What Kind Of Soil Am I… Today? (07/13/08)

(Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23)

Perhaps you saw the article in the AJC this past week.  A woman, who was pregnant at the time, recalled passing by the campus of Atlanta’s Morehouse College, years ago, while construction was under way, when her eyes suddenly fell upon a mound of red clay.  “My mouth watered,” she said.  In fact, she yearned to eat that clay, said the article; a craving she apparently had had since childhood.  Only now, during her pregnancy, she finally succumbed to it.  Not only that, but today – some 26 years later – she still consumes about 12 ounces of red clay every day!

This practice of eating clay, or dirt, while certainly not common, is not unheard of, however.  And while it most often affects children, women may also develop these unusual cravings during pregnancy.

In fact, the medical condition is called “pica” (pike-a), a term that comes from the Latin word for “magpie,” a type of bird known to eat almost anything.  And people with pica may eat everything from freezer frost to metal coins, said the article.  But the specific practice of eating clay or soil is called “geophagia” (jee-a-fay’-jee-a) or “earth eating.”

Most prevalent in rural, or preindustrial, societies, this craving or desire to eat “earthy” substances, such as clay, apparently develops as a way to augment a scanty or mineral-deficient diet.

Yet the practice endures to this day.

So at the Sweet Auburn Curb Market in downtown Atlanta, for instance, Ziploc bags filled with white chunks of “kaolin,” (Kale-in) that go for $1.49 a pound, are located behind the produce at one vendor, and next to the cigarettes and over-the-counter medications at another.

Kaolin, a type of clay found right here in Georgia, was also formerly the key ingredient in Kaopectate – the anti-diarrhea medicine.  And one of its side effects, apparently, is alleviating nausea; which, of course, is why it then might appeal to pregnant woman.

See – you can learn something new every day!  But eating dirt or clay?  Yechh!

On the other hand, it does remind me of the fact that, according to Genesis 2 at least, human beings were actually made from the earth.  “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)  In fact, the name “Adam” literally means “man of the red earth.”

And then on Ash Wednesday, of course, when we receive that smudge in the shape of a cross on our foreheads, we are reminded, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Or, even in everyday parlance, when someone is plain and practical and unpretentious in their approach to life, what do we say?  We call them “earthy,” or “down-to-earth.”

I guess what I’m saying here is that, biblically and otherwise, we have something of a symbiotic relationship with the earth and with the soil.  For tens of thousands of years, in fact, we (meaning human beings) have toiled in it.  We have plowed and planted the earth, and then cultivated and harvested the crops that grew from it for our food and sustenance.

If there was one thing, therefore, that people down through the ages could understand and identify with, it was the soil; the soil from which (it was believed) they literally came; and the soil in which they labored for their very survival.

And so if there was one thing Jesus’ audiences could also easily understand and identify with, it was the soil as well.  In fact, in today’s gospel reading Jesus actually tells them that they, themselves, are soil; at least in terms of God’s Word working in their lives.  And he does so, through a parable…

But first, I think, we need to set up the context for this parable.  Dale Allison, a professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, does an excellent job reminding us of the flow of Matthew’s gospel.

For instance, the first four chapters of Matthew, says Professor Allison, introduce us to the main character, Jesus.  “They tell us who he is… how he came into the world, how his ministry got started, etc.”

Then we have chapters 5-7, commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, which is a collection of Jesus’ ethical teachings.  Next come chapters 8-9 where the focus now shifts from “words” to “deeds” and we are introduced to Jesus’ acts of compassion and healing.  Following them is chapter 10, “the missionary discourse where Jesus commissions his disciples and instructs them to say what he has said and to do what he has done…”

Then these chapters on the words and deeds of Jesus (chapters 5-9) and the words and deeds of the disciples (chapter 10) lead up to chapters 11-12, which record primarily the response to both John the Baptist and Jesus.  “Unfortunately,” writes Professor Allison, “it all adds up to an indictment: many of the people, under the sway of their hard-hearted leaders, have decided not to join Jesus’ cause.”

This, then, finally leads us to chapter 13, and today’s gospel, where, according to Professor Allison, the burning question is:  “How is it that so many in Israel have rejected the Messiah?  That is, “How did his own (people) receive him not?”  And chapter 13, which opens with today’s gospel reading – the Parable of the Sower – then addresses this very issue.

But one last point, before we take a look at the parable itself.  In the verses that are not included in today’s reading (that is, verses 10-17), the main issue is the question of why Jesus chose to speak in parables in the first place.  Which then leads into a conversation, as well, about the relative difficulty of understanding Jesus’ parables.

Tom Long, who is a professor of preaching at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, claims that Jesus used these often “confusing” parables in order to force people to think more deeply about the meaning of the gospel.  In others words, Jesus did not want to have people grab the gospel too quickly because such a “quick grab” almost invariably results in a shallow faith that does not last – one of the points that Jesus actually makes, of course, within the Parable of the Sower itself.

To support this claim, Long tells the following story.  The great preacher, George Buttrick, was once flying on an airplane.  And as he sat there, he had a legal pad in front of him on which he was furiously scribbling some notes for Sunday’s sermon.

The man sitting in the seat next to Buttrick noticed this and inquired, “Say, what are you working on there, sir.”  Buttrick answered, “My sermon for Sunday – I’m a Christian preacher.”

“Oh,” the man replied.  “Well, I don’t like to get caught up in the complexities of religion.  I like to keep it simple.  You know, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’  The Golden Rule; that’s my religion.”

“I see,” said Buttrick, “and may I ask what do you do for a living?”  And the man responded, “Why, I’m an astronomer.  I teach astrophysics at a university.”

“Ah, yes, astronomy,” Buttrick shot back.  “Well, I don’t like to get too caught up in the complexities of science, myself.  ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.’  That’s my astronomy.  Who would ever need any more than that, eh?”

Touché.  Point well taken.  Shallowness of any kind, whether in religion or science, or anything else for that matter, is not a good thing.  And so it behooves us, this morning, to give Jesus’ parable here something more than a “quick going over.”

Although actually, at first, it’s really not too hard to understand.

“A sower went out to sow,” said Jesus.  Pretty straightforward, and it doesn’t take too much brain power to figure out that God is the sower here.  And that the seed he’s sowing is his Word.

The first problem, however – especially for modern listeners – is the apparent wastefulness of the sowing.  By that, I mean the sower appears to be throwing his seed around rather indiscriminately, doesn’t he?

Scott Hoezee writes that, today, we might have the same reaction if we heard a story about a farmer who hooked up his planter to the back of his tractor, but then threw the switch to activate the planter even before he was out of his driveway!  “There he is putt-putting down the country lane with corn seed scattering everywhere he goes.  It bounces on the road, some flies into the ditch.  When he finally gets near his field, he first has to cut through a weedy and thorny patch with corn seed still flying out loosey-goosey from that planter that, by all rights, had been switched on way too early.”

Hoezee’s point here, of course, is that no farmer in his right mind would be so careless in the scattering of valuable seed.  It would be the kind of wastefulness that a “frugal and economically-minded farmer would never tolerate.”

Yet, this is exactly what God chooses to do with the seed of his Word.  Jesus says that God is just such a foolish farmer.  “He’s got (apparently) more than enough seed to go around, and so throws it anywhere and everywhere, the odds of success notwithstanding.”

Now the ability of the seed to do what it was intended to do, even under adverse conditions, is something I want to come back to

a little later.  But what I’d like for us to focus on at this point, instead, is the third key element in the story after the sower and the seed; that is, the soil.

Four types of soil, of course, are mentioned: hard-packed soil, rocky, shallow soil, soil filled with thorns, and finally good soil.  And as he sat there in that boat, looking at the crowds packed along the shoreline, it was as if (someone has noted) Jesus was able to “scan” their hearts with a kind of “spiritual MRI.”  In other words, he could see “the hard hearts, the shallow hearts, the thorny hearts, and the pure and unencumbered hearts.”  And so to such an audience he now tells his story…

The “hard-packed soil” on the path is those “hard-hearted” people, isn’t it?  People who have completely shut their hearts and minds to the possibility of God working in their midst.  In Jesus’ day these were undoubtedly the people who found it difficult, if not impossible, to conceive that God might be doing something new and wonderful in the world through his Son, Jesus Christ.

In our own time, it’s perhaps a little different.  The hard-hearted people, in our day, are more likely to be the people who have completely ceased to believe in the possibility that God even exists, much less can actually make a difference in their lives.

Recent best-selling books, written by self-proclaimed atheists, who attempt to make the age-old claim that there simply is no God, are just one example.  But hardness of heart can also be found among those who reject God on intellectual grounds, as well; those who mistakenly believe that a commitment to knowledge or to science somehow precludes any kind of faith.  And, sadly, it can also be found among those people who have been hurt deeply in life, sometimes by the church itself, and now they wonder – even if there is a God – how such a God could have allowed these things to have happened to them in the first place…

Next there’s the “rocky, shallow” soil.  Then, as now, people can often get “side-tracked” by the superficial things in life.  Two items in the news in recent days caught my attention.  One is that the latest statistics show that while serious skin cancer has decreased among young men, it has actually increased among young women.  The reasons aren’t completely clear yet, but the greater likelihood for young women to want to be tan in the first place, even frequenting tanning salons during the winter in order to keep their tans year round, has been cited as one of the possibilities.  The other news item are the reports that people were lining up all over the country, even waiting for days in some cases, in order to buy the new iPhone that has just hit the market.

At a time when global warming, the risk of terrorism, the horror of genocide on the African continent, the AIDS pandemic, rapidly rising gas and food prices, the collapse of the housing and now the banking industries in our own country, all threaten the world and life as we know it, it never ceases to amaze me just how silly and shallow and superficial we can be, at times, as a society.  That is, staying tan and having the latest techno-toy are apparently more important, for many of us, than any of these above-mentioned threats to our planet and to our existence.  Furthermore, there was actually more press coverage, it seemed, of Christie Brinkley’s nasty celebrity divorce than there was over the travesty of justice and threat to democracy and self-rule perpetrated by Robert Mugabe’s regime over in Zimbabwe.

Shallowness, or the lack of real depth in one’s life, is a serious issue, of course, when the tough times come.  Edward Markquart, a Lutheran pastor who grew up in Minnesota, tells the story of working as a canoe guide during his college summers.  And among those they would take on these canoe trips were reform-school kids who had gotten in trouble with the law.  Tough and worldly on the outside, they, nevertheless, had very little experience when it came to the outdoors.

Markquart relates that they would often camp beneath tall pine trees, some reaching 65 feet in height.  But when storms would come and the winds would blow, they would hurriedly get the tents and canoes away from these tall trees.

The reform-school kids would naturally ask why.  And Markquart would tell them, “Because it’s dangerous.  Underneath all this ground is solid granite; and the top soil is only a few inches deep, which means that when the wind comes, it blows these 65 foot tall pine trees right over because they don’t have any roots.

It’s the same with some people, says Markquart.  Inside they’re just as shallow, they don’t have any deep roots, and so when the hard times come – and they will, for all of us – they simply can’t stand up to them.

The third kind of soil is filled with thorns and weeds.  Scott Hoezee says these people “are just plain busy and crowded.” He writes, “These hearts are neither calloused nor shallow.  In fact, there is some real depth to them.  Lots of stuff grows here.  But in the end, it’s too much.  The seed of the gospel comes in and sprouts just fine, but faces stiff competition for light and warmth and nutrients.”

Hoezee goes on to suggest that concerns about 401k retirement plans, Roth IRAs, the kid’s college fund, and their stock market portfolios “absorb a lot of nutrients from the soil of their hearts.”  In addition, youth sports, community involvement, the PTA at school, politics, neighborhood associations and socializing with friends – and it’s mostly all good stuff – still makes people busy, often too busy, he contends.  And so the seed of the gospel simply gets choked out…

Finally, of course, there’s the “good” soil, the soil in which God’s Word can sprout and grow and produce the kind of “fruit” Jesus hoped his followers would always produce.  But these aren’t very good odds, are they?  One out of four; only one soil out of four soils (according to Jesus’ story) produces the kind of growth God is looking for.  Remember, just a little less than one out of four at the plate got Jeff Francoeur sent down to the minors.  And the truth is: it’s not such a hot batting average for Christians either…

And then, of course, we have the inevitable question, don’t we?  Which is simply: What kind of soil am I?  Am I the kind of person who’s become so jaded, or has been hurt so deeply at some point that my heart has been completely “hardened” against the possibility of God working in my life?  Or am I a “shallow” sort of person who jumps at every latest fad, and takes my cues in life from celebrities and whatever else is the most popular thing going at the moment?  Or is my life just so busy, even with good things sometimes, that faith doesn’t even have a chance to grow?  Or is it somehow possible that I am basically “good soil”; that the seed of God’s Word has actually found a place in my heart and, even as we speak, is growing in my life?

The tendency – and the temptation – of course, is to assume that it has to be one of these four possibilities; that we’re either hard-packed, shallow, thorn-infested, or good soil, and that’s it.  One of the above, and nothing else.

But what I would suggest to you this morning is that you and I have been all of the above at one time or another.  That there have indeed been times when our heart was hardened, or times when we have been shallow and superficial, and other times when we were just too busy for God, and yet also times when we were prepared for and even receptive to God’s Word – and that it, therefore, found a home in our hearts.

So the real question then, for me, is not simply “What kind of soil am I?” but rather “What kind of soil am I… today?”  The realization and acceptance of the fact that we are not always good soil for God’s Word, that we actually fall victim to those soil conditions that make it next to impossible for God’s Word to take root.  But also that the soil of our hearts changes as we change, and as we face the various challenges and temptations and difficulties of life.  Which takes us back to the ability of the seed to do what it’s intended to do; a topic I said we’d get back around to… eventually.

I once came across a story about some archeologists who were excavating, a number of years ago, in the courtyard of a medieval monastery.  And during the period of time while they were digging, some seeds that had been dormant for over 400 years had actually begun to grow.  King Henry VIII had closed this particular monastery back in 1539, and the herbs tended by the monks had died.  But now they had sprouted to life again after the archeologists has disturbed the earth in which they were buried.

The point is this: if seeds in nature can do it, why can’t the seed of God’s Word?  In other words, if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that sometimes we’re not very good soil for God’s Word to take root in and grow.  Maybe even for a long time, we aren’t.  But then something happens, something to change our heart and our mind, and the seed that has lied dormant in our lives suddenly, and finally, begins to sprout.  When that happens, it’s called grace.

Fred Craddock, another well-known preacher, tells a story about the time he got a phone call from a woman whose father had just died.  She had been a teenager in one of the churches he had served as pastor some 20 years before, and he would have sworn that if there ever was a person who never heard a word he said – it was that teenage girl!  She was always giggling with her friends in the balcony, passing notes to boys, and drawing pictures on her bulletins.

But yet when her father died, she had looked up her old pastor and gave him a call.  “I don’t know if you remember me,” she began.  “Oh, yes, I remember,” thought Craddock.  “When my daddy died, I thought I was going to come apart,” she continued.  “I cried

and cried and cried.  I didn’t know what to do.  But then – I remembered something you said in one of your sermons…”

And, at this, Craddock was simply stunned.  She had actually remembered something he had said in one of his sermons?  It was proof enough to him that you can never tell how the seed will fall, or where it might even take root.

Maybe it’s also a reminder of why the farmer in Jesus’ parable kept lobbing seeds at even the unlikeliest of targets.  As Scott Hoezee writes, “It’s not that the farmer doesn’t understand the long odds.  It’s just that when you’re talking about salvation by grace, it’s not finally about the odds, but about the persistence of the Holy One who won’t stop (trying).  Ever.”  Amen

 

Our Welcoming Ways (06/29/08)

Our Welcoming Ways

(Matthew 10:40-42)

Three couples from my past…  Their names were Vern and Mary Anne, Mike and Lori, and Herm and Eleanor.  I encountered each of these three couples at a particular time and place in my past, and they all left an indelible mark on my life and also my call to ministry as well.

The names of the first couple were Vern and Mary Anne (two words).  I can’t remember their last name anymore, but I do remember their first names because they were so similar to close family friends of Jeanette’s while she was growing up, Vern and Mary Ellen Arft.  Again, this couple was Vern and Mary Anne.

And although I haven’t seen or talked to them in close to 28 years now, I’ll never forget them.  They were members of Zion Lutheran Church in West Jefferson, Ohio where I served during my first year at seminary.  The program was called “Ministry in Context,” or MIC for short (although, as students, we sometimes added the “K-E-Y” and said that it was “Mickey Mouse.”)

The idea, more or less, was to assign all the first-year seminarians to area churches where, outside of the classroom and a purely academic environment, they could get involved on Sunday mornings in worship and Sunday school, and then also serve one other day during the week in order to experience, again, (quote unquote) “ministry in context.”

Vern and Mary Anne were about my parent’s age at the time, also with two sons – one still at home and the other off to college.  Mary Anne was the church organist and that’s how I first came to know her.  But early on in the year, she and Vern invited me over to their house after church one day for Sunday dinner, and a few hours of rest and relaxation; an invitation they then repeated almost monthly for the rest of that year as well.

For a student who ate only cafeteria or the occasional “fast” food, a good home-cooked meal was a God-send, and so I jumped at the chance.  From day one, Vern and Mary Anne welcomed me into their home like I was family; indeed in some ways I think I was filling the void created by their son being away at college.  I’ll never forget, Mary Anne even remarked one time, after I had thanked them again for their hospitality, that they hoped some other couple out there would think to do the very same for their own son.

A typical Sunday afternoon went something like this: a wonderful home cooked meal followed by sitting around in their family room watching sports on TV for a few hours.  Sometimes I even drifted off to sleep on their couch.  And, then, later that afternoon Mary Anne would typically send me off with some leftovers to warm up for supper, and Vern, who worked for a candy company, usually had a bag full of my favorite sweets (back when I could still eat them and not gain any weight!) to take with me on their road.

Now they didn’t have to do this, but they wanted to.  And while they also seemed to enjoy my company, in reality I was the one who truly benefitted; from their hospitality and from their kindness…

A couple of years later, Jeanette and I were newly married and found ourselves on my first internship down in Beaumont, Texas.  That’s where we met Mike and Lori.  I do remember their last name: Lockwood.  The Lockwood’s were a young couple, several years old than us, but also without children at that point.  They were members of Bethlehem Lutheran Church and also members of my internship committee.

And they, too, went above and beyond the call of duty.  Others in the congregation certainly befriended us and occasionally invited us over to their homes, but Mike and Lori let us hang out with them.  In fact, their house was a welcomed escape, and retreat, from our tiny duplex on the weekend, and pretty soon Lori let Jeanette bring over our laundry as well, since the little washing machine in our apartment tended to “eat” our clothes, and the Laundromat could get expensive.  It was not unusual, therefore, for us to go over to their house on a Friday nigh or a Saturday afternoon to watch a movie and have a pizza, while our laundry was getting done.

Now Mike and Lori were also from Ohio; Toledo and Maumee, respectively, and so we really hit it off with them.  But they, too, went to the next level with their hospitality and friendship.  And we kept in touch with them for several years afterwards, once even getting together back up in Ohio.  But eventually we lost contact with them, although, as I say, we’ll never forget them…

Finally, just about four years later, after I had completed my seminary studies but had to repeat the internship, at my own request since there had been some bad conflict down in Beaumont while I was there, I ended up being assigned to another Zion Lutheran Church, this time in Gibsonburg, Ohio, southwest of Toledo between Bowling Green and Fremont.  It’s here that we met Herm and Eleanor Rolf.

Because Jeanette had to tie up some loose ends with her job down in Columbus, and the parsonage where the congregation was going to house us wasn’t going to be available for a couple of months, Herm and Eleanor offered to let me stay with them, and quickly opened up their home to me for as long as I needed it.  Their own children were all grown and gone at this point, including their youngest son who was about my age.

Once again, they quickly adopted both of us (me and Jeanette) into their family, and treated us like we were their own children.  When I was ordained the following summer, they even drove all the way out to New Jersey to be a part of that important day, and we kept in touch with them for all these years until just recently.

We would often stop in and visit them whenever we were traveling to and from Jeanette’s parent’s home in Michigan, even after we had kids.  In fact, one time, when Kristyn was little (I can’t believe she just turned 21 yesterday, how time flies!), Kristyn asked if we were going to visit her “other” grandparents.  We didn’t know what she meant by this.  Jeanette’s grandparents were still living at that time, down in Florida, and at first we wondered if Kristyn was referring to them.

No, said Kristyn, my grandparents in Ohio. You don’t have grandparents in Ohio, we started to say… and then we suddenly realized that she was referring to Herm and Eleanor!  A third couple whose hospitality and “welcoming ways” will not soon be forgotten.

Welcoming and hospitality, of course, figure prominently in our short, but powerful, gospel reading this morning.  Now, normally, we are reminded in scripture to welcome the “outsider” and to show hospitality to the “stranger.”  Many of us, undoubtedly, also remember how Jesus told his disciples that whatever you have done unto the “least of these my brethren, you have done unto me.”  Or who could forget this verse in the Letter to the Hebrews, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

And all of this was consistent with the Old Testament traditions regarding how God’s people were expected to treat the sojourners and the aliens in their midst.

But this morning’s lesson puts a little twist on these expectations regarding hospitality and welcoming.  Instead of talking here about how we are to treat others, especially the strangers and aliens in our midst, today’s verses are focused, instead, on how others should treat us; that is, as Christians witnesses of Jesus Christ.

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me,” said Jesus, “and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  As Bryan Findlayson has written, “To welcome the messenger and accept their message is to welcome the one who sent the messenger.  To welcome a disciple is to welcome Jesus, and to welcome Jesus is to welcome the one who sent him, namely, the Lord God.”

In Matthew 10, you see, Jesus has been all about commissioning and then sending out his disciples as his ambassadors. Quick, who can tell me the name of the United States ambassador to Great Britain?  To Israel?  To Mexico?  Probably no one, because the ambassadors identity is irrelevant.  What is important, however, is who or what the ambassador represents.

And so it is with Christian disciples as well.  As you’ve heard me say before, and will undoubtedly hear me say again, “it’s not about us.”  Rather, it’s all about the one who sent us; that is, Jesus Christ. Scott Hoezee adds, “So often when we read Matthew 10’s closing words about handing out a cup of cold water… we often picture ourselves as the water-givers, reveling in the fact that to serve even society’s lowliest people is the same thing as serving Jesus himself.  And there is something to that line of thought, as Jesus made clear in the famous verse, ‘I was in prison and you visited me, naked and you clothed me…’  But in Matthew 10,” he says, “it may be a bit more radical than that: here in these verses it’s not that when we serve others, we serve Jesus, but rather that when others serve us they serve Jesus because they are supposed to see the true Christ in us.” It’s really a simple concept, actually.

A substitute Sunday school teacher once couldn’t open the combination lock on the supply cabinet.  So she went to the pastor for help.  The pastor went with her to the supply room.  He took the lock in his hands and started turning the dial. After the first two numbers, however, he got a puzzled look on his face, stopped turning the dial, and serenely looked up – as if to heaven – for the answer.  Slowly, he began moving his lips silently and then turned the dial to the last number, and the lock fell open.

The teacher gasped.  “Wow!  That was something,” she said.  “I’m totally in awe of your faith, Pastor!”  The pastor replied, “Ah, it’s nothing really…  Pointing upward, he said, “The combination’s written on a piece of tape on the ceiling.”

Here, with the issue of welcoming and hospitality, it’s also pretty simple, “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me.”

As Scott Hoezee, again, points out, “I have always relied on the kindness of strangers” is the famous closing line spoken by Blanche Dubois in the classic, award-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams.  “In Matthew 10,” writes Hoezee, “Jesus basically tells the disciples that they, too, must rely on the kindness of strangers when they go out to proclaim the good news of the kingdom…  By doing so, Jesus puts the disciples at the mercy of the hosts they would encounter along the way…  Jesus is not talking (here) about a message to be heard, but about the reception of a person, namely himself as he dwells inside the disciples.

And so I think about those three couples who had such a meaningful and lasting impact on my life and ministry; three couples I will never forget.  What they did for me, and also for Jeanette, was thoughtful and kind. But in doing it for a future pastor of the church it was even more than that.  Because just as we can see the face of Jesus in the face of that person in need; in the same way, then, when we welcome and extend kindness to a pastor, or even to a “pastor-in-training,” or even any fellow Christian, it’s as if we are actually doing these things to our Lord himself.  No… we are, in fact, doing these things directly to Jesus.

And so what does that also say about how we should treat and regard pastors and church-workers?  For instance, I can’t tell you how many hurtful and unkind things I have heard spoken over the years about a former pastor, especially when I was visiting with parishioners as their new pastor.  Now I always tried to stop them dead in their tracks because I thought such talk and behavior was totally inappropriate and uncalled for.  But now I see that it’s actually even worse than that; for, again, when they say such hurtful and unkind things about a pastor, or a church-worker, or even a fellow member of the congregation, they are really saying these things about Christ.

Father Anthony Clavier, an Episcopal priest, reminds us “Hospitality towards other Christians isn’t to be based on whether we like their opinions (for example, what James Dobson had to say about Barack Obama in recent days), but on their status. Another Christian is another Christian.  That’s worth remembering next time you get into a quarrel at a vestry (or church council) meeting, or accuse someone of not being a ‘real’ Christian!  Jesus is talking about a culture of kindness; a habit learned through living a selfless life, a life-giving life, a life lived in Jesus.”

Larry Patten points out that, in today’s gospel, the word “welcome” was used – in just those three short verses – six times.  And looking even further, he also discovered that variations of the word “welcome” were used at least sixty times in the New Testament.  “Welcome” appeared more than “sword” (28 times), but less then “angel” (over 150 times).

But “welcome” occurred just as frequently as “worship” and “teacher.”  Which is to say, he writes, that when you consider how important worship and teaching were to Jesus’ ministry, then welcoming ranks pretty high.

Jesus also talks about “rewards” in today’s passage.  Whoever welcomes a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, whoever welcomes a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous.  Even whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of the little ones… truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.

Now commentators have sometimes argued over who these prophets, righteous persons, and little ones really were.  Were these job titles or some other kind of designation in the early church?  Or is it simply this, if someone welcomes one of Jesus’ followers – from the greatest of them, to the most insignificant – it doesn’t really matter, he or she will be rewarded.

Yet, speaking of “rewards” like this, as Pastor Ed Markquart has pointed out, does not imply that we somehow earn salvation, or that salvation is not a gift.  What it means is that these acts of kindness will not go unnoticed or unrewarded.  Another way of putting it is that those who welcome Jesus’ followers will be blessed by God for even the simplest acts of kindness and hospitality.

Consider Jesus’ one example: the giving of a cup of cold water.  In Jesus’ day, a traveler in hot, dusty Palestine would certainly appreciate something as simple as a cold cup of water.  “What a treat,” writes Markquart.  “What a reception.  What a welcome…

To give a cup of cold water was a symbol of meeting another person’s essential need… a pure gift.”

Even more than that, hospitality – in this context – is also a sign, as someone once noted, that the “reign of God is near.”  The offer of a cup of cold water may seem like an act of charity which brings a spiritual reward, writes Bryan Findlayson, “yet the context works against such a view.  It is but a description of the welcoming of a disciple and, thus, the welcoming of their message,” and the welcoming of the very one who sent that message…

In the 1950’s, marketing whiz Stanley Arnold was working at Young & Rubicam, where he was asked to come up with a marketing campaign for Remington Rand.  This company, at that time, was among the most conservative in America.  Its chairman of the board was retired General Douglas MacArthur.  Intimidated, at first, by a company that was so much a part of America, Arnold nevertheless also found in that phrase the inspiration for his campaign.

After thinking about it for a while, he went to the New York offices of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Beane, and placed the ultimate “odd-lot” order.  “I want to purchase,” he told the broker, “one share of every single stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange.”  After a vice president tried to talk him out of it, the order was finally placed.  It came to $42,000 for one share in each of the 1,098 companies listed on the Big Board at that time.

Arnold then took his diversified portfolio into a meeting of Remington Rand’s board of directors, where he argued passionately for a sweepstakes campaign with the top prize called “A Share in America.”

The conservative old gentlemen shifted around uncomfortably in their seats and discussed the idea for a while.  “But Mr. Arnold,” one of them finally said, “we’re not in the securities business.”  And another added, “We’re in the shaver business.”

Arnold then responded, “I agree, gentlemen, that you are not in the securities business, but I think you also ought to realize that you’re not in the shaver business either.  You’re in the people business.”  The company bought his idea…

Sometimes, perhaps even many times, as Christians we mistakenly think that we’re in the church business, or the bible business, or the morality business.  But the simple reality is that we, too, are in the people business.

That’s what Jesus was always most concerned about – people.  That’s why it mattered to him how we treated the least among us.  And that’s also why it mattered to him how his disciples were treated, as well.  Because for Jesus, in the end, it all came down to people and to our welcoming ways.

Amen