Parashat Vayera: Inviting in Whoever Comes

When God appears to Avraham in the beginning of this week’s parsha, what is Avraham doing?   He is yoshev petah ha’ohel , “sitting in the opening of the tent,” ready to greet and welcome and honor whoever happens to come by.  He sits in a posture of openness towards the world; if war comes, if a command to leave his home comes, if a famine comes, if random people pass by -- they are welcomed and accepted as God’s agents.   This is a life posture, as is implied by the root yashav used here, which in addition to meaning “sit” also means “dwell.” This is how Avraham lived, not just at this moment, but in all moments, open to whatever and whoever comes, standing at the door, laughing and inviting them in.  

To such a one God appears; with such a one God chooses to dwell.  Or perhaps we should think of it this way -- Avraham was able to see that every guest that came his way -- whether it be an event or a person or a feeling -- was a messenger of God, and so Avraham’s life was filled with God’s appearances, filled with moments of receiving God’s presence and gifts and messages through everyone and everything around him.   

I am reminded of a Rumi poem, The Guest House:

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing, 

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, 

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Avraham’s tent was indeed a guest house, a symbol of the guest house that was his very being, sitting in a posture of radical openness toward the world, and welcoming each passerby.   In this case, in our story, the visitors are quite literally messengers from God, three angels each with a mission -- Compassion, Hope and Destruction.   

One is sent to help Avraham heal from his recent brit milah  (circumcision), to offer comfort and compassion and healing by visiting the sick.  Another comes with a message of Hope -- to inform the couple that in a year’s time they will have a baby.   And the third is sent to destroy the evil Sodom and its environs.  

These are three visitors we receive all the time, through other people and through our own fluctuating emotions; we are visited sometimes by a sense of healing and compassion, sometimes by hope and sometimes by despair and destruction -- the sense of irredeemable evil in the universe, hopelessness, and the impossibility of repair.   These feelings in us -- as for Avraham -- sometimes relate to ourselves or our families and sometimes to the broader world around us.   Avraham welcomes all three into his guest house, treating them all with great honor and hospitality, understanding that all are guides from beyond.   

I want to focus on the Hope messenger.   In this scene, Hope addresses itself primarily to Sarah.  Avraham has already received this message in last week’s parsha, so here, the messenger, about to deliver the news, asks first -- “Where is Sarah your wife?” making it clear that what he has to say is directed primarily at her.   Finding that she is in the tent, the visitor speaks near the entrance so that she can hear, and proclaims his message of hope -- next year at this time, Sarah will have a child.  

But messages of hope are not always easy to hear.  The Torah says that Sarah is listening at the petah ha’ohel, “the opening to the tent,” but also that there is something blocking her -- vehu aharav, and it, meaning the entrance, was behind him, the angel, as he spoke.   She was both open to the message and not open to it, both at the opening and yet also blocked by the back of the angel.  

Indeed her reaction (not unlike Avraham’s in last week’s parsha) to Hope is Doubt; she laughs to herself, saying, “Now that I am withered, am I to have enjoyment -- with my husband so old?”   This is what we do sometimes.  If we have been in a stuck place for a very long time -- as Sarah has -- we learn to protect ourselves from Hope with Doubt, to protect ourselves from the emotional ups and downs of wanting something so much and continually being disappointed with each new prospect.  It is better, we think, to just stay in this stable place of despair and not expect anything to change.   And so, when Hope shows up, we counter it with Doubt.  

What happens next is interesting. God reports Sarah’s doubt to Avraham, and she, Sarah, seeing that her doubting laughter has come to light, denies it.  Vatikahesh Sarah.   Sarah denied it, saying:  No, I didn’t laugh.   This is the opposite stance of sitting in the opening of our guest house, welcoming whoever comes.  Hope showed up and she only half let him in, pushing him away with Doubt.  And now Doubt shows up and she denies his existence, pushing him down inside her.  No, I didn’t laugh.  I don’t doubt.  There is no such visitor inside me.   

But God wants truth and openness -- it is the only real way to access Him -- and so He replies to her -- “No. You did laugh,” as if calling her to hold the Doubt, to welcome it in and own it.  Doubt is far more dangerous in hiding than it is in broad daylight, allowed its place inside us.   

You did laugh.  You did doubt.  And that is ok.  Doubt is a part of being human, one of the many guests from beyond that visit us occasionally.  And it, too, like all guests, once honored, has a certain power and goodness to it.   The flip side of doubt is amazement and awe and a letting go of knowing so that one can inhabit the unknown realm of the divine.    Sarah’s laughter symbolizes both sides of doubt -- the bitter hopelessness as well as the radical amazement.

To make clear how important each and every emotion is -- even doubt has a place in faith -- this laughter of doubt is not only outed, but also celebrated; it becomes the name of their son Yitzhak, born in circumstances that inspire both doubt -- according to the midrash, neighborhood women doubted that Sarah had given birth to him -- and amazement. 

This celebration of doubt-turned-amazement is a key aspect of this story.  The fact is there is no need for Avraham and Sarah to be told ahead of time that they will have a child in a year.  There is no need for Hope to come to them.    They could simply have had the child.  What this story does is to highlight the time before the birth, the time before knowledge, the time of uncertainty -- we know about such times -- the time where both Hope and Doubt play inside us.    In highlighting these guests and celebrating and honoring them, the Torah teaches us to sit, and to live, as Avraham did at the start of the parsha, in an open doorway, welcoming all who come our way.   Whoever they are, if we invite them in for a cup of tea, we can see that they are indeed guides from beyond.