Holy Work of Welcome (6.28.20)

Holy Work of Welcome
Matthew 10:40-42
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church

40 "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; 42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."

We only have a couple of verses to work with this morning in our gospel reading. On the surface, there isn’t much to chew on or at least much of anything new. Jesus has *just* finished telling his disciples to take up their crosses and follow him. He has spoken the ominous, challenging word that whoever follows him will find their truest life. And then he speaks these words of welcome. “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me.”

So maybe this is a word about hospitality? That seems an unsatisfying and tremendously inadequate conclusion. This is about more than the welcome. This is about more than offering a drink to one who thirsts. This is very much about the mountain behind the mountain or the You beyond you. 

Professor Elisabeth Johnson adds this observation to our study, “In the ancient world identity was tied to family and community. It was understood that in showing hospitality, one welcomed not just an individual, but implicitly, the community who sent the person and all that they represent. Therefore, welcoming a disciple of Jesus would mean receiving the very presence of Jesus himself and of the one who sent him, God the Father.”

So this welcoming practice Jesus is describing is about a community or family he has formed through his disciples. I’m particularly struck in this reading by the timing of the gospel’s writing. These stories aren’t dictations of real-time events. We need to remember that the stories of Christ and the movement he sparked were passed around for decades before writers documented what we now hold as the gospels. It was some 50 or 60 years before this story was written, which means the disciples in the story are not the intended audience. 

The “you” in this story is a listening audience likely not even born at the time of Christ’s life and death. The “you” is "all of y’all” who hear about Jesus later on. All of you who come across these words and feel a spark of life in the invitation of Jesus to love your neighbor as yourself. All of you who hear the words of blessing on the poor in spirit and know you’re hearing more than poetry, you’re hearing capital T Truth. 

Jesus sparked a movement community of a dozen folks who he taught but also laughed with, broke bread with, spent hours and hours of time with, healed and blessed and loved strangers and neighbors with, lost his temper in front of, reconciled, prayed with, and then commissioned and sent to go do the very same thing in his name. He taught them to pair up and go out and expand the community by making new ones. He processed that with them and coached them before they went out to do it again. 

So by the time these words about taking up a radical, empire-threatening cross and finding your truest life, and receiving a holy welcome are spoken, how many communities have formed? How many groups of Christ-followers are gathering, studying, praying, laughing, eating, and going out into the world together?

These building-less weeks are a remarkable time in which we get to be this kind of community today. The trappings of institutional life are largely set aside, and we are left with a collective being. What does it mean to simply BE together? Who are we called to BE together? 

And as a sent people, called and commissioned to love the world in Jesus’ name and Jesus’ way, how are we called to go out? We’re called to go in ways that involve our own crosses—our own threats to status quo and powers of empire. We’re called to go in ways that shake up our identities until we lose an old way and find a new one. We’re called to head into places of suffering and oppression and margin and isolation not just as ourselves but as a people who stand in such solidarity with the Christ that we are welcomed as the Christ in the spaces we inhabit.

So when we are doing anti-racism work. 

When we are actively working and learning and advocating for dismantling the systems and structures that are a threat to people of color.

When we are celebrating our LGBTQ+ community.

When we are lifting up the continued need for equity and safety, both in life and in policy, for LGBTQ+ siblings.

When we are doing the big, public work

and the small, private work

When we are hosting discussions and vulnerable small groups in which we learn and grow together

When we are speaking the truth about our lives…

When we are opening the literal, virtual, and metaphorical doors of our church to welcome all and really mean it

When we are wrestling with the discomfort and change (or losing one’s life) that comes with welcoming all and really meaning it

When we are sitting in absolute silence, resting in the healing powers of that holy space

When we are laughing and delighting and breaking bread together

We are doing this as Jesus the Christ. We are doing ALL OF THIS as a movement community so closely rooted to the steps Jesus walked thousands of years ago, that we move through this world in his name. 

Both the welcome we extend and the welcome we receive are in the name and way of Jesus.

That means all of this work we are committing ourselves to doing is holy. When friends and loved ones say, “Ah, but the church shouldn’t be political,” we can point all the way back to this text in Matthew 10 and be assured that the first called communities of the Jesus movement were meant to MOVE. They were designed and called to GO AND MAKE in the world in very specific ways.

Never were they asked to sit in a circle and be nice, quiet communities of polite comfort and middle-of-the-road ease. From the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, people were called out of their old lives, told to literally drop what they were doing, and follow Jesus into a new one, a fuller one, a life so abundant it was the truest thing they’d ever known.

That’s the work we are doing now. That’s the welcome we are breathing into the world. And when we are received into spaces of advocacy, action, reform, undoing, dismantling, expanding…we are received as part of the movement community Christ formed farther back than we think we can reach.

This is holy work. We are not alone even in this small zoom room of gathered believers today. We are called and sent, we are comforted and guided, we are stepping into the radical, life-upending path that Jesus trod before us. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.