Welcome

Matthew 10:24-39

June 28, 2020

This is the end of the pep talk that
Jesus gives the disciples before he sends them out.

the one where he told them

they were sheep sent into the midst of wolves,

and that said that they would be like a sword to peace,

The one where warned them about

persecution, flogging and even death.

At least it ends on a high note.

Or at least a more gentle note: Welcome.

 

Last week we heard that some

people would reject the disciples.

But today, the insinuation is

that some people will welcome the disciples

and their mission and their message about

the Kingdom of God.

And it actually also gives a little lesson to the disciples

About what God values and

how they should behave to others.

Their mission, in a nutshell, is welcome.

Welcoming is a hard word to explain.

We talk about it a lot,

but if you asked me to define it, I don’t know if I could.

well, the dictionary definition is

“to greet someone in a glad or friendly way”

but like a lot of definitions,
it doesn’t quite get there.

Welcoming is a lot of unspoken things together.

Basically, we know when we’ve felt welcomed,

and we know when we haven’t.

  

When someone’s face

lights up when we enter a room.

That can be welcoming.

Or when someone gives us a real hug.

That can be welcoming too.

And when we come into a room,

and a group of people abruptly stops talking.

When people look away,

those things can be unwelcoming.

But then again, sometimes a hug isn’t welcoming.
Sometimes those lit up faces seem false.

Sometimes silence when we enter is respectful

And sometimes it’s welcoming for someone to avert their eyes.

Welcoming is more than just a few identifiable actions.

Welcoming is a feeling that we have for one another

It’s conveyed in our actions, but goes beyond our actions.

Really welcoming someone is to make room

for them in your life or in your day.

Gethsemane is a place of welcome.
We state it in our mission it’s on our sign

and we do a good job of

welcoming new people in our midst.

But there are things we could do better,

and Christianity in general could do a better

job of being welcoming.

  

Many Christians have the best intentions to

welcome everyone.

But real welcome requires vulnerability.

Someone could reject our welcome.

Someone could take advantage of us.

And to welcome someone in – to really welcome them

into our churches and our lives –

means that we will allow them to change the things
that we like, and to ultimately change us.

To welcome means to be open to change

And Jesus values the spirit of welcoming.

Jesus says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me,

and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

Welcome is the first step at the heart of the gospel.

Our neighbors, those strangers we meet,

those people in need,

those that need a cup of water,

those are Christ to us.                                              .

Welcome is the first step to know others

the first step to allow them into our space

to bring them into our circle

to intertwine them into our lives

and make the stranger a part of our new families.

Brothers and sisters in Christ.

The religious leaders at the time of Jesus and

lots of religious leaders now and over the years

try to make Christianity into something more complicated:

following rules, repeating rituals, or following certain,
narrow definitions of purity.

But true Christian spirituality is as simple as welcome.

About being willing to open ourselves up and giving

someone what they need, a cup of water on a hot day.

Everyone can be a part of this.

Even the least among us,

just a simple cup of water is enough.

Not a bathtub. Just a simple cup.

And Jesus doesn’t tell us to make sure they really

need the cup of water, or to ask whether they

will use the cup of water for good things or not.

Just to give it, just to share it.

No questions asked.

And likewise, in Jesus words,

there are no questions asked of the welcomer either.

We don’t know whether the one who shares the cup of water

believes the message that the disciples bring.

Did they believe in Jesus? Do they worship God?

Do they ever share it with others?

We don’t know. They just welcomed.

They just offered the cup of water,

and none of them lose their reward.

Jesus’ way doesn’t get much more complicated than that.

No elaborate systems, no checked boxes,

no obsessions with keeping every code or law.

Because one small welcome can snowball into others
and eventually the world is a place of welcome,

and that place of welcome becomes the Kingdom of God.

  

Bishop Desmond Tutu,

The bishop of South Africa during and after Apartheid,

said this in a sermon in Washington DC

in November 2001, two months after 9-11.

“God says, I have a dream, that all of you - my children -
will realize that you belong in one family.
This is a family in which there are no outsiders; all are insiders. All.
When Jesus spoke about his death, he said,
If I be lifted up, I will draw all -- he didn’t say I will draw some.
He said, I will draw all –

black, white, rich, poor, American, Iraqi,
Afghanistan, gay, lesbian, straight.
All belong in this family: Arafat, Sharon, George Bush, bin Laden.
And God says, I have no one except you to help me realize my dream.
Will you help me?  says God.  I have no one except you.”

God dreams about us.

We might dream about wealth or romance or security.

But God daydreams about us, reaching our hands out

to someone new, someone different,

and giving just a cup of cold water to them in God’s name.

God dreams about us welcoming others

and us being welcomed by them.

This is Gonna Hurt

Matthew 10:24-39

June 21, 2020

Jesus has his disciples huddled together

before he sends them out into the world

in pairs on their mission to spread the Good News.

And this is basically their pep talk.

Now, most pep talks, the coach

talks about how the team is going

to win and succeed and how

Jesus and His 12
Ed de Guzman

they should win one for the Gipper

or something like that.

But not here,

Jesus tells them the 

world out there isn’t safe.

Earlier he was telling them

that they’re go as 

“sheep in the midst of wolves,”

they will face anger, arrests, beatings,

persecution, and death,

And today he says, 

“don’t be afraid of those who

can just kill the body.”

And then Jesus says that he has not

come to bring peace, he comes to bring a sword

He tells them that he has come
to set a man against his father

and a daughter against her mother
and everyone against everyone.

It’s almost like he’s sending them into battle.

But it’s a conflict that they are going to cause.

Jesus is saying that the things they he has

sent them out to do: healing, and casting out demons,

declaring peace and announcing the kingdom of God

will bring its own conflict.

You would think that those things would be

well received. That everyone would receive

God’s presence with joy and happiness

and welcome the disciples in. But no.

Jesus knew that in doing God’s mission,

they were going to create conflict.

Now not everything that makes people

angry and upset is God’s mission.

And every conflict that is caused

by Christians is NOT a holy conflict.

Sometime Christians forget about that,

and we just want to make everything a holy battle.

But setting oppressed people free

from their oppression, casting out the

demons that oppress them,

and telling the powerful

that God’s kingdom would be

remarkably different from the Kingdoms they run,

doesn’t always go over well.

It will create conflict.

But this conflict is necessary.

It’s the new world being born.

It’s the old world holding on tightly to its old ways.

And we can’t do this without some pain and suffering.

We are definitely experiencing conflict

now in our world.

I think we felt, for a moment, a couple of months ago

that the virus was uniting us, bringing us together.

But those were the good old days.
Now it seems like wearing a mask or not

is a divisive act in itself.

It seems like everything is volatile.

Everything is a cause for a fight.

And like I said, not every conflict is a holy conflict.

But some are. Some are struggles of the kingdom.

Like our issues over race in this country.

You think that people saying that

“black lives mattered” and that black people

shouldn’t be killed by the institutions that are

there to protect people would be an easy,

unanimous concept. But it’s not, obviously.

Because it’s coming up against the powers

and systems of this country and this world.

The systems that say that one life

is more important than another.

The one that says that some people

need to be disposable.

This call for equality, and to get rid of the

old ways, is coming up against the

system that enabled white people

around the world to justify

buying and selling human beings,

and keeping them as slaves for hundreds of years.

That system and the thoughts that made

it happen for so many years doesn’t

just go away because a couple

of laws were passed or one black

person was elected president.

It’s not going to just let go.

  

That system is still living in our world.

It lives in each one of us too.

That thing in our brains that justified that

and told us that black people are

savages and they are to be feared

and they’re dangerous,

that has been passed down through

our ancestors and our grand parents

and our parents, and still tells us

that white society needs to fear black people

and they need to be controlled.

And to prove it’s not gone,

we still have monuments and

statues in our town squares

honoring the people

who faught to keep the institution of slavery.

So it might seem to an outsider,

that just saying that “Black Lives Matter”

wouldn’t cause a conflict, but it does.

Because it’s coming up against

hundreds of years of saying otherwise.

It’s coming against the powers and systems of this world.

Jesus said he didn’t come to bring peace today and I’m not either.

The powers of this world will not go gently.

They live in all of us, and in our actions and lives.

There are things that we will need to give up.

It will mean sacrifice for us, we will lose

some of the things that we hold dear and precious.

But what would you trade for the kingdom of God?

What would you trade for real justice?

Real peace? Real and true equality and harmony?

Your life? your family? your privilege? your comfort?

It’s a question we all need to ask ourselves.

Will be able to bear that cross?

That’s what Jesus is asking his disciples right here.

For God’s kingdom to come, there will be some sacrifices

things will change, and there will be conflicts.

And like Jesus said, even conflicts among families.

These conflicts are just a part of the birth pangs.

This is our world working out its problems.

This is the human race exorcising its demons.

It’s part of bringing about the new life that Jesus promises.

Shedding off the old and letting in the new

it will continue to be painful and difficult.

And all this seems like pretty bad news for the disciples.

And maybe it’s bad news for us.

But the good news is this:

When we die with Christ, we rise with Christ too.

Paul writes to the Romans:

Do you not know that all of us who have been

baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 

Therefore we have been buried

with him by baptism into death,

so that, just as Christ was raised from the

dead by the glory of the Father,

so we too might walk in newness of life.

  

On the other side of this suffering and struggle,

and conflict will be new life

A new world, a new reality.

A more just world, a more peaceful world,

a more forgiving world, a more loving world,

a world more like the kingdom of God.

That is the story of the cross that we all

bear into these struggles.

The birth pangs will be hard,

but once we hold that new life in our arms,

we will forget all about the pain.

 “Those who find their life will lose it,

and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

God’s love and the kingdom of God will be hard won,

but our new world,

born in the resurrected Christ,

 will be worth it.

Ready for the Kingdom

Matthew 9:35-10:8

June 14, 2020

We have been away from Matthew for quite a while

spending our Easter mostly in the book of John.
We come back here in Chapter 9

and lots has happened before this:

To summarize:

Jesus was born, his life was threatened by Herod,

innocents were slaughtered,

Jesus was baptized,

he was tempted in the desert,

He calls a few disciples,

starting in chapter 5,

Jesus gives the sermon on the mountain

which lasts for three chapters in Matthew,

He comes down from that mountain,

and he heals some, and he calms the storm,

then he casts demons out of a man,

and sends them into a bunch of

swine who throw themselves off a cliff.

Then in the middle of chapter 9,

Jesus finally calls Matthew the Tax collector

and his 12 disciples are complete.

And we come to today’s gospel reading

which says, Jesus and his disciples went to lots of

cities and villages and did amazing things:

casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead.

Then he sends those disciples out to do the same.

So this isn’t just a story about an amazing

man who does impressive and miraculous things

and tells people the good news.

This is a story a man who did

impressive and miraculous things

and then sends other people out to do the same.

  

He tells the disciples that “the harvest is

plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

Meaning there is a lot of produce to pick,

but no one to go pick it.

Meaning that there are a lot of people who

could be following the Way of Jesus

but there’s no one to show them

and tell them about it.

Is that the same for us now?

I don’t know if most people would say that.

We’re told that no one is interested

in the church any more

Christianity is in decline

the youngest generation of adults is leaving the church

in droves, or they’ve never stepped foot

into a church or heard much about Jesus in the first place.

If you are a young person in a church,

you are an anomaly,

and it’s only going to decline more as time goes on.

The word on the street is “there is no harvest any more”

Church people keep looking back at the past

and wishing we had the kind of harvest they had in the

50’s or the 70’s or even the 90’s:

all the potential Christians

to come to worship and fill our pews.

But honestly, I think the harvest is still there.

They are still longing to hear the good news.
They’re just don’t want to do it the way we’ve always done it.

When Jesus sent out those original disciples

he wasn’t looking at them to fill pews in a worship.

His instructions were to “proclaim the good news

the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

That could be done a whole lot of ways.

At the start of the gospel today,

it says Jesus had compassion for the crowds of people

because it says they were harassed and without a leader.

This past two weeks we’ve seen crowds of people

protesting after the death of George Floyd.

Most of the people protesting are young.

Some say this is a generational protest like

the anti-war protest in the 60’s.

These young people millennial and generation Z,

these are the people who they say have no interest

in God or Jesus who we’re told we have nothing

spiritually in common with.

But they are congregating together in community.
They are singing songs together.

They’re protesting against violence,

they’re hoping for an end to racism and hate,

they’re longing for real justice and real peace,

they’re hoping for a country and a government

 that is reformed, that tries to help people

instead of incarcerating them.

The crowds that we have seen in the streets of Columbus,

and Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles,

Seattle and in every state of the country,

and in France, and Italy, and the UK and all over the planet –

ALL of those people are hoping and praying

for the same things we have been hoping and praying for.

They are ready for the good news.

They are waiting for the Kingdom of God.

I was watching a piece on CBS news

and they were interviewing a young

Black activist who was a leader of one

of the protests, he said,

“We are looking forward to a world

that I’ve never seen, but I know is true.”

That’s the kind of stuff we say!

I think if Jesus saw these crowds,

he would have compassion for them too.

He would see a crowd that has been harassed

in some of the worst kind of way.

He would see a group of people ready for the good news.

he would tell us that the harvest is plentiful

but there are not enough of us willing to do the work.

These people may not want to sit in our church

every week and sing the hymns that we like

and do things the same way that we like to do them,

But they are dreaming the same dreams we are.

They are hoping for the same things we hope for.

They are longing for the kingdom of God too.

We have known for years that we as a church

need to do ministry differently,

that we can’t be doing the same thing

the church has done for centuries and expect

the same results.

But the mission that Jesus gives us is the same

as those disciples were given.

Cast out those demons:

the demons of racism, and apathy and complacency,

heal those sick with the pain of oppression,

and poverty, and hopelessness, and defeat,

raise our cities and countries from the dead,

release ourselves and others from being

captive to the suicide machine

that we’ve all been caught in.

And proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God is near.

It’s coming. Can you feel it?

There is a lot of work for us to do.

And we have to figure out just how to do it

in this new reality that we’re living in.

  

Art On Columbus, OH building
@Chinezexo & @Amaraokpalaoka

On Friday, Bob and I drove downtown

to see what was going on there.

And there were lots of 
windows boarded up

But there was also 
lots and lots of art on those boards.

Beautiful, astounding art made 
in the past two weeks.

and this was one of the paintings.

It cites psalm 126

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,^[a]
    we were like those who dream.
² Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
    and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
    “The Lord has done great things for them.”
³ The Lord has done great things for us,
    and we rejoiced.

⁴ Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
    like the watercourses in the Negeb.
⁵ May those who sow in tears
    reap with shouts of joy.
⁶ Those who go out weeping,
    bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
    carrying their sheaves.

The harvest is plentiful.

Go out and tell everyone the good news:

The kingdom of heaven has come near.