We Are What We Welcome.

Matthew 10:40-42

July 2, 2017

I.

At the end of last week’s sermon I mentioned how Jesus draws a line of identification weaving together the disciples, himself, and God.  God is present in him, and through him, in his disciples.  That is, us.  We are Christ-in-the-world, as one mentor of mine was fond of saying.  We are God’s presence and activity in the world as well.

I will let that sink in for a minute.  It is both a tremendous gift and an awesome responsibility to be God’s agents and God’s face in the world.  Jesus says things like this several times, like when he gives his disciples and apostles the power to bind and release the sins of others.  It reflects the responsibility the prophet Ezekiel placed on the leaders of the people to warn them of the consequences of their actions or to bear those consequences themselves.

This is not a bestowal of privilege on the disciples, as if Jesus is affirming them in themselves.  He’s just told them they have to take up their cross and lose their lives!  The disciples have to give up their ego-centric, sinful, self-centered existence.  Only then can they function as effective channels of Jesus’ ministry.  Disciples who relinquish their own identity, who become nothing so God’s love may flow through them… these are the ones who, if people welcome them are welcoming God.

These are those who serve as prophets, righteous people, and “little ones.”  You have to have made yourself little, you have to have emptied yourself after the example of Jesus, you have to have died to your old self and its puffed up self-importance, you have to have surrendered everything over to him in obedience so that your actions really are Christ’s actions and therefore the actions of God.

Look at the instructions Jesus gives them way back at the beginning of the chapter.  They are not to go into these villages with an attitude of superiority, let alone conquest.  They are to heal people by integrating themselves into the community.  They heal by identification and sharing lives.  This healing and liberation happens incarnationally, which is of course the way Jesus himself comes into the world: with nothing, in abject poverty and humility, utterly dependent, identifying with us completely at our lowest most vulnerable place.

Then, like the yeast in a loaf of bread, or like salt in food, their influence, the content of which is Jesus’ teaching of peace, humility, justice, forgiveness, generosity, welcome, equality, compassion, and joy, spreads through, infuses, and permeates the whole system.  They empty themselves and identify with the people, even as their presence subtly changes everything.  The system doesn’t “become Christian” in a formal sense, any more than a loaf of bread becomes a hunk of yeast.  But the presence and activity of Jesus’ disciples in the system makes the whole place more human, more just, more gentle, more joyful, more healthy, and more true.

II.  

This infusion, this spreading of Jesus’ values and practices through a culture, is accomplished by what Jesus calls “welcoming.”  It happens through hospitality.  In other words, the success of the disciples’ mission it totally up to the people they are sent to.  They have to receive it.  

It’s kind of like with our bodies.  When a foreign entity comes in, the body either rejects and fights against the invader by means of the immune system, or it welcomes the new thing, recognizing it as something healthy and beneficial that adds to its life.  

This assumes a healthy and functional body that can tell the difference.  When a body gets out of balance, it starts welcoming things that are toxic and destructive, and rejecting things that are good for it.  This happens when the brain and its ego-centric fantasies start overruling the body’s natural sensibilities.  We decide, for reasons having nothing to do with what the body really wants and needs, that things are good for us that really aren’t.  We ingest substances on the basis of self-image, convenience, a desire to fit in with conventional standards, or a temporary good feeling, even if they are in the long run poisonous.  And we refuse to consume things because our brains have decided they are inconvenient, don’t “taste good”, or project the wrong image to ourselves or others.  So we have people who smoke tobacco because that’s “cool,” but won’t eat anything green because that’s “rabbit food.”

What is true for a body is also the case for a community.  When something new comes in, it is either welcomed or rejected on the basis of whether the community feels it is beneficial.  And it makes this judgment often based on arbitrary criteria rooted in its own self-image and fear of outsiders or of change.  The community has to decide whether the new thing will become a part of its life become different because of it.    

Jesus will say much the same thing in the Parable of the Sower.  The productivity of the seed depends on the quality of the soil.  Soil that welcomes the seed, and gives it room to grow, allows the seed to take root and sprout and grow, producing a plant and gives grain.  If the seed is the good news about God’s kingdom, the good soil is a community that embraces and encourages the kingdom of God to grow among them, changing them.

We are what we welcome.  We are what we take into ourselves and allow to become part of us.  We are what we receive in the same way that we literally are what we eat and breathe.  

This is what the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is about.  We eat Jesus; we therefore become Jesus, and he becomes us.  How this happens depends on our receptivity.  We may mindlessly eat the bread and not allow it to have any effect on us at all.  It’s just bread, and not very much at that.  Or we may be good soil and welcome this bread as the Body of Christ our God given for us and for the life of the world, and know it is the way he gives to remember, participate in, and become him.  Then we are eating God’s Body and that changes us.  That’s the risk we take when we lift up our hearts and come to this Table.  And it changes us into this particular person: Jesus Christ.  We become what we welcome. 

III.

The problem with the good news of God’s Kingdom is that to some it often looks toxic.  The good news sounds, and actually is, profoundly threatening to the established powers that run the world.  Jesus’ message turns the world upside down and its values inside out.  If you let this message into your life you will be changed.  Count on it.    

We, as disciples, are all sent by Jesus Christ into the world on a mission.  Wherever we find ourselves is the place to which we have been sent by God as God’s agents.  It is our deep responsibility to ensure that we are faithfully and truthfully representing God, not our own agendas or desires.  We have to know that we are about spreading the seed of God’s truth, the good news of God’s Kingdom of justice, peace, and love.  Jesus says we are the leaven and the salt of the Earth, and our mission is to change the shape and the flavor of people’s lives and the life of the community.

Unfortunately, the church has not done this very well.  We habitually sell-out to the same temptations of money, fame, and power, that Jesus rejects at the beginning of his ministry when Satan offers them to him.  Instead of losing ourselves and becoming efficient channels of God’s love flowing into people’s lives, we become obsessed with what we can gain.  We think it is about getting members, or money, or status, or buildings.  We think it is about “success” as the world defines it.  

And in so doing we capitulate to the same values, practices, traditions, memories, and habits that are already killing people.  We become no different from any other group or movement with something to sell.  We just tell people what we think they want to hear.  Instead of a message of this new and different way of life in harmony with God and our own deepest, truest selves, we appeal to people’s fear and ignorance.

So the church degenerates into what Jesus calls “salt that has lost its flavor,” which has no effect on the food it is added to.  It is like leaven that instead of making the dough rise just dissolves into it and has no effect at all.  We have to face the fact that the church hasn’t really been leaven or salt to begin with.

The Lord calls his disciples and equips them to be the people that we have been waiting for.  He sends us into the world to be the change we want to see in the world.  This means acting as agents of the God of love.  Everything that Jesus teaches, we have to do and be.  We have to be a blessing to the poor, the grieving, the gentle, the peacemakers, the pure in heart, and the hungry for righteousness.  We have to hold to the higher standard of non-violence that Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount.  We have to witness to the living Presence of God’s Kingdom: God’s way, truth, and life, in this world.

IV.

We have to be the prophets who tell the truth and call the people back to God’s vision, so that people may welcome us and receive the reward of living in a community of love and peace.  Even if it means receiving from people the prophet’s “reward,” which is often rejection, we still have to bring with us benefits of the message.  

We have to be the righteous ones who express God’s justice, of forgiveness and reversal, making the last first and the first last.  To welcome the righteous is to receive the reward of living in a community of equality and acceptance. 

Finally, we have to be the “little ones,” the ones happy to be given just the water necessary for life, the ones who make no claim to greatness.  To welcome those who follow Jesus in simplicity, humility, gentleness, and joy is to receive the reward of communion with him, and in him communion with God, and therefore with all creation.