Pentecost 5A2023
Matthew 10:40-42
A family in the first congregation I served owned an elevator company. Somehow, the owners of the elevator company heard about a school for children with disabilities in a village along the side of a volcano in Guatemala. For years, the students in wheelchairs had been carried by their teachers up and down the stairs—for the founder of the school could only buy enough land to build vertically, not horizontally. Upon hearing of this school, the owners decided they would donate an elevator and its installation. Excited, the senior pastor of our congregation organized a small group of people from the church to go along with the technicians installing the elevator. When the senior pastor spoke with the school’s director, she asked: What can we do while we’re there? What can we bring? How can we be helpful? And the director said, “Just come.” The senior pastor, a generous woman, a servant at heart, asked again, What can we do? Paint the school? Volunteer in the classrooms? Bring school supplies or medical supplies? And again, the director said, “Just come. Just come meet the people. Be with us.” When the senior pastor told me the director’s words, I was puzzled just as she was. Because we had so much, and these children and their families had so little by comparison, we thought.
The small group from church went along with the technicians from the elevator company, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say the trip changed their lives. They mostly spent time at the school getting to know the children and teachers. Along with the children and teachers, they rejoiced when the technicians completed the elevator installation, and they rode on the elevator’s maiden voyage with a couple of students in wheelchairs. They visited a nearby coffee co-op and learned how they were replanting the rainforest while growing coffee. They visited coffee farmers at their homes. And that was it. They didn’t fix anything, clean anything, teach anything. They did donate some school supplies and vitamins because they couldn’t help themselves. But they mostly just received the hospitality of the students, teachers, the director, and coffee farmers of this village in Guatemala.
In Matthew chapter 10, Jesus has just finished giving the disciples instructions about what to bring with them as they go about the work of the kingdom: healing people and raising them from the dead, cleansing lepers and casting out demons. Jesus has declared that those who find their lives lose them and those who lose their lives for Jesus’ sake find them. And then, he says: “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.” At first glance, this passage seems to extol the virtue of welcoming others. But looking more closely, I notice that Jesus is talking about the disciples being welcomed as they go about healing people and raising them from the dead, cleansing lepers and casting out demons. Jesus is not telling the disciples to welcome others. He’s talking about all the people who will welcome the disciples. He’s saying the disciples will go out and be welcomed by people who are not already part of Jesus’ tribe—and that in doing so, these folks will welcome not just the disciples but Jesus and not just Jesus but God.
Like the disciples were called just a few verses earlier, we are called by God to participate in the work of the kingdom though cleansing lepers and casting out demons is no longer in the wheelhouse of a disciple of Jesus. Still, we are called to go and do, to go and be the shining, loving, justice-seeking children of God we are. And there are times when we go out to do this work that we are welcomed by people who are not already Jesus-followers. And in welcoming us, they welcome Jesus, and they welcome God into their midst. But those who welcome us also minister to us. It can be tempting to get caught up in Jesus’ exalted view of his followers. He says, point-blank, today that those who welcome us welcome him and God! It can be tempting to focus on what we have to share, to give, to do. But the people with whom we share, to whom we give, with whom we do acts of service, those folks who welcome us, they minister right back to us. Ministry goes both ways.
We are busy and generous people here at Esperanza. We have built a Habitat for Humanity house every year for the last 26 years. We are always collecting food for the Kyrene Resource Center and, more recently, school supplies. We garden and care for the property here. We serve the pancake breakfast and will prepare heat respite lunches for Grace Lutheran. We go to the Lutheran Day at the Legislature and participate in the hunger leaders network. We organize drives for Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest and will serve at I-HELP three times this year. We participated in the Kiwanis Easter parade and will contribute to the fun of the 4th of July children’s bicycle parade on Tuesday. And in each of these ministries, when we go and meet the people who our gifts benefit, when we sit down with a cup of coffee at the pancake breakfast (once the pancakes and sausage are good to go of course!), when we are having a good time with the children gathered for the parade, when we receive the welcome of the people, yes, we bring the presence of God with us. But we receive it right back.
The group who traveled to Guatemala, their lives were changed by meeting these children with disabilities and a determined group of teachers working in difficult circumstances.
The opportunities that I have had to serve others, through Lutheran Volunteer Corps, through community involvement in the places I’ve lived, in simply being a pastor and getting to serve all of you, my life is far more blessed than those who have welcomed me so graciously.
So too for all of us. We bring God’s presence with us as we go about the work of the kingdom, but ministry goes both ways. I suspect God will surprise us in the way God shows up among those we went to help. And the joke’s on us! We busy, generous people, we went to serve because we heard God’s call, but when we show up, God shows up in the people who welcome us. For that we can say: thanks be to God! Amen.