This week’s parsha begins with a divine appearance to Avraham: Vayera elav Hashem. “The Lord appeared to him.” We normally think – that kind of revelation happened only in biblical times; it is closed to us.
But the Torah is eternal; maybe there is something to learn here about our own experience of the divine.
Immediately after the proclamation that “The Lord appeared” to Avraham, the Torah tells us that Avraham lifted his eyes and saw 3 “men” in the distance. The relationship between these two events – the divine appearance and the visitation of the three men/angels -- has been debated for generations. Were they two separate events or one? Was Avraham’s vision of the three people – guests to invite into his home – actually the content of his vision of God or merely coinciding occurrences?
The two stories are woven together in a strange and complicated way. Even at the end of the narrative, as Avraham walks his visitors out on their way, God is at the same time informing him of his plans for Sodom. The narrative switches back and forth between the three visitors and God in a seamless way, giving one the mixed up feeling of a dream, with one character blending into another. The implication is that for Avraham, the two entities, whether or not they were identical, were certainly interrelated in some profound way.
Avraham saw God by seeing (and helping) other people. His vision of God did not take place in solitude, but as part of his interactions with others. At the same moment that he made himself open to receiving visitors into his home, he also opened himself to receiving God’s presence. The experience of helping others and also of being able to receive from others – as he received the strangers’ good message here—made him feel the divine presence on this earth.
My therapist once pointed to a particular person in my life and said – She was an angel sent to help you understand something new about yourself and the world. People sometimes are angels. Can we sit in our open tents ready to greet them and to hear their divine messages? Can we see that our interactions with others -- our ability to give to the other, to hear the other, to receive from the other -- these are all ways of seeing and experiencing God?
It’s like the joke about the flood. A man sat in his house during a flood and waited patiently for God to deliver him. A boat came by and the people in it called – Come on up. But the man refused, insisting that God would save him. The water rose and he went up to the second floor of the house. Again a boat came and again he refused. Third floor and the same thing happened, until finally he drowned. He went to heaven and said to God angrily, Why didn’t you save me? God said: What do you think all those boats were?
Maybe we shouldn’t be so sure it’s impossible to see God anymore.
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