God himself enters houses with Jesus’ messengers
Readings: Matthew 10. 40-42
Imagine you’ve got guests coming round for dinner. How are you going to prepare? Well, if it’s close friends and family you’ll likely make a bit of a fuss, but you’re not going to panic too much about a bit of mess around the corners of the house, usual plates and stuff for the meal. I remember hanging out with some friends at a conference, we’d brought a bottle of port, but ended up drinking it out of mugs because it was all we had. You’re delighted they’re there, you’re going to make a fuss of them, but it’s not going to be anything extraordinary, you’ll make do and muddle along.
But what if it’s your boss, or someone you’re trying to impress? Well, then you’re going to have a bit more of a spruce up around the place, dig out the better plates or at least try to avoid giving them the one with a chip in it, set the table nicely, maybe even go and grab a bottle of wine for the evening. You’re going to make a bit more of an effort.
But now imagine that the King is coming for dinner, or if you’re not much of a monarchist pick your favourite world leader from the past two decades. You’re going to properly clean around the house, get into all the corners, finest plates and dishes you can find, everything is going to have to be perfect. It was often observed that the late Queen must have thought the world smelled of fresh paint as everywhere she went they’d have done it all up specially. More personally I remember meeting the then Prince Charles when I was working with the churches in Abergavenny, he had the nicest tea cup and saucer in the place.
It may not be quite such a big contrast for you, but try as we might, what we think of people affects how we treat them. Well, not so much what we think of them, but what they represent for us. Are they a beloved head of state we’re keen to impress, or a potential new boss or client we want to make the best impression to. We all, almost unthinkingly, modify our behaviour based on our impressions of people.
And the remarkable thing is, Jesus tells us that that’s true for us as Christians. How other people treat us reveals their reaction to the Gospel and to Jesus himself, and their reaction to Jesus is how they are responding to God himself. How they treat us is how they are treating what we represent.
We’re right at the end of Jesus’ teaching as the disciples are sent out on mission. He’s told them they go with great heavenly power but no earthly power. He’s given them warnings; to expect persecution, that they are sheep amongst wolves, and of the division the Gospel will bring. But now he moves onto something much more positive, if people treat us well because of our faith, it reveals in some way an openness to Jesus. If they receive us and welcome us, they are welcoming Jesus with us. As the 20th Century German Lutheran theologian observed ‘God himself enters houses with Jesus’ messengers. What a statement!’
It’s most pronounced for me as a Vicar because I wear one of these things round my neck, and sometimes my cassock if I’ve come straight from a service. And it’s interesting how people react to me, some people feel greatly comforted by the arrival of the Vicar, others very occasionally shout insults from their car windows, and some react, particularly when hospital visiting, like you’re the angel of death itself. How they treat me in some ways points to how they are reacting to Jesus, but also likely to the institution of the church too. But the same is true for all of us, and likely without that institution baggage, as we go out in mission, as we go about sharing our faith how people respond reveals where they are at with Jesus. As we enter houses, or cafes and pubs, or meet people on the street God himself goes with us. To use the Apostle Paul’s language from his letters ‘you are the body of Christ’. In other word’s Jesus’ presence on earth.
And so Jesus starts to describe how they might respond to us. He says if they welcome you as a prophet they receive a prophet’s reward. Prophets are those who speak God’s words, it’s not so much about telling the future, rather prophets are those who speak what God is saying, which sometimes is about the future but not always. So if someone welcomes you as someone who speaks for God, as someone who brings his message to them, they will be rewarded in that way. And all of us carry Jesus’ message with us, we are all called to speak the Gospel in his name.
And again Jesus says that when someone welcomes you as a righteous person they will receive a righteous person’s reward. This might be they welcome you as a good person, they recognise you as a Christian and therefore as a good person rather than someone evil, and they welcome you because of it. Or it might be they welcome you because they recognise you as being right with God, which is what righteousness is all about, being right with God. And so if they welcome you as someone they recognise as being right with God they will be rewarded in that way.
And if someone offers you even a cup of water because you are a disciple of Jesus, they won’t lose their reward either. It’s interesting that Jesus doesn’t just name us as disciples, he calls us little ones. ‘If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple’, Jesus isn’t talking about children here, he’s not talking about giving drinks to Christian kids, we’re little ones, we’re his little ones.
It’s one of his preferred ways of talking about us as his disciples. It’s a wonderful picture of dependency and affection and intimacy. Like his image of longing to gather us under his wings like a hen with her chicks. But it’s also a picture of our vulnerability, mirroring back to the image of us as sheep among wolves. We’re vulnerable, needing help and support, needing that welcome and hospitality.
In the ancient near east hospitality was an important thing, and in a region that was incredibly hot giving a cup of cold water to a guest was the very least you could do to make them welcome. We perhaps all recognise that a little in the light of the temperatures this past week. Whilst on retreat I walked to a nearby church to look around and the church warden letting me in told me if I wanted that she’d be happy for me to pop in for a drink before I wandered back. In the heat, cold water is much appreciated. If someone gives us even the smallest offer of welcome and hospitality, because we’re Christians, they won’t lose their reward.
So what’s with all this talk of reward? I’ve rather circled round it haven’t I. Reward in Matthew’s Gospel often has eternal significance. For example in the Sermon on the Mount the ‘reward’ for faithful discipleship is set against the futility of those who parade around how good they think they are. And later in Matthew 25 Jesus speaks of the ‘reward’ as ‘the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’, and ‘eternal life’ is contrasted with the ‘eternal fire’ reserved for those who have turned the ‘little ones’ away.
If to welcome us is to welcome Jesus, if Jeremias is correct in his observation that ‘God himself enters houses with Jesus’ messengers’ then when people welcome us as people who speak God’s message they receive God’s message and are welcomed into the kingdom. When people welcome us as people who are right with God perhaps they are looking for how to be made right with God, and as we share, salvation comes to that house too. To offer us help and hospitality as we go about our mission is to reveal a sympathy for our cause, and perhaps an openness to receive Jesus for themselves. It’s a wonderfully simple truth, but a profoundly deep one, how people respond to us is how they are responding to Jesus and in turn responding to God.
So what are we to do about this? Well in some sense there’s nothing we can do, it’s simply true that as Christians sharing Jesus how people respond to us is how they are responding to Jesus, it’s not an effort thing, it’s a simple truth. And perhaps that means when people are less than gracious with us when we share faith or they discover we’re a Christian that we shouldn’t take it personally, it’s not us they are rejecting so much as the one who sent us.
However, with that in mind, we had therefore better look as much like Jesus as we can. If you wander round Haven Drive yelling repent into a megaphone, you’ll likely get a rather different response to if you sat down with one person you’d met over coffee and chatted about the difference Jesus has made to your life.
If how people respond to us is how they respond to Jesus, we had better look like him. Which leads us in a nice little loop back to a fortnight ago when we started this section. Because that week we heard the end of chapter 9 where Jesus ‘went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness’. And then at the start of chapter 10 where he ‘sent out the twelve with the following instructions… proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons’. The disciples mission looks a lot like Jesus’ mission. In fact it’s the same mission. And we continue that mission, going with the presence and authority of Jesus. So let us do and live and act as Jesus did, so that people may see him more clearly in us. And as we day by day grow to look more like him, as we do as he did, may we find that, by God’s Spirit, people around us respond to the message we proclaim and are added to his kingdom.
Amen.