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