Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Durham, NC
This morning’s text is the end of a sermon or commissioning that Jesus is giving to his disciples. He’s explaining the mission that they are about to join. They’re being sent out on a mission to heal, teach, and serve. It is before this morning’s text that Jesus delivers some troubling news about the risks involved with joining his movement. Jesus warns, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” [1]They will be arrested. They will be persecuted. Families are going to be torn apart – “a man against his father and a daughter against her mother.”[2] Christ’s invitation to this mission is not for the faint of heart.
After making their upcoming roadblocks and challenges clear, Jesus closes his speech with this morning’s three verses. They serve as words of promise to the disciples as well as promise to whomever will welcome the disciples and their message. Offering welcome to the disciples will also mean welcoming Christ; welcoming God; welcoming the Divine, into one’s home and heart. It’s promising for the disciples because there is assurance that while they will face ostracization from some, they will also receive hospitality and embrace from others.
Before we get too far into this text, let’s not make the mistake of only reading Christ’s words as though we are the ones who will be welcomed in. There are certainly times when we, too, need to receive the welcome. I’m sure many of us can pull out a mission trip memory right now – a memory where we were received with hospitality that went above and beyond. Cling tight to those memories, but it’s important to flip that narrative from time to time and now feels like one of those moments. Let’s read this text as the ones who will do the receiving – the receiving of disciples, prophets, righteous ones, of these little ones.
What does it mean to welcome one of these in? We open the sanctuary doors. We say “good morning” as we hand them a bulletin. We invite them to the post-worship potluck or to mid-week Bible study. Maybe the pastor follows up with them later in the week to thank them for visiting. Sure, compared to the poor treatment that Jesus’ mission co-workers would have faced, any of these actions of hospitality would seem above and beyond. But it almost feels too easy for whatever reward God has in store for us. It’s also worth noting that most of the examples I just named don’t fully exist in this virtual space we’re living in.
So, let’s imagine a deeper Christ-like hospitality that we are called to offer.
Listen again to verse 41, this time from the Common English Bible translation:
“Those who receive a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward. Those who receive a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward.”
It’s not just about giving the prophet a pew to sit in. It’s not just about recognizing the righteous person as a visitor during the passing of the peace. The Reverends Alex McNeill and Ashley McFaul-Erwin dug through this text during an online Bible study this week, and from the point of view of being two queer pastors who know what it feels like to get halfhearted welcomes into spaces, they discussed the significance of welcoming a prophet as a prophet and a righteous person as a righteous person.
You’re welcoming in the whole person when you do as Christ says. You’re not only inviting in parts of someone’s identity – the parts that you agree with or the parts that are easier to handle. To accept the prophet as the prophet is to accept the prophet as a person as well as to accept the prophet’s message. To accept the righteous person as a righteous person is to accept the person and their quest for justice. These are their identities and their God-given vocations.
Last night, as I thought I was wrapping up this sermon, I watched the final plenary session of our denomination’s biannual meeting. I guess this is your warning now. I am about to talk about the Presbyterian Church’s national governing body. Please stick with me though, because this is important. It’s important to me and, based on the last month I have spent with first Presbyterian, I suspect it will soon be important to you.
Okay, so, as you can imagine, like nearly everything else that has gone on this spring, this year’s General Assembly was an unprecedented one because of its virtual nature. Everyone went into this meeting knowing that decisions would need to be made about what business was “important” enough to be discussed this week rather than in the future.
One of the issues that repeatedly came up had to do with the “Disparities Experienced by Black Women and Girls Task Force Report.” This task force was created at the last General Assembly, two years ago, for specific research to be done on the disparities faced by Black girls and women and for official recommendations on how the PC(USA) can “strategically and prophetically engage and determine how the church might be most effective in impacting this important social issue.”[3]
Their report was one of the many items referred to be discussed during the next General Assembly in 2022 rather than this week, which was a difficult decision to take in when we are in the midst of a national uprising against racism, knowing that even then, Black women like Breonna Taylor are not getting the same coverage or demand for justice that Black men are getting.
Acknowledging that the report would not be reviewed this year but that it continues to be a pressing matter that the Church must act on in the meantime, the task force crafted a statement and proposed that the Assembly adopt it. Part of the statement reads:
“As the 224th General Assembly, we cannot adjourn without making a statement on Black women and girls, we cannot sit by and allow Black women and girls to remain invisible. We must confess that we have participated in structural sin that has exploited, abused, and dehumanized Black women and girls. We affirm the imago dei of Black women and girls as we recognize their cries. We commit to listening and in the work of racial justice, attending to the particularity of the plight of Black women and girls.”
When the commissioners were asked yesterday around 6:30pm to vote in favor or against a motion to open the floor back up for new business so that the statement could be reviewed and voted on, the motion failed by a margin of twenty votes.
Twenty votes kept our denomination from merely considering a statement of acknowledgement, confession, and commitment to issues around the disparities experienced by Black women and girls. Twenty votes kept us from adopting a prophetic and righteous statement.
With this, I see false hospitality in our denomination. We invited a group of Black women, including our neighbor at Covenant Pres, the Rev. Lakesha Bradshaw Easter, to tell us what we should do to be a better Church and citizens of the world. We said please and thank you, but once the task force’s requests got in the way of the schedule we had planned, once the task force asked more of us, we shut it down. It seemed more important for everyone to have a few free hours last evening.
When you are the one doing the welcoming, whether you know it or not—you inevitably hold some power over your guests. The interaction is being played by your rules. It’s up to us, as hosts, to work at pushing past this power game.
When I first read this text, I got to “whoever gives even a cup of cold water,” and my brain immediately focused on “even.” Even a cup of cold water, meaning, it doesn’t take that much. Whoever gives the bare minimum to one of these little ones, will not lose their reward. Initially, all of this passage feels easy. It’s simple to walk to the faucet or the Brita pitcher in the fridge and offer a cup of water to our guests. It does not seem like Jesus is challenging us to much beyond what my growing up in the south has taught me to say and do.
I read the text a second time. When I got to the same line about the cup of cold water, “even” floated away from my focus and I noticed that the cup of water is cold. Now we are asking guests, “Do you want ice?” “Sparkling or still?” “A slice of lemon?” I’m no historian, but I’m pretty sure ice makers and freezers did not exist during Jesus’ life on Earth. What would it mean for Jesus’ listeners to retrieve a cup of cold water? The online study I attended considered this question. It would mean more work. It would mean going out of one’s way in their act of hospitality.
The statement on our denomination’s commitment to the wellbeing of Black women and girls felt like a lukewarm glass of water. It was a bare minimum placeholder that would rely on individual presbyteries and congregations to do the true welcoming, to offer the cold cups of water, in their own settings. And not even that was possible last night.
To be clear, this is not the first time that the Church (church with a capital C) has offered a half-welcome to a group of people. It happens when we tell LGBTQIA+ folks that they can come in, but caution them to avoid talking about their lives outside of the church when they’re here. It happens when we tell youth and children that they are welcome here, but no, they can’t lead that part of worship. Come join us, but keep things pleasant and easy to digest. It’s not far from the message to the Black Lives Matters movement: I agree that Black Lives Matter, but please, tone down your anger. Can’t you just protest in a way that makes me more comfortable?
It’s an unfortunate, sinful trend. If we continue to act in these ways, when we reject the fullness of someone, we risk rejecting Christ. We risk rejecting the presence of God. We must change our path together. We need to lament and confess our false sense of hospitality. And move forward, embracing others to the fullest extent, loving every piece of who God made them to be, and work hard to give that refreshing cup of cold water.
And there’s a reward involved. The prophet’s reward, the reward of the righteous, the reward that they will not lose. The rewards are what those who welcome the disciples will receive. It’s for those who would invite in and listen to the disciples who have arrived in a new town to spread the message of Christ – a message that flips everything on its head. It’s a message that is threatening to the empire and to all existing order for civilization. The message teaches that Christ is Lord; not the emperor. The message teaches that there is another way of doing life and to live that life means to abandon established hierarchies and routines. Those who have the courage to welcome in a messenger that could get them in trouble will receive a reward.
The Rev. Dr. Emilie Townes writes, “Such witness can stimulate our theological and spiritual imaginations so that we become new beings. This is the reward we will not lose.”[4] When we offer the genuine hospitality of Christ, it will be difficult. We might lose the respect of friends or family. We might have to rearrange our schedules and plans. We might give up our own resources and opportunities so that others can have them. But it won’t be done for nothing. We will meet new siblings, hear new stories, and gain new insights into who God is. We will grow and be transformed.
All glory be to the Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Matthew 10:16
[2] Matthew 10:34
[3] https://oga.pcusa.org/section/committees/committees/ga223-special-committees-and-task-forces/#Disparities
[4] Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 2 (Westminster John Knox, 2011)
Rev. Natalie Wolf 