Welcome, welcome, welcome!
This is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church this Sunday. The text is Matthew 10:40-42.
A tale of two churches. I got acquainted with Church One during my first year of seminary. It was my teaching parish. That’s where I spent most Sundays, engaging in a variety of roles--student, assisting minister, and sometimes preacher and teacher. I will never forget my very first Sunday there. The pastor asked me to visit “incognito.” He told me not to wear a clerical collar to identify me as a seminarian, so I could experience this church as a visitor would. It was a tiny congregation, so anyone different would stand out. No one seemed to notice my presence, however. No one greeted me other than the pastor’s wife. Many of you know that I was not raised Lutheran. My stock answer for why I became a Lutheran is that the Lutherans were friendly, so this experience was puzzling.
I was disturbed by the coldness of the congregation. This was unlike any experience I had ever had in a Lutheran church. If I wasn’t assigned to go there every week, I wouldn’t have returned. When I voiced my concerns to the prof working with teaching parishes, she said, “I think it’s in the water.”
The church was dying…and it was obvious why. With a chilly climate, the church needed a climate change. As time went on, people did warm up a bit and were actually friendly by the time the school year drew to a close, but would the average visitor stay long enough to discover this?
Now to Church Two. We have a reputation as a welcoming church, and so we are. The contrast between Churches One and Two is jarring. Many churches consider themselves welcoming…well, St. Timothy actually is!
Right out of the box, the basic theme of today’s gospel is obvious—welcome. Before these verses, Jesus was preparing his followers for what they might face when they were sent out into the world: persecution. Here things have been flipped a bit, with the emphasis more on the benefit to those welcoming the evangelists instead of what the sent may encounter.
Because God uses people to share God's message, those who welcomed the disciples also welcomed Jesus. Those who welcomed Jesus also welcomed the Father. We see the same interconnectedness that there is in the Trinity, with two of the members highlighted.
Can you imagine…the not-getting-it disciples; impetuous Peter, Judas the betrayer and the others representing Jesus? Let’s go one step further. Can you imagine us, the people of St. Timothy, being the face of Jesus to our neighbors? We are. As author/pastor Frederick Buechner wrote, “We have it in us to be Christs to each other…to work miracles of love and healing as well as to have them worked upon us” (A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces).
Matthew’s gospel was written for the church of Matthew’s time, several years following Jesus’ time on earth. It was an insider document. In that time, some prophets would go from place to place, church to church. They relied on the hospitality of those they visited. We don’t know what a “prophet’s reward” was. It may have been just the pleasure of the presence of such a godly person representing Christ, representing God. As the author of Hebrews wrote, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb. 13:2).
Next, we come to those referred to as “righteous,” as distinctive from prophets. They may have been traveling missionaries who were not prophets, although later in Matthew “prophets and righteous” are paired as representing the church as a whole (Brian Stoffregen, crossmarks.com). Those who welcomed the righteous got what they deserved, “the reward of the righteous.” They had the joy of entertaining God’s workers.
In the 1980s, I lived with my young family as a missionary in the Holy Land. We frequently had the privilege of hosting several missionaries and pastors. Getting to know these people on a personal level was amazing. We were thrilled to have them with us. Now we move to the “little ones” and here we may have a better idea of how we can experience and exercise hospitality today.
The “little ones” were not those with a big name. They were not famous prophets or righteous ones. “Little ones” were normal, average, ordinary people. They were those who lived in the margins of society. Author Douglas Hare explains, they were “humble Christians who are not church leaders and who may also be poor. Such persons must not be neglected or treated with disdain, because they too represent… Christ.” (Douglas Hare, Interpretation: Matthew). Could today’s “little ones” be people of color, the handicapped, those of a different sexual orientation or religion? This is where God is calling the church today.
Giving a cup of cold water to “one of these little ones” was all that was required—and yet, that was not so easy either. Remember, there was no indoor source of water at that time and there were no refrigerators. A “cup of cold water” indicated sacrifice. It meant going to the village well, drawing the water into a heavy jar, and lugging that back to the family home. If more water was needed? This may require another arduous trip to the well to draw more cold water for the household (Bonnie I. Pattison, Feasting on the Gospels: Matthew, Volume 1). This was to be done for no-name, easily overlooked by others, relative unknowns, for they too are the face of Jesus.
For someone in his 30s, pastor/teacher/martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was very wise. He wrote, “The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community…may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.” Shall we answer it? Amen!
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