Matthew 10:40-42
10:40 "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
10:41 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;
10:42 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."
I want to try to convince you, gentle reader, that this is not a descending order. It is an ascending order. Let me put it this way. I find it more likely that one might recognize and welcome a prophet or a righteous man, than go out of one's busy way to do such an insignificant task as offering water "to one of these little ones." But I have a sneaking suspicion that in the upside down structure of the Kingdom, we have more difficulty realizing that such small acts actually have eternal significance.
A prophet, a righteous person, and a little one - sounds like the beginning of a joke. I have sometimes wondered about this passage from Matthew's Gospel. Is this a descending order? Do these actions and people start at the top, as it were, and then work their way down? Or are they on equal footing? Or is this an inversion; building up to the point where you can see the glory in giving a cup of cold water to one the little ones as actually the highest point?
I think one of the inversions of the Kingdom of God is that the greatest glory is found in unexpected places. You can perhaps easily recognize a prophet or a righteous person as someone whom God 'favours' (don't take that the wrong way). But when do we stop to see the eternal value in offering the cup of water to the "little ones"? We naturally seek the "great and the glorious" - because there is something in us that pulls us toward glory. I recall the buzz for tickets when Desmond Tutu came to speak at the U of A Human Rights Lectureship. The same committee had a member who expressed "absolutely no interest" in having Jean Vanier come and talk about, well, the little ones. Our perception has been skewed, and mistake importance for glory. But enough on that theme for now.
This section comes as part of the missional discourse in Matthew's gospel. There are themes of "welcoming" and "sending". Jesus has just finished talking about the sending part in last week's reading. You know - some will like you and some will really, really, not like you. So we have heard about sending, and we have heard about the negative welcomes, and now we are going to hear about the "positive welcomings".
It is a rather staggering claim that Jesus is making in v 40. The welcome of a disciple in mission is a welcoming of Christ, which is a welcoming of the Father. It is marvellous that Jesus puts us in the same position as himself so many times: as He has been sent, so He sends us.
Well, it's time to move on to other tasks; we'll pick it up again in a day or two.
The latte has now been ordered, so a few more thoughts will be posted in a while. For those who find such things helpful, some takes on the patron/client relationship of representation to which Jesus could be alluding. This is nothing particular to the ancient culture in which Jesus is speaking - it is a widespread political norm. As St Paul says, "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us".[2 Cor 5:20] To welcome the representative is to welcome the one represented. And as the last part of the missionary discourse in Matthew, we are finally reminded that we are sent as representatives of Christ, and Christ of God.
That word "welcome" comes up so many times that it would also seem an obvious choice for the focus of a sermon. I suspect their are two basic approaches: welcoming others and welcoming Christ. Various leanings in the church might tend to emphasize one over the other; I think that the two are necessarily connected, like the two great commandments. We love God and we love our neighbour. We welcome Christ and we welcome even the "little ones" in his name. A few of us were chatting earlier today about this passage, and we got around to that old topic of how welcoming we are as a church. The passage speaks to the whole ministry of hospitality which Christians need to practice. It also predicates this ministry upon our own "welcome" to Christ: how do we invite Him into our lives?
One other thing which keeps coming back to my mind is the notion that the giving of the cup of cold water - the "small act" - is the stuff of which a holy life is made. Growth in discipleship and holiness is not to be found in a few occasional spurts of encounters with prophets, but in the thousands of small acts and decisions which make up the bulk of our lives. These are the daily acts of "giving the cup of cold water" which , practiced over the course of a lifetime, make up Christian character.
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