A reflection on Matthew 10:40-42
‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 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; 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.
I love the 10th chapter of Matthew readings because Jesus is getting his disciples ready to go on a mission trip. It’s also super interesting because we don’t know the outcome of this mission which means that the author thinks that his instructions are way more important than the actual mission itself. This makes it easy to imagine him giving these instructions to us his followers 2,000 years later. What’s even more terrific is that today's reading has an even more familiar feeling to it.
If you walk into my mother's house for the first time you never go straight to a couch. Most conversations are organized around the kitchen table. Why? Because there will inevitably be food and drinks for you to peck at while you chat. Families of many different cultures and throughout all times used food as a device for welcoming guests into our house. This is the environment that Jesus is creating for his followers.
How many of us as children would have guests visit our house and get the, “be on your best behavior” talk right before they came to the door? My little brother and I got it every time, which probably gives you a good idea the level of concern my parents had for us and our behavior. Some of you may have visited your grandmother as a child and got caught doing something you're not supposed to do and would give you the old, “you were raised better than that”? They did this because how we act in public is to a large extent a reflection of each of our private values? If you are a loving and considerate person in private then your public persona generally reveals that.
This theology of warmth and hospitality is the environment that Jesus was creating for his followers. He wants an environment where his followers will flourish. Remember that he comes from a society much like ours. A faith fractured by division and cast. Where the sick and lame are blamed for their own disease and where the religious cast itself is broken into factions, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and so on, sound familiar? It’s an environment where people don’t talk to each other but past each other.
Imagine the testimony that the communities that are exposed to the followers of Jesus, his “little ones” as Matthew calls them. They treat each other with respect reserved for Prophets, and righteous ones, even though they are made up of ordinary people. Back then it was fishermen and bankers. Now it could easily be, a Nurse, a waiter, an account and so on.
He’s not even asking that people treat each other in a way that is beyond their scope. With the Sadducees being nearly untouchable do their closeness to the Temple or the Pharisees with their academic prowess and years of study, Jesus only requires a little act. A welcome and maybe a glass of water. It’s also interesting because Jesus is showing the people in his organization that how they treat each other matters in terms of their own spirituality. If they treat one another well and warmly then this has an effect on you. We grow from this kindness, and these small acts are noticed by God.
Later in Matthew Jesus will go on to expand his theology of warmth and welcome later when he expands it to taking care of the most vulnerable among us, through the parable of the lost sheep but here we are being taught to walk before we run. This is good because we still need some practice. Just 19 years ago in 2001 81% of the American public identified as Christians of one persuasion or another, today that number is 65%. We are trending in the wrong direction. I can’t help but wonder if we followed Jesus in his theology of warmth and hospitality if we could reverse this trend. Unfortunately, to care and welcome each other in modern America with the respect he calls for among believers would in fact be a revolutionary act. One that distinguishes us from a public that appears to enjoy aggressively feuding with and tearing each other down. So as we go forward today let us take the lessons learned from our readings and renew and regenerate our community of faith so that we can then offer a theology of warmth and hospitality to the larger communities around us.
Amen
