Meditations on Matthew: Welcome, Rewards, and Cups of Cold Water

June 29, 2008

Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder

Psalm 13, Matthew 10:40-42

 

Introduction to the Readings

            The first reading Chris will share with us is from early in the book of Psalms, a song that is honest, demanding, and hopeful ? which is to say, full of biblical faith.

Honest because the psalmist isn't sugar-coating his walk with God.  Here you'll find no "I'm happy all the day" drivel, no "God has met my every need" denial of reality.  The psalmist tells it like it is.

            And the psalm is demanding - of God.  "Answer me, God!"  This poet has been given no small portion of hutzpa!

            But there is also hope here.  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said of the Hebrew prophets that they were unwaveringly critical of their society, were not afraid to speak of God's impending judgement, and yet maintained an unshakable hope for the future of the nation under God's steadfast love.  So too the psalmist today.

            Listen for that honest lament, the demand for God's vindication, and the hope that the heart will yet sing the praise of God.  Maybe your spirit will resonate with one of those feelings - or all of them.

 

Psalm 13

 

            The second reading is from Matthew.  It is brief, stark, and its meaning is surely up for discussion.  In proverb-like form, three times we hear, Whoever welcomes . . . Some would argue that a better translation might be Whoever receives you, the prophet, the righteous.  Do you sense a difference in those two words - "welcome," and "receive?"

            The fourth saying begins with Whoever gives even a cup of cold water.  Welcoming, receiving, giving a cup of water . . . .  All these actions are promised a reward.  Hear now the gospel reading for today's meditation.

 

Matthew 10:40-42

 

The dying, the crippled, the unwanted, the unloved - these are all Jesus in disguise. - Mother Teresa

 

            "Jesus in disguise . . . " A statement of profound faith.  That every person - every person - not just the well and the strong, the powerful and the wise, the wealthy and the educated.  Every person - the sick and the weak, the poor and the uneducated, the dying, the crippled, the unwanted, the unloved, the least among us - every one, says Mother Teresa, is Jesus in disguise.  She of course was merely quoting Jesus on this.

            What a powerful motivator to love, this idea that each person we know - each one we love or hate, idolize or fear - and every person we don't know, but who just happens to drop into our lives in line at the grocery store, beside us in traffic, waiting on us at Robbins, a person sitting down the pew from us at church - they all are the Christ embodied again, and present before us.  Jesus sometimes in odd disguise.  If we could believe that and remember that - what a motivation it can be to live as we long to live as disciples of Christ.

            We have been reading the Gospel According to Matthew this summer, and we have learned that the first readers of this story of Jesus needed some encouragement.  They were new at being Christ-followers.  And they were clearly in the minority, their idea that Jesus was the Messiah, that he had been crucified and miraculously raised from the dead, that faith was accepted by only a small, but growing group.  As does any minority, they knew what it meant to be on the outside.

            This chapter ten of the gospel is all about how the very first disciples were sent out by Jesus into a not-so-friendly world to announce the presence of the Kingdom of God.  They were to carry on the ministry of Christ himself - healing the sick, raising the dead, proclaiming that God was among them, calling for repentance and for righteousness. They were going out, says verse 16, "like sheep into the midst of wolves."  "So be as wise as serpents," says Jesus, "and innocent as doves."

            So it was a time of great challenge for that fledgling church.  To encourage them, to keep them going when things got tough, the Gospel writer includes these closing promises that Chris has read to us.

            Jesus is saying here, Take courage!  You go in my name, in my place.  And so if people receive you kindly - if you welcomed and taken in, cared for - it is as if - no, it IS exactly that they have welcomed me.

            He goes on to give examples.  And he mentions three classes of people who could be welcomed - or not - as they went about announcing the Kingdom of God, doing the ministry of Jesus.  There were prophets - preachers, missionaries - who went from city to city with the message.  They were looked up to for their speaking skills, their courage, their knowledge.   Welcome these, says Jesus, and you will be rewarded.

            There were others known as "righteous people"  - Christ-followers who perhaps did not travel around but who were known to be good and faithful people.  They may have been leaders in the church, known for their wisdom and love.  Welcome these, says Jesus, and you will be rewarded.

            And then there were the "little ones."  Not children.  Most scholars think these were humble followers of Christ, probably poor, and not leaders. They are the ordinary people, the ones we might overlook, because of their humility, because of their place in society, because of their seeming lack of abilities.  But these little ones, says Jesus: welcome them too, with even just a cup of cold water, and you will be rewarded.

            Great and daring prophets; admired, pious, wise leaders; and the poor in spirit and in worldly goods too - welcome them all.  Because God has welcomed them, so will we, and so reflect the presence of God in the world.

            This is a text of hospitality.  By that I mean welcoming, receiving, being open to and celebrating people who are new to us, even different from us.  Being hospitable is at the heart of the gospel of Jesus.  As he broke down barriers of race and creed, gender and class, so too are we called to do the same - to be hospitable to all, to be  more and more a welcoming and caring congregation.