Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Year A, RCL
June 29, 2008
All Saint’s, Bentonville
Gospel:
Matthew 10: 40-42
Jesus said, "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."
Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes the one who sent me. These words of Jesus to his disciples offered them the assurance that as they traveled, those who welcomed them were also welcoming Jesus, and that they were, in fact, welcoming God into their midst.
This kind of welcoming language resonated with me as I anticipated my return home to All Saints’ after having spent the last two weeks training at the Congregational Development Institute in Seattle. I am so glad to be back with you. Jesus’ words about welcoming also remind me of the amazing welcome I received from the good friends I stayed with in Seattle, and especially from their 9 year old son, Will.
Imagining himself as the innkeeper, Will began emailing me a few days before I left Arkansas, assuring me that my accommodations were in order and that the “Vicar’s Suite” had been prepared for me. When I drove up to the house, late on a Sunday evening, I saw that a shovel had been planted upright in the flower bed in front of the house. Taped to the handle of the shovel was a cardboard sign, and in the careful handwriting of a nine-year-old wielding a marks-a-lot, I read, “The Priest’s Inn and Vicar’s Suite”.
Tiptoeing through the still house, I made my way to the room they had prepared for me at the rear of their home and found a collection of toiletries, a turned down bed, and chocolates on the pillow. A note from Will, the self appointed manager, promised that the entire staff of housekeepers, cooks and laundry personnel (which I knew to be Will’s devoted mother, Lisa) were at my service. I was as welcomed as if I were the Christ himself.
Late in the afternoon, two days later, I emerged from a downtown Seattle restaurant, having spent some time unwinding with colleagues after a series of intense role playing and experiential learning sessions. I noticed a message on my cell phone from my son, Nate, so I found a comfortable bench in Pioneer Square where I could return his call and enjoy our conversation. He had some rather weighty issues on his mind and our talk went on for awhile. My billfold grew uncomfortable in my hip pocket, so I removed it and placed it in my lap and continued to listen intently to my son. I was soon lost in our conversation and when we finally said goodbye, I got up and began a short walk in the direction of the seafront, where I planned to watch the ferries and cargo ships sail across Puget Sound.
A block from the square, a disheveled woman stopped me on the street corner and said, “Sir, I’m hungry. Could you spare some change?” I reached for my billfold, so that I could hand her a dollar, and found my pocket empty. Quickly, I patted myself down, thinking I might have put the billfold in another pocket. I felt my breath quicken and my heartbeat race as the ramifications of a lost billfold in a strange city, began to sink in. “I’m sorry, I don’t have any money,” I told the woman.” She turned away as I crossed the street against the traffic light and walked quickly back to Pioneer Square.
Finding the place where I had sat only moments before, I looked frantically about for the wallet - on the bench, under it and all around. It was no where to be seen. I asked a few of the other visitors around me if they had noticed a billfold and no one had. Disheartened, I sat on the bench and really looked around for the first time. Under the stern gaze of a bronze statue of Chief Seattle, surveying the brick and concrete and asphalt that covered the once lush landscape his tribe had formerly inhabited, I saw a collection of desperate people revealed in a variety of shades of homelessness, poverty, and neglect. They, as Chief Seattle described his once proud people, “resembled the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.”
An almost toothless woman, muttering to someone only she could see, spilled tobacco from a pouch of Redman, onto the papers held in her trembling left hand. She moistened the edge of the papers with a white coated tongue, rolled the cigarette between her fingers, twisted the ends closed and lit it. Despite a hacking cough she drew smoke deeply into her lungs.
I looked over at the two men at the next bench. One was loudly lecturing his sullen partner on the varying quality of soup kitchens around the city and the places where one might find refuge from the cold and damp Seattle nights. As I listened to them talk I remembered that I hadn’t shaved that morning. And I became acutely aware that, because the airline had lost my luggage, I was still wearing the same rumpled shirt and faded jeans I had worn on the plane two days earlier. And now that the sun was low on the horizon, and the same chill that passed through the weary bodies of the dispossessed souls of Pioneer Square, caused me to shiver.
With 53 cents in my pocket, I knew that all that had really separated me from the dozen or so homeless folks ambling about the square was the thickness of my wallet. Although the welcome I had received when I arrived at this city with all the wealth of Microsoft and Google and Yahoo was far different from the welcome these cast out men and women had received, we really were the same.
I had friends that I could call. Friends who love me and would pick me up, provide me with a place to stay, and loan me money. But really, the toothless woman rolling the cigarette, and me, and Bill Gates are all the same.
The righteousness that Jesus refers to in this gospel reading isn’t about some vague notion of goodness or being nice. It’s about fairness and justice and our obligation as followers of Jesus to seek justice for all God’s little ones. And to recognize that the line that separates us from those without the money and possessions that enable us to appear more acceptable, is a very, very thin line.
Our willingness to extend a welcome to the prophet, to the righteous, the extension of a cup of cold water to the thirsty, calls us to a recognition of the Christ that exists in everyone around us. Sometimes it’s our wallet that prevents us from seeing our kinship in Christ with the poor. And sometimes we allow the pigmentation of another’s skin, the make-up of an x chromosome, or the accident of birth in one country or another, to blind us to the presence of Christ in all creation. The reward we are promised is an awakening, the absolutely joyful realization that we are all one.