It was a lesson in hospitality and in sacrifice.
Anyway, there was this huge ice storm one winter when I was a junior in high school, and it caught our youth group by surprise. We were locked into the parish house of my home parish in the Dutch Point section of Hartford, Connecticut, originally for an overnight retreat of Christian formation and fun, but which ended up with us being frozen in and unable to leave.
It turns out that by some miracle, our building was the only one in our neighborhood with electricity and heat but that everyone in the homes in the projects around the parish were blacked out and cold. We as a group decided that we could not just hunker down alone—we had to help. So, we went out in pairs—a bunch of suburban kids—into the projects around the church that we were usually told to stay away from, knocking on doors inviting people out of their dark apartments into the warm shelter of the parish house. We scrounged food to make soup—truly a kind of stone soup—and we scrounged blankets and linens. Eventually, the clergy and adult advisors called someone (on old-style rotary dial phones!) who got the Salvation Army or the Red Cross (I can’t remember who) to bring us cots and blankets and food. Over 48 hours, we teens and other adults from the congregation learned a lesson about receiving the stranger and the cost of discipleship.
Here was the transaction: we who were comfortable learned to share our comfort with others.
Today’s Gospel is the second of two parts. We heard the first part last week. In this part of Matthew, Jesus is telling his closest followers (and through Matthew, telling the early Church and us) that even though discipleship is costly, we are called to practice hospitality.
Matthew recalls Jesus’ words in a very specific context. The Gospel of Matthew is written to a congregation composed of Jewish Christians, Gentiles who were initially attracted to Judaism (called “Judaizers”) who then became Christians, and were in community with other Gentile Christians who did not come through Judaism but probably knew something about the traditions and practices. It was also a community under threat of persecution and where following Jesus was often a risky, life or death proposition.
At the very least, choosing to follow Jesus could mean that the Jewish believers severed relationships with family who might consider them traitors and apostates. For the Gentile Christians, it meant following customs that seemed strange at best (selling your possessions and sharing them in common, perhaps) or bizarre (such as claiming to eat the flesh and blood of your founder in the Eucharist). So this is the context of Matthew’s remembrance of Jesus’ words: following Jesus might be costly.
So when Matthew recalls another part of Jesus’ teaching:
Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me
And whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me
God will honor whoever receives a prophet;
God will honor whoever receives a righteous man,
And God will reward anyone that shares even a cup of cold water with one of God’s own.
He is reminding us of what Jesus taught: Discipleship is costly, but we never have to bear the cost alone.
On the other hand, sometimes we try so hard to please God that we go over the top. One of the lessons from today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures may be that, as writer and Presbyterian pastor Frederick Buechner once wrote, that sometimes we bend over backwards so much to please God that we flop over and fall right on our faces.
The story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac is, to me, a case in point. Abraham listens for God. Abraham is told to dedicate his son to God, but hears that in terms of literally sacrificing his son. In a world where human sacrifice was fairly common especially in those days before Judaism took hold, perhaps his mistake might be understandable. But in his zeal to be as faithful as he can be, Abraham nearly gives up the son he waited his whole long life for… until God intervenes with a useful alternative.
Today’s Gospel in conversation with today’s reading from Genesis reminds us that being a friend and apprentice to Jesus will, at the very least, cause us to examine and change our relationship to everything: money, society, what is meaningful work, our relationships, even family. And rather than go over the top, our life of faith causes us to open our hearts, even when this seems perplexing to those around us.
At most, being a friend and apprentice to Jesus may cause conflict with people, even those close to us, who do not understand the life of faith. For others, ordinary Christian faith can become a radical act that might cause us to become outcasts from the very people and places we hold dear.
And for those of us for whom our belief is not a life-or-death matter, we must be ready to receive with hospitality those for whom faith in Christ is costing everything.
For those whose faith is costly, there is a home. We may be the home for those who have none for Jesus’ sake.
That is why we care for the sick, the outcast, the hungry, the jailed, for the refugee, for the lonely amongst us. That is why we host Good Neighbors and 12-step meetings—we are food for the hungry and a safe place for those seeking sobriety.
Our use of our relative wealth and relative comfort to support and hold up those for whom Christian faith is a costly, chosen sacrifice is a living example of the fullness of the body of Christ in action.
Jesus knew that faith is not always easy. But for those whose commitment to God might cause them dislocation there is not only a home in heaven but there is shelter here. Who knows? Our church, our prayers, our resources may be the shelter and safe-place that might mean life for a person whose faith has cost everything!
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