Jesus said, “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.” In this brief passage from the gospel today we continue to listen in on a conversation that Jesus is having with his disciples and his closing words to them in what is known as the missionary discourse.
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
In this brief passage from the gospel today we continue to listen in on a conversation that Jesus is having with his disciples and his closing words to them in what is known as the missionary discourse. And the topic Jesus chooses to wrap up with, the last words he leaves with them, are about welcome – what it means to truly offer and receive welcome. Something as seemingly simple as extending hospitality to a follower of Jesus has profound implications. And that it that God is the ultimate recipient. But perhaps not the only beneficiary.
Jesus gave them a guide for evaluating welcome in the gospel we heard a couple weeks ago. When they go into a home, they are to offer peace. And if it is returned, the place is worthy of their visit and they are to stay there to teach and offer healing. If their peace is not returned, they should leave that place and go on to look for welcome elsewhere.
In ancient Jewish law and culture, a sent messenger was to be treated as the person who sent them. So Jesus used this familiar concept to give his disciples a kind of official divine authority.
Their survival also called on Jewish culture and tradition. Jesus ordered the disciples to travel light, taking no money, extra clothes, or food. Their complete dependence on welcome is thought to have motivated strangers to feed and shelter them.
And we wonder if it didn’t also offer emotional comfort. The disciples faced intense rejection, persecution and even trial and execution. Knowing that welcoming them was equivalent to welcoming God must have provided massive encouragement during lonely travels.
Shawn Smith was a freelance journalist in need of a job, or more precisely a paycheck, when he was asked to meet a Syrian refugee named Omar. Shawn had ideas about refugees, about Middle Eastern men and their motives that he wasn’t especially proud of that but he wouldn’t exactly set them aside either.
So he wasn’t sure of the welcome he could either offer to or accept from this man. As a writer, though, he knew that the stories are always hidden from us at first, always waiting in the shadows. They are tentative, skittish things, yearning for light.
Shawn calculated that there are nearly 6,000 miles between Omar’s hometown and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where they both lived. There were dozens of other countries to which Omar could have been relocated and hundreds of other cities. Yet somehow there he was, less than a mile from Shawn’s house, and the area where Shawn’s ancestors had lived for the last 250 years. What are the odds of their paths crossings? He was still tentative, but his curiosity was stronger.
At their first meeting, he offer a perfunctory thank you to Omar through a translator for Omar’s willingness to meet him here in a strange country. “It may very well be that nothing will come of our time together,” Shawn says. “But I’m willing to help you tell your story.” The translator echoed his words to Omar in his own language. He smiled and nodded and replied in Arabic. “Omar says it is impossible for nothing to come of this. He is glad you are willing to hear his story, but no matter what happens, you are friends now. That is all that matters.”
The words caught Shawn off guard. He thought this Syrian man would be as skeptical as he was. He thought that a Middle Eastern Muslim, would see Shawn, a white, western, Christian, as a potential enemy. But Omar accepted Shawn without reservation, almost instantly. He called him his “friend” which rocked his world. Shawn wondered perhaps for the first time ever, what the word “friend” even meant to him.
“Omar, can you tell me about your village?” Shawn asked. “Can you tell me about how you got to the United States?” With a sad smile Omar said, “I love Syria. No one ever wants to leave their home. But we had no choice.”
Omar had gotten a tip that his village would soon be bombed. With his wife and three sons somehow balanced behind him, he guided his motor bike out of their village and into the countryside. Their combined weight wobbled the aged bike from side to side, as he shouted at them, “hold still, hold still.” From his cousin’s porch, they watched bombs rain down on his village miles away. “That was your house,” he said, then, ten minutes later, “I think that one hit my house.”
The next night Omar walked through the pitch-black Syrian wilderness, his family in a line behind him. He could feel the tension in his wife, the fear in his older boys. Someone ahead shouted, “Get down!” and they all collapsed into the dust, holding their breath, trying to keep the baby quiet. There was the taste of dirt. There were rocks digging into his body. There was the sound of his boys, so far from home and so afraid. “Abba,” they whimper. “Abba.”
Small children crying out for their father echoes the cry of all of us to God our Father and the longing we all have to be safe, to find ourselves in welcoming arms. If we follow Christ, we represent him to the world. Our words and actions are often the only window non-believers have into who Jesus is.
Welcoming others—especially strangers, the marginalized, or those in need—is a direct act of worship, our way to love and honor God by loving and honoring God’s creation. Service to people is treated as service to Christ. He especially remembers those he calls “little ones.” The Greek word is “mikros” and they are especially beloved of Jesus. They are the children but also the vulnerable and those who some in society considers inferior.
How critical is welcome? Jesus’ charge today is a powerful one: those who show hospitality to his disciples, are effectively hosting Jesus himself—and by extension, accepting God the Father. So everyday acts of kindness are elevated into expressions of devoted worship.
When Shawn set out to write Omar’s story he thought it would be an action-adventure tale following a Syrian family through bombs and bullets to an inner-city US neighborhood that persecuted them for being Muslim. He thought it might be his own story of how a middle-aged man in search of meaning helped a Syrian family find the American dream.
Instead, something happened inside of him. His belief that refugees have little to offer and make communities where they settle weaker was crushed. His belief that they need his help more than they need his welcoming friendship was gutted. His deep-seated, hidden concern that every Muslim person might be inherently violent or dedicated to the destruction of the West was exposed and found to be false.
Instead of a magazine story, he wrote a book which he describes as “a deeply personal story of two fathers hoping for the best, two hearts seeking compassion, two lives changed forever and the opportunities to show love and hospitality to the sojourner in our midst.”
So what is the meaning of friendship? Shawn discovered it is all in, nothing held back, arms wide open welcome. He never could have imagined he’d become friends with a Syrian man from 6,000 miles away, a Muslim man whose children call him Abba. Shawn’s life changed in ways he still finds difficult to explain. Through all the coffees, drives to Philadelphia, and chats on his front porch, there’s one thing he knows for sure. The role of the welcoming host, in a role reversal he did not see coming, had been taken on by Omar. Before he even knew him, he called him friend.
For us as modern readers and followers of Jesus, today’s teaching shifts our focus from ancient missionary travel to our own ethics and relationships. It links humanity all the way up to the divine. Welcoming the disciple leads to welcoming Jesus, which ultimately means welcoming God who sent Him. Open doors lead to open hearts. Open doors lead to open minds and a place for love to live.
The ancient story of Jesus sending his friends and followers into the world and the modern story of Shawn and Omar remind us that we have it in us to be Christs to each other to work miracles of love and healing as well as to have them worked on us. Amen.