Welcoming Others in the Name of Christ

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Matthew 10:40-42
It was uncommonly warm that October day in 1990. My family and I had arrived in the Cincinnati-area neighborhood that would be our home for seventeen years less than two months before.

We had gone there to start a new congregation and as part of the start-up process, 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 German Shepherds when I came up the driveway of a woman who was weeding her flower bed. I introduced myself 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!”

Years later, that woman, by then a longtime member of the congregation I’d been called to start, told me that as she prepared the glass of ice water for me, she remembered words of Jesus that are in our Gospel lesson for this morning: “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.”

That woman believed that by welcoming me in Jesus’ Name, she was welcoming Jesus Himself. As His words in today’s Gospel lesson indicate, Jesus agrees with her.

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)

That 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, the bishop of the north African city of Hippo, believed that the three visitors 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 represent 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.

A woman who was a member of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Burnsville, Minnesota, once told her former pastor, Mike Foss, how she’d landed in that congregation:

“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].”

Through the years, I personally have known or talked with hundreds of people who could tell stories similar to the one told by that woman: How, at pivotal moments in their lives, they too were welcomed to turn from sin, to follow Jesus Christ, and to get involved with the ministries of the Church.

In fact, that’s really my story. When Ann and I were first married, you know, I rejected the very notion of God as a an unnecessary fiction, a crutch for the weak. The pastor of Ann’s home church didn’t know my sentiments when he dropped by our apartment one day and asked us to be the youth group leaders. But, having been welcomed into the ministry of the Church, I was incited to learn more about this Jesus I was serving. 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. We're to extend it also to the people we know well, something that can, at times, be more difficult than reaching out to strangers.

The late priest Henri Nouwen, was an amazing writer and one who spent a good portion of his adult 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 were literally dying for the love that the world had withheld from them.

In one of his books, Nouwen wrote about the nuclear family—moms, dads, and children--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.

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 freely give to others the same hospitality and welcome He has given to us, we in turn hold on tightly to the free gifts of forgiveness and life He gives to all who follow Him.

During our recent mission trip, some of our church members cleaned a Christian elementary school in inner city Grand Rapids. The staff there deeply respected the principal. One of the stories they told about him is how at the beginning of each school day, this principal greets every student by name and shakes their hands. It’s a simple thing. But that simple gesture may alone explain the success that school seems to be having in turning the lives of at-risk children around. You see, by acknowledging those children personally, that principal is saying. “I see the Jesus in you. I see how important you are. Welcome to this outpost of God’s kingdom!”

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a sort of parable about the day of judgment when He will judge the whole world. Those who enter His kingdom, Jesus says, are those who saw the Jesus in the neighbor, in the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned.

When we see Jesus in those around us and extend Christ’s love to them, something amazing happens: they see Christ in us.

This week, I hope that you’ll join me in accepting the challenge in Jesus’ words to us today, the challenge of making Christian hospitality part of our lives each day.

We could try, for example, to ask a co-worker or a neighbor how they’re doing and then, actually take the time to hear their answers.

We could invite a spiritually disconnected friend to be with us for worship next Sunday or come with you to the Roots of Our Faith class tomorrow evening.

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 refreshes them now and gives them hope for eternity.