So I
would like to reinterpret Jesus’ parable to make it more relevant to our day.
Instead of leaving space at the table for the stranger, I want you to consider
making space in calendars for strangers and for the unexpected. I want you to think of giving your time.
Do not
neglect to how hospitality to strangers, says the Letter to the
Hebrews, for by doing that some heave
entertained angels without knowing it. Make
room for people that you do not know.
Make space for God to tell you something through people you may not have
even met. You may meet someone who will change your life. But you must have time to listen to that
person, time for the unexpected. You must retain the ability and the space to listen
to your life.
The word angel means messenger.
Anyone can be an angel, a relative, a friend or even a stranger. Whether they
know it or not, angels carry messages from God. But how can we entertain angels
if we have no space in or lives, no time in which to meet them? What if Carla’s phone had not broken? She would have been texting and emailing and
she would not have had time for the stranger across the aisle or for his
children. She would have missed out on
love.
If you take up the prime seats
in your life with your current job and relationships and obligations, how can God
send you anything new? If there is no
space in your life for the unexpected, how can anything ever change?
In order to listen to God, we
must not only give God time but we must give strangers time too. We must let people in when we are driving, we
must give our attention to someone who makes a request of us, we must try to
give make room for God’s Spirit to move. There is another word for giving up the
central seat in your life, it is called listening. Or another way of putting it is being
present.
Make space for God in your
lives. Keep your eyes open to what God
is saying and doing. Listen. Watch. Welcome the stranger into your life.
When I was in college, I spent a
few summers working in Russian orphanages.
My home church gathered toys for the orphans that I would then take over
with me. This was before 9-11 before
threats of terrorism. My church was so
generous that I filled a UHAUL with toys, gum, craft supplies and made my way
to the airport with boxes upon boxes. I was so young. I didn’t realize that
there is a weight limit on airplanes.
There was no way that I could take all that stuff. So there I was, in a long line at JFL Airport
in New York with boxes and boxes full of toys and no way to get them on the
plane.
A group of Orthodox Jews stood
in front of me. When they learned what I
was trying to do, they opened their suitcases.
A woman threw away a dress, a hairdryer. “Give me some of those toys,”
she said. A man shoved his books aside. More suitcases opened. Clothes were being thrown away, toiletries,
shoes. The news traveled further down
the line. “Give me a stuffed
animal! Give me more!’ “I can fit some,”
said another teenaged girl.
The people on that airplane made
room for those toys. Every single toy
made it to Moscow. Because people made
room.
Your life is like a
suitcase. It is full of appointments and
obligations and errands. But you must take some of these things out in order to
make room for God. It is essential. Leave space for God in your life. In that way, you will be open to the message
of the angels.
