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“You are Welcome,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 6/29/14

“You Are Welcome”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

by the Rev. Melissa St. Clair

Matthew 10:40-42

June 29, 2014

 We read from Matthew’s gospel this morning what is known as the “missionary discourse.”  Jesus doesn’t sugar-coat what a life of discipleship is like.  Jesus’ disciples are sent to places they are reluctant to go, they can expect to be rejected and persecuted for their radical teachings, and they’re expected to give up the things that the world says are important while giving fully of themselves to the mission to which they have been called.  This is not a life one lives without courage, to be sure.

As Jesus paints the picture of discipleship, it may seem a bit foreign.  Surely, we can be disciples without being sent into enemy territory or experiencing constant persecution while being entirely self-sacrificing.  What is it we signed up for again?

And yet the life of discipleship that Jesus describes and how we live out our lives as Christians shouldn’t be what Through the Looking Glass is to Alice in Wonderland—that is, the complete opposite.

The Christian life – a life of following after Christ – is, according to Jesus himself, essentially:

• confessing God’s work in Jesus Christ
• living toward the coming kingdom engaged in mission
• letting go of material possessions and what others might think about us
• placing our loyalty in the God we know through Jesus Christ above all others; and
• trusting in God and God’s future[1]

That’s what Jesus has been teaching his disciples to this point.  Where we pick up today, he’s focused on affirming the blessings that accompany such a life.

READ MATTHEW 10:40-42

Math was always one of my least favorite subjects in school.  Geometry was the only class that was remotely easy and enjoyable for me.  I opted out of taking calculus my senior year of high school only to end up in a statistics class I basically taught to myself in college.  There’s not much I remember from those classes except for a few random principles, and by that I mean one – the transitive property.  The transitive property states that if A= B and B = C, then A = C.  As it turns out, Jesus is good at that kind of math too.  The math of discipleship.

Someone welcoming you = someone welcoming me.

Someone welcoming me = someone welcoming the one who sent me (aka God).

Therefore, someone welcoming you = someone welcoming God.

Simple math.  Maybe not as simple to practice.

The Greek word that’s used for welcome is one that literally means to take with the hand, to take hold of, to receive.  To be welcomed is to accept, embrace, receive hospitality.

That’s what Jesus is describing here – hospitality.  The Latin hospes means both host and guest – in other words, host and guest share an identity.  To be hospitable is to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.  To consider others’ needs above your own.  That doesn’t mean throwing our the flight attendant’s instructions to put on our own oxygen mask before helping someone else put on theirs; caring for ourselves does allow us to better care for others.

When I say considering others’ needs above our own, I’m talking about thinking about things from another’s perspective, recognizing that there are times when we are host and times when we are guest, and when we host, true hospitality isn’t fussing over making ourselves look good or inviting others simply we’ll be noticed and praise and maybe even invited to something bigger and better in return.  It’s about meeting the actual needs of our guests as our top priority.

I have to confess the way I keep straight the characters in one of the New Testament’s finest examples of hospitality – Mary and Martha.  When I think of Martha, I think of Martha Stewart.  She busies herself with cooking and cleaning and preparing the perfect dinner table, complete with origami place card holders and homemade napkin rings.

Meanwhile, Mary is doting on Jesus.  As they sit together and visit, Mary hangs onto every word he says.  And where’s Martha?  Marinating the vegetables in a homemade vinaigrette.  She chides her sister in front of Jesus, triangulating with the best of them, as she interrupts,  “Master, don’t you care that my sister has abandoned the kitchen to me? Tell her to lend me a hand.”  And what does Jesus say? “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it—it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her”  (Luke 10:39-42, The Message).

That’s not to say that it’s wrong or bad or inhospitable to enjoy fixing a nice meal and a fancy table.  This world needs Marys and Marthas.  (In fact, I could use my own Martha.)  But when we busy ourselves with things that are more about our need to look good or keep up appearances instead of considering what our guests truly need to feel comfortable and welcome, that’s not hospitality at its best.

I’ve probably told you this story before, and I can promise you, I’ll tell it to you again someday.  During the three weeks I spent in Ghana, West Africa, with my classmates between my first and second semester of seminary, we were routinely greeted in the streets with, “You are welcome.”  You are welcome.  How often do we say that without the prompt of thank you first?

And this wasn’t just lip service.  At every meal, we were filled up with meat – meat from goats, from fish, from chicken.  Meat that would usually be eaten only on holidays there.  Meat that as Americans, many of us are pretty accustomed to eating – or at least having available – at every meal.  Did we need meat at every meal?  Of course not.  But this was our hosts way of honoring our way of life as they understood it, sacrificing their own resources to be sensitive to our customs.

One warm afternoon, we loaded up into the van and bumped along the road as far as it would take us to the tiny town of Prestea.  After parking at the end of the road, we started walking down a path.  In another mile, we were greeted at the edge of the village and ushered into the church where plates of fufu and greens and, of course, meat were placed in front of us.  There were enough ice cold Fantas for all of us.

We were enjoying conversation with our hosts when one of my classmates asked why there weren’t any chickens running around like we’d grown used to seeing in most of the areas we’d visited.  One of our hosts looked down at her plate and before she could say a word, we knew the answer.  All of their chickens were on our plates.  They had cooked them all – all that they had – for us.  And while the women were doing that, the men carried in ice-filled coolers of drinks from the end of the road, because there was no electricity in Prestea.

To be on the receiving end of hospitality can be humbling, to say the least.

The good news is, to offer it doesn’t require heroics.

Welcoming all, including those who might feel like other, extending hospitality, even to strangers, can be as simple as offering a cup of cold water, Jesus says.

Think about it.  We are drawn into relationship with God even through the more mundane aspects of our lives – our struggles, the acts of mercy we perform and the ones that are performed unto us.  It’s the small acts, David Lose says, the small acts of devotion, tenderness, and forgiveness that may go largely unnoticed but are the fertilizer for the rich soil of the relationships that are the most important to us.

Our life of faith sprouts from that same soil.  One act of mercy, one hug to someone who is grieving, two listening ears to someone in need of a friend, offering a ride to someone without a car, serving with Faith Family Hospitality or at Laurel Elementary.  Small gestures.

Except that, according to Jesus, there is no small gesture.  Anything that is done in faith and love and with highest regard for the other has cosmic significance for the ones involved, and, yes, even for the world God loves so very much.[2]

I know you all are offering these small acts of mercy to the world all the time.  And yet the place that has brought some of those into clearest focus for me is this table – the Lord’s Table.

• One of our elders crouching down to serve one of our youngest communion at her level, the bread and the cup now within easy reach of her eager, outstretched hands.
• One of our youth, after receiving the loaf and cup herself, circling back to walk back with – and offer steadying support – to one from another generation.
•  One friend carrying another’s oxygen on the way up to receive the bread of life, another carrying it back.
• Our communion servers carefully observing who is not able to come forward to receive communion, so that they can make sure they are served at their seats, a sure sign that God’s grace meets us where we are at.
• One of our littlest running to find a pastor after worship to see if there are “seconds” available, and that pastor walking hand in hand with her to see, that she might know the abundance of God’s love for her.

“Discipleship doesn’t have to be heroic; the life of faith is composed of a thousand small gestures,” David Lose reminds us.[3]  “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 teaches.

In college, one of the last papers I wrote before I graduated, assigned in one of the two religion courses I took during undergrad, was to be about a spiritual practice of our choosing.  We were to research it, then engage in it for a month.  I chose hospitality.  As I re-read my paper this week, I realized just how much I thought I’d missed the mark.  Everything I tried to undertake didn’t work out for one reason or another – serving at meal ministry in inner-city Lancaster, spending an afternoon with women and children in need.  The things that did?  Making an effort to truly pay attention when in conversation with someone, rather than being preoccupied with my own thoughts of where I should be or what I should be doing or what I should be saying.  Inviting people to dinner, to share a meal and conversation that I wouldn’t have normally.  It was through those meals, simple as they were, that I learned just how much of an impact hospitality can have, and how it’s worth striving for on the daily, for ourselves and for others and for our relationship with God in Jesus Christ. That lesson came in the parting words of each of my dinner partners, with which I couldn’t help but agree: “We need to do this more often.”