Welcoming as We've Been Welcomed

Matthew 10:40-42
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, June 26, 2005)

It was uncommonly warm that October day. My family and I had arrived in our area less than two months before, brought here to start a new congregation. I was going door-to-door, eliciting interest in this adventure of faith. On this particular day, I was knocking on doors, ringing doorbells, and running from dogs in the neighborhood that sets across Clough Pike from Amelia High School. I came up the driveway of a woman who was weeding her flower bed.

I introduced myself to the woman and we chatted for awhile. “It’s awfully hot out here today,” she observed. “Would you like a drink of water?” I responded enthusiastically: “That would be great!”

Later, Sabrina, a person a few of you here this morning will remember and who has since moved, told me that as she prepared the glass of ice water for me, she remembered the words of Jesus that are our Bible lesson for this morning:

“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 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.”

Sabrina believed that by welcoming me in Jesus’ Name, she was welcoming Jesus Himself.

Hospitality--for all people--is at the core of our lives as followers of Jesus Christ. It begins with God’s welcome of us. We know that we’re like the prodigal son in Jesus’ famous story. We’ve tried to make our way in the world and even when we’ve achieved success, we’ve experienced an emptiness that can only be filled by the God we know in Jesus. Like the father in that same story, God has welcomed us back.

This theme of hospitality is then, Jesus says, to be replicated in our own lives as we welcome others. The New Testament book of Hebrews, tells us, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)

The passage remembers an incident from the Old Testament when Abraham, the father of all with faith in God, had pitched his tent amid some oak trees and received strange visitors. It turned out that the three men were God and two of His angelic servants. (Saint Augustine believed that they were God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But that’s another story.)

The point is that our every encounter with others might well be divinely-orchestrated appointments. Why? Because it’s God’s passionate desire to welcome into His kingdom others in the same way He’s welcomed you and me.

Pastor Mike Foss, whose work helping others live out their faith in Christ has come to mean so much to me, tells the story of a woman who had joined his congregation some time before:

“I came to this church when I was at a crossroads in my life, Pastor Mike. My marriage had failed, I was between jobs, and struggling to find myself. And when I came [here], the first thing I noticed was how warm it felt, how close to Jesus it brought me. But the best thing was that, when I looked for a place to serve and belong, I found [several] right away...[I got involved with several small groups.] This church not only gave me a sense of the nearness of God, but by welcoming me into ministry, by making room for a stranger, I could belong.” Foss says that the woman then looked at him for a moment and said, “Pastor Mike, this church gave me the strength to believe in God and myself again. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for the people of [this congregation].”

More than a few of you, I know, would tell similar stories about the life of Friendship Church: How, at pivotal moments, in your life you too were welcomed to turn from sin, to follow Jesus Christ, and to get engaged in those five purposes for living that animates the lives of Jesus’ followers---worshiping God with our whole lives, engaging in deep fellowship with God’s people, taking on ministries to the Church, serving and loving the spiritually-disconnected in Jesus’ Name, and sharing Christ with others.

The hospitality you’ve experienced from individuals of Friendship and from the congregation as a whole have changed your life for the better and forever. When we welcome others, we are most clearly doing Jesus’ will for our lives!

And this ministry of welcome isn’t something that we’re called upon to extend just to strangers.

The late priest, Henri Nouwen, was an amazing writer and one who spent a good portion of his life living with and caring for the mentally retarded. Toward the end of his life, he ministered to gays and lesbians dying of AIDS and wept as he said that it broke his heart to see these people literally dying for the love and acceptance that the world had withheld from them.

In one of his books, Nouwen wrote about the family and observed that in those households where love prevailed and children thrived, there was a common thread: Parents treated their children as guests sent to them from God. That isn’t to say that the parents didn’t provide loving discipline. But these parents, Nouwen observed, never lost sight of the fact that their children were gifts sent to them from God, whose time in their parents' homes were fleeting. (This is fact to which I've become very sensible with the recent wedding of our daughter.)

How might our lives be changed if we regarded every person we encountered as though they were a very special guest: Jesus?

What consideration might we show them?

Would we quench their thirst for hope and kindness?

Jesus says that when we afford others the same hospitality and welcome He has given us, we hold on tightly to the free gifts of forgiveness and life He gives to all who follow Him.

Today, as we close this five-week series on growing in our faith in Christ by growing in our welcome of God and others into our lives, I want to issue again the challenge I gave to all of us a few weeks ago. Let’s make it our goal to invite at least one spiritually-disconnected person to worship with us, to be involved in one of the small groups that are going to be an ongoing feature of Friendship’s life, or just to know and follow Jesus every month for the rest of our lives.

Let’s extend the loving welcome of Jesus to those who need Him. For a world thirsting for love and truth, hope and God, we can be a cup of cool water that quenches them forever.