If you come to My house, I'll come to your house

"If you come to My house, I'll come to your house" (Im tavo l'veiti, avo l'veitechah)

Thus goes a well-known and enigmatic epigram of Hillel Hazaken. What does it mean, and to whom does it refer. The standard interpretation puts the words in the mouth of Hashem, and interprets them thus: If you come to the Beit Hamikdash and fulfill your responsibilities, then I will come to your homes and communities and bless you there with plenty.

Let's turn it around, however, and apply it to our parashah.

Avraham has just undergone Brit Milah and is recovering in his tent, when Hashem comes to him and reveals himself. No sooner is that stated than Avraham lifts his eyes and beholds three men standing there, he addresses s(S)omeone and says, my l(L)ord, if it please you, don't go on, stay here. Rashi brings the midrashic interpretation that Avraham addressed Hashem and ask him to wait while he attended to the visitors, and from here we learn the greatness of Hachnasat Orchim (welcoming and attending to wayfaring guests), which comes before even receiving the Divine Countenance. Ibn Ezra, amongst others, however, interpret that the otherwise unspecified CONTENT of the Divine revelation was the presentation of these three angels apprehended by Avraham as men, and the presentation of their various missions.

But why must those two interpretations conflict? We can still understand that Avraham performed the mitzvah of Hachnasat Orchim, only the Guest was Hashem, who chose to manifest His Presence via angels in seemingly human form on a mission from G-d!! Now Hashem himself has set Avraham up as the Ba'al Habayit by making a gift to him of the Land of Israel, making him the source of blessing for all the world, confirming his mission via a brit and the other empowering events of Lech Lecha.

The meeting between the itinerant and the settled is always fraught with challenge, even danger. Who knows what the guest brings with him; who knows what he'll leave, what he'll take? The reverse is also true - the wayfarer is ever concerned that the householder wants to co-opt him and steal his soul by planting him, shorn of his wildness, in some sedentary life. Yet, each is in need of the what the other can provide - food, rest, warmth and clean sheets for the traveller, companionship, new vistas, exciting tales for the humdrum householder. Thus each takes a chance, and offers to step a bit out of his role in order to engage the other. Will he get what he needs? Will he have to give more than he is willing? How will the transaction end up?

But Avraham, the Ba'al Habayit, wasn't looking for gain, social, material, spiritual or otherwise. Hashem has given him a ptor for the week from hosting via the pain of the bris, but Avraham HaIvri keeps looking up at the horizon until his guest arrive. His giving unconditioned, he runs and attends to all their needs, stirs up his household, and is nevertheless given gifts: his immediate healing, the tidings of Sarah's impending pregancy and Yitzchak's subsequent birth, and the priviledge of arguing the case for the preservation of Sodom before Hashem.

But now it's time for the condition to be fulfilled: Hashem has come to Avraham's house, now Avraham must come to Hashem's house. Hashem's house on earth is the Beit Hamikdash, which hundreds of years later will be built on Har Harmoriah, but, from the timeless perspective of Hashem, is effectively already there. So Hashem "invites" Avraham to a meal, BYOB (bring your own boy). Just as Avraham's far-seeing Chesed overcame the constriction and limitations imposed upon him by the pain of the brit, likewise the middah of Hashem (Chesed) overcomes the constrictions of logic (logically, one of two verses can be fulfilled, either "through Yitzchak shall you seed be called", or "Take your son... Yitzchak, and offer him up as a burnt-offering", but not both). Avraham's gift to Hashem is in passing the test with flying colors (the word "test" nisah, is deeply related to the word for "banner, standard", nes) - he hears and acts on both the command to take and offer AND, at the last moment, when the overwhelming momentum of carrying out the terrible demand is hurtling forward - the knife is in the hand, moving swiftly as it must if Avraham is to actually carry out the order, yet Avraham ALSO hears the unexplained Chesed of STOP.

And he stops. He reveals to Hashem and the world and himself the full stature of his faith, at once simple and paradoxical, and vindicates the very Creation through his act. Avraham is transformed, yet so is Hashem (so to speak). From now on, on this earthly realm, Avraham, and with him, all human kind, are the Ba'alei Habayit. We have the unique privilege of hosting the Infinite Almighty in our homes, our lives, our very selves, and he will, as it were, bow to our "ownership" and not overwhelm us. But we can rightly hope to host the Eibishtere ONLY if we come to His House. We come to His House when we engage in demanding acts of self-transcendence, when we welcome a stranger at our door, presenting himself at every encounter, and we dare to imagine how he, too, might be an angel.