Matthew 10:40-42
“The Welcome Mat”
July 2, 2023 Communion Sunday
This is just what I needed to hear this week to get over myself.
“Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one these little one in the name of a disciple.”
We moved into our new home on Monday, and it is amazing how much water factors into the living of our days and how much our easy access makes us take all that water for granted.
We are fortunate enough to have a dishwasher and a washing machine to learn how to operate.
The showers are different, and we learned that there is enough room on top of the bathroom vanity for our cat Seamus to perch upon as his endless fascination with water came with him on the move from the parsonage.
There were new flowering plants to water but the one thing I mentally began to complain about and then caught myself after having read this passage again was the water pressure coming out of the kitchen sink.
Mind you, ours is a lovely kitchen with a double stainless-steel sink and two sources of water that can flow into it but all I could focus on was the so-so water pressure.
I had what about 800 million people in the world would be in awe of and there I was, wondering what I could do to make the beautiful, clean, safe water come out of that very nice faucet faster and more powerfully because of my impatience and privilege.
10 percent of the world’s population must walk, often many miles, every day to find a source of water.
Sometimes there are lines to stand in and often you must go and get enough water for your entire household, livestock included.
And it isn’t always clean and pain and diarrhea and other water borne diseases often come with all that effort.
And here Jesus, giving instructions to his followers in this passage that the NRSV titles “Rewards” and Eugene Peterson titles “Forget about yourself” in The Message, ends with the simple gift of a cup of water, no a cup of cold water.
Cold makes all the difference as any of us who spend time outside on hot summer days like we have been experiencing.
The thought of a drink of warm water, whether naturally warm or because of a lack of running water or refrigeration, makes me rethink my desire for that life-giving and life-affirming water at all.
In fact, the development of drinking fountains in the middle of the 1800s came about as a way to prevent the spread of typhoid in London while a few decades later in Warren, Ohio refrigeration was added to water fountains because it was determined that colder water inhibits bacteria from growing.
But in Jesus’ time, to get a cup of cold water would mean probably a woman or girl going out very early in the morning to the village well, carrying a clay jar which would be filled and balanced on her head for the walk home. She would find the coolest part of the house to place the jar and as the day went on, the water would warm up. To bring a cup of cool water to those little ones immediately would mean making a special trip.
And who exactly are the little ones?
It appears that they are the disciples and the crowd around them that Jesus is addressing.
It is going to be difficult work at times where they will be treated with disdain or even driven out but then there will also be glimpses of hospitality.
The challenge will be in not knowing the response they will receive.
Our challenge in welcoming Jesus via prophets, the righteous people or the little ones or least of these is that they will all need to be offered hospitality.
What does that look like now?
Who are the ones in need of some relief – from heat or the elements or hunger or thirst or a society that looks down upon them?
The disciples were about to head out to a world with a message of salvation that they would offer for free.
Some will spit at them.
Some will greedily accept it and then continue doing what they were doing.
And then there will be the ones who, seeing how hard the disciples then and we disciples now, are working and will offer us relief in the form of a kind word, an assurance that they have been changed or even some refreshment – that cold water that Jesus talks about.
A faithful life is about those trips to the well for the cool water that is not for ourselves but for someone else.
The source of our refreshment is the Living Water that is God.
So many of you have shared how welcome you felt when you first came to this church.
I want you to think right now about that moment.
What made you want to come back?
Do you remember who it was that welcomed you?
Go talk to the person next to or in front or behind you and share that experience…
We each know what welcome feels like.
That’s what we, those of us trying to follow the way of Jesus, have to offer.
As we prepare to come to the welcome table that has room enough for all God’s children, hear then these words from Steve Garnaas-Holmes:
We forget how thirsty we all are
for hope and gratitude.
Don’t pass up an opportunity today
to offer a cup to one of the little ones
(who of course are angels in disguise):
to encourage, to appreciate, to give thanks
to the one checking your groceries,
or delivering your mail,
or doing their best to be a decent person.
Notice how offering a cup of grace
quenches your own longing, too.
God is thirsty for our love for each other
and every little cup is a delight
that satisfies us all. (unfoldinglight.com)
Amen.