Today’s readings: Genesis 18,1-10; Colossians 1,24-28; Luke 10,38-42.

If we were to take seriously the truths about our humanity, we would make it a point to constantly remind the world we live in that the way things are is not the way they have to be. There seems to be a mood of resignation, a pragmatism that abandons vision and is satisfied with what can be salvaged, that is currently the dominant mood of mainstream politics.

This same mood though can very easily take over even in religion and in our churches. Shane Claiborne, a leading figure in the New Monasticism movement, in his foreword to The Awakening of Hope, is right when he says that one of the major crises of religion today is that “we find ourselves in an age of shallow spirituality, where much of our Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep”.

Today’s readings, particularly Abraham’s experience by the Oak of Mamre welcoming God’s visitation, show that God’s newness breaks into the world as we know it, disrupts the status quo, disturbs the peace that is no peace, and reminds us that another world is possible here and now. It is the mystery of hospitality expressed not only in Abraham’s and Sarah’s welcome of the three angels, but also in God’s welcome of the aged couple into the joy of the covenant through an heir.

Andrew Rublev beautifully reproduced this text in one of his icons, offering his fellow monks a way to keep their hearts centered in God while living in the midst of political unrest. Henri Nouwen, in his book Behold the Beauty of the Lord, writes that “through the contemplation of this icon we come to see with our inner eyes that all engagements in this world can bear fruit only when they take place within this divine circle”.

The other option to remaining within this ‘divine circle’ is the spiral of everyday hassling that adds further unrest in our hearts to the unrest around us. Luke narrates Martha and Mary welcoming Jesus in their home as an icon of different ways of being Church and of going about one’s life. It highlights the tragedy of the Church today and of many of our Christian communities that fail to be embodied in community. The Christian gospel is social and contemplative at its very heart.

Hospitality and solidarity strictly speaking are not Christian virtues. Basically they are human values, and when they are lacking, there is no civility, and our humanity is impoverished. Experience shows that our societies can go so far. W. H. Auden, an Anglo-American poet engaged with moral and political issues, once observed with cynical perception that we are all here on earth to do good to others: “What the others are here for, I don’t know”.

In his essay Letter on Humanism, published soon after Germany’s defeat in World War II, Martin Heidegger refers to the condition of homelessness as “coming to be the destiny of the world”. By homelessness, Heidegger means something more than not having a roof over one’s head. His assertion of homelessness as the condition of the modern world is part of a critique of the status of humanism in the West.

The status of humanism at this juncture of history calls for anything but resignation. Resignation breeds shallow politics and shallow spirituality. Etienne Balibar, in his book Politics and the Other Scene, writes about the most massive form of poverty in today’s world as being the fact that millions of human beings are superfluous. “Nobody needs them – they are, so to speak, disposable people. They are facing the prospect of extermination whose forms are not only violent but specifically cruel.”

We may be on the receiving side of such a tragedy. We may be tempted from time to time to enter into political or moral disquisitions whenever the issue surfaces tragically. But surely we cannot afford to lose sight of what is at stake. The less we see with our inner eyes what life is about and what gives it dignity, the greater unrest we experience not only politically but also spiritually, in the depths of our own hearts and in coming to terms with who we are.

Contemplation is a dimension of our lives which, whoever we are and whatever our beliefs, we cannot ignore. Or if we ignore, we do it at a cost.