When I hear this gospel proclaimed, I think of the word, company, or club. As a kid growing up, those were the words that we got excited about hearing when Mom and Dad would say, “We’re gonna have club tonight. “We’re gonna have company.” That meant that people were coming over to the house. And so we kind of knew, we had a prelude for that too, because we had to get our stuff together. We had to get our rooms clean. We had to put everything in order and in place. So there was a different mood in the house. When you have seven kids growing up together in a house with Mom and Dad, things have to get straightened out a bit before club happened or company happened. But there was a mood change, and there was very good food by the way. So that was also another perk. So I think of that when it comes to mind when think of our readings for today. First of all, the story of Abraham and Sarah. Here are these three men who are passing by on a hot day. They are the unexpected guests. And what does Abraham and Sarah do, but they provide hospitality. And they make sure that those who are there before them, are taken care of and cared for, and know that in the shade there, that they are welcomed. I think of that as such a beautiful image and it carries forth really as we reflect upon that. Because later on that year as one of them tells Abraham that Sarah will have a son, that in that unexpected moment, grace can happen. And when we stretch ourselves and change a bit, and prepare for the unexpected with God’s cooperation, with God’s grace, blessings flow. We think about that too as Jesus is company. He’s club coming over for Martha and Mary, and we see that in this interaction, we see we can imagine what their household was like, knowing that Jesus was coming over. We can imagine the great urgency and all the preparedness that had to take place. And so who is all about it? But Martha, so she’s doing a lot of the tasks and she’s getting a little bit impatient with her sister, Mary. Because Mary appears is not doing anything. But then again is she? She’s actually doing something very important. As Martha and Mary show us two approaches to discipleship. Martha concerned about, anxious and working, and preparing herself to see the Lord and knowing that he’s going to visit. And Mary is there being attentive to him, in a new way, by sitting at his feet and listening. In the gift of hospitality, in the gift of welcoming company, we can welcome the Lord in unexpected ways. Perhaps that can challenge us though. Perhaps it teaches us that sometimes the anxiousness and the worries that we have, have to be placed aside for those moments of grace, those moments when we can sit at the Lord’s feet and listen, hear his voice speak to us, hear him comfort us, hear him challenge us, and listen to the words of his love.