“just a cup of cold water, please…”

(Matthew 10:40-42)

“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.”

              Short and sweet.  Short and simple, right?  You’re thinking, “We’re gonna get out of here in record time!”

              Well, short, for sure.  Simple?  Not so much.   So, I found a story about this saying of Jesus in The Christian Century that, I think, interprets today’s reading beautifully.

              The writer/preacher, Trice Gibbons, begins by saying, “I saw Jesus.  Let me tell you about it.…In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that whoever welcomes them welcomes him—and that offering someone a cup of cold water matters in the kin-dom of God.  So…I saw Jesus”

              And she goes on to tell us about Easter morning 1988, at her Presbyterian church in St. Louis.  This congregation had both a vibrant outreach ministry and a high-church, formal worship style.  The service always began with a grand procession.  They were so formal that the children worshiped separately, so as not to disturb the adults or to disrupt the formality.

The other important piece of information is that every Easter, the congregation gathered for breakfast before worship.  This particular year she was sitting with a college friend at a table by themselves, feeling like the only single people among a bunch of families. 

And now I will quote the author: “I do not remember seeing him arrive, but suddenly a lanky, awkward young man appeared at our table.  Wendy and I, somewhat irritated that our sanctuary had been disturbed, looked up from our plates, and the young man introduced himself as Bill.  It was evident from his speech and demeanor that Bill had an intellectual disability of some kind.  While Bill filled his bowl with equal parts dry cereal and sugar but no milk, I subtly glanced around to see if anyone was looking at us.  We learned that Bill’s legal guardian was a member of the congregation, that the guardian had invited Bill to breakfast, and that Bill had taken a cab from his group home to the church.

“…I could have reacted with sympathy.  This young man apparently had no family with whom to spend Easter, and he was dependent upon his legal guardian for an invitation to church.  I could have noted that, like us, he was a single young adult who needed a place to sit.  Instead, I found myself thinking, ‘Where is his guardian?’

“Somehow, during the post-breakfast cleanup process and the migration to the sanctuary, Wendy and I lost track of Bill.  We settled into our usual place toward the back amidst the 300 or more worshipers.  Then we stood as the trumpet sounded the start of the procession….  And there was Bill—right in the middle of the center aisle, pacing back and forth.  Maybe he was looking for his guardian.  Maybe he was just looking for a seat, but there he was, right where the procession needed to pass.

“I couldn’t watch.  I kept my eyes fixed on the hymnal opened to “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today,” so I didn’t need to risk eye contact with Bill or witness the pending collision.  When I looked up, the procession had reached the front of the sanctuary without incident.  I glanced around—no Bill.  Still, my anxiety remained high, but I didn’t see Bill again.

“For the rest of the day, though, I could not get that gentle soul out of my mind.  Had someone offered him a seat?  Did he leave without finding one? 

“Maybe Bill was a prophet—or an angel.  Maybe Bill was just Bill.  But I believe that I saw Jesus that morning, and I failed to make sure he was welcomed.  I was too busy worrying about the disruption of my life to even offer this child of God a cup of cold water.  If Christ is present in those we encounter, even those who arrive awkwardly or inconveniently, the way we receive them is the way we receive Christ, lest we forget.”

…I’m thinking this memory of our author may have happened to many of us as young people.  But I also think that these words of Jesus convict all of us every day when we don’t welcome others into our presence, into our churches, into our communities, into our nation and our world. 

This manifests in a variety of ways.  Perhaps we are present with folks but we don’t engage them in conversation, essentially ignoring them.  Or we don’t include them equally in the conducting of a meeting or in worship.  The very crude and mean-spirited ways in which we fly in the face of Jesus’ words are when we blatantly refuse asylum to immigrants who are being kicked out of their own horribly violent countries or who are too frightened to stay and raise their families there.  We are refusing to see Jesus’ reprimand of us when we lump all people from certain areas of our country or from certain nations into stereotypes such as criminals, rapists or simply rejects because of the color of their skin or our judgement that they are dirty or uneducated.

This text from the Gospel of Matthew is completely and totally about the reward that is ours when we welcome Emmanuel, when we offer a cup of cold water to the God who is with us, so that we can be with God in the Jesus House.