Sunday 2nd July 2023

2 July 2023           ST LUKE’S ENMORE        The Revd Michael Deasey

Mat­thew 10.40–42  

 

Jesus said ‘who­ever wel­comes you wel­comes me, and who­ever wel­comes me wel­comes the one who sent me’.  Or in an older trans­la­tion ‘who­ever receives you, receives me’.

Today’s short gos­pel read­ing seems to be just an exhorta­tion on the mean­ing of Chris­ti­an hos­pit­al­ity – how we treat each oth­er, how we treat those we know, how we treat those we don’t know.

But in fact, it con­tains the very essence of the gos­pel — a remind­er of Jesus’ state­ment ‘by their fruits you will know them’ – not by doc­trin­al cor­rect­ness, but by how we see Christ in oth­ers, and how we bring Christ to oth­ers, being a chan­nel of his love and his peace and his grace.

In one of his last ser­mons the Eng­lish preach­er the late John Stott asked a ques­tion of him­self: ‘What is God’s pur­pose for his people?’ And he decided the answer was ‘God wants his people to become like Christ’.

He told the story of the Hindu pro­fess­or in India who dis­covered one of his stu­dents was a Chris­ti­an and said to him: ‘If you Chris­ti­ans lived like Jesus Christ, India would be at your feet tomorrow’.

How­ever, John Stott went on to acknow­ledge that in our own strength this is not attain­able, that we need the indwell­ing of the Holy Spir­it to change us from within.

Wil­li­am Temple, Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury in the 1940s illus­trated this point from Shakespeare. ‘It’s no good giv­ing me a play like Ham­let or King Lear and telling me to write a play like that. Shakespeare could do it – I can’t. And it’s no good show­ing me a life like the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that. Jesus could do it – I can’t. But if the geni­us of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write plays like this. And if the spir­it of Jesus could come into me, then I could live a life like His’.

There’s the legend of a mon­as­tery that had fallen on hard times, full of dis­cour­age­ment, bick­er­ing and dis­con­tent. The Abbot went up to the hills to vis­it a sol­it­ary holy man for advice. The holy man said, you have the Mes­si­ah liv­ing at your mon­as­tery in dis­guise, and no one has recog­nized him. The Abbot went back, called them all togeth­er and repor­ted what he’d been told. They all tried to work out which monk was the Mes­si­ah in dis­guise, but no one admit­ted to it – no one could work out which monk it was.

So, just to be sure, each mem­ber of the com­munity star­ted to treat every­one else as though he were the Mes­si­ah. With­in a few short weeks, all the dis­cour­age­ment, bick­er­ing and dis­con­tent had van­ished, and now the mon­as­tery pos­it­ively glowed with love, joy and peace. Jesus said ‘any­one who wel­comes you wel­comes me’.

To be wel­com­ing is to be Christ-like because Jesus him­self grav­it­ated mostly to those who were shunned by soci­ety. Some­times this can be shown in the simplest ways. When I worked in the dio­cese of Bathurst, I knew a lady whose great gift was the min­istry of hos­pit­al­ity, and it was evid­ent all the time. Even when she answered the phone you could tell she was smil­ing. Her voice always soun­ded so wel­com­ing even before she knew who her caller was.

Some years ago in the United States, an art­icle in the pew bul­let­in of the Epis­copal par­ish of Christ Church, Green­ville, South Car­o­lina, writ­ten by the rect­or had this message.

‘As we entered Trin­ity Cathed­ral in Columbia for the open­ing of the Dio­ces­an Con­ven­tion, I noticed a couple of people stand­ing out­side the cathed­ral gates with signs. “Repent”, pro­claimed one. Anoth­er quoted the Bible con­demning adul­tery, divorce, homo­sexu­als, and oth­ers “bey­ond the pale”.

My eyes shot from those signs to the one per­man­ently posi­tioned on the Cathed­ral grounds. That sign was the famil­i­ar red, white, and blue one that read simply “The Epis­copal Church Wel­comes You”.

‘My thoughts went back to those signs: the two signs filled with judge­ment and con­dem­na­tion and the third, which simply pro­claimed “Wel­come”.

Then the rect­or went on to write:

Wel­come, all of you!

Wel­come, those who carry sins so secret and so dev­ast­at­ing that you fear ever being com­pletely forgiven.

Wel­come, those of you who are pris­on­ers of your own secrets.

Wel­come, those of you who carry hate in your hearts for broth­er, sis­ter, moth­er, father.

Wel­come, those of you who are con­fused in any way and beaten down with guilt.

Wel­come, those of you who have gone to a house of wor­ship and received not mercy, but condemnation.

Wel­come, those of you who have been so wounded by your own sins or the sins of oth­ers that you need to feel the solace of the Heav­enly Father.

Wel­come, those of you who are so wear­ied by this life that you need to rest in the pres­ence of the Eternal’.

He con­cluded with this:

‘I fully real­ize that there is a need in the world for the Church to hold up the plumb line of God. There are stand­ards against which we must meas­ure our beha­viour. How­ever, this proph­et­ic role need not be ful­filled with such rel­ish. It can­not be said too often or too force­fully – sin is a dis­ease to be healed, not a crime to be con­demned. If any­thing stands out in the Gos­pels it is the com­pas­sion and love that Our Lord showed the repentant.

If God is call­ing the Epis­copal Church to be that branch of His Body that places love above judge­ment, and pro­clam­a­tion over proph­ecy, then it may well be the role that we need to embrace with enthu­si­asm. The voices remind­ing us of our sin­ful­ness and con­dem­na­tion are indeed plen­ti­ful. They lift their signs high and with great delight.

The voice that those broken by their own sin­ful­ness and the sins of oth­ers need to hear is not filled with judge­ment, but with com­pas­sion, mercy, and love. Per­haps God is call­ing us to bid his wel­come to those who would not feel wel­comed any place else’.

A story from Eng­land tells of an evan­gel­ist in his best suit walk­ing to a meet­ing, when he encountered a filthy, smelly, derel­ict man com­ing towards him. And he believed that God had told him that this man needed a hug. ‘Even in my best suit’ he asked God. ‘Yes’, seemed to be the answer. And talk­ing to this man, sure enough he asked for a hug. And as he was hug­ging him, he looked down at the wretched man — and saw the face of Christ. Do you believe that? Would I have done the same? I don’t know.

But I do know that Jesus said ‘who­ever wel­comes you wel­comes me, and who­ever wel­comes me wel­comes the one who sent me’.  And when we wel­come the stranger, we wel­come none oth­er than Christ.