2 July 2023 – Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
by The Rev. Tammy Hobbs Miracky
Sermon preached by The Rev. Tammy Hobbs Miracky
Below is a DRAFT text of the homily. It may vary considerably from the recorded version. Please excuse typos and grammatical errors, and do not cite without permission.
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Amen.
Good morning and thank you for being here with us on this, the first of two weeks of honoring rest and refreshment. You will have noticed the streamlined, simplified approach to our worship this morning. And what a perfect week for this gospel. As we slow down and focus on our life in Christ – our discipleship, if you will – today’s
reading is drawn from a section of the gospel of Matthew where Jesus is teaching his followers about discipleship. So let’s walk through it together.
This section begins in Chapter 9 with Jesus performing many healings, then he goes about to all the cities and villages in the area, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The author of Matthew tells us that Jesus “cur[es] every disease and every sickness” (9:35). The crowds are full, and we’re told that Jesus “had compassion for [the people] because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36). Here we hear Jesus speak a phrase you will likely recognize: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (9:37-38). The very next verse has Jesus gathering the twelve disciples and sending them out, laborers to the harvest – counseling them to travel lightly; to receive food and hospitality, but not to receive payment; and if they are not welcomed, to shake the dust from their feet as they leave the town (10:1-15). And then, as Michael shared with us last week, Jesus alerted them to the difficulties they might face – to the likelihood that not everyone would be pleased with the message they shared, but that God would be with them, would provide the words they needed, would care for them as God cares for the sparrows, would care for them to the last hair on their head. This is where we are in the gospel of Matthew.
Interestingly, even though they are being sent out, the primary identity of the twelve in this unit of the gospel is not as αποστολος, an apostle, one who is sent to proclaim a message. Instead, their primary identify here is as disciples, in Greek μαθητης, a word meaning “learner.” Or – with credit to Wikipedia – a more ample definition might be “one who engages in learning through instruction from another.”
And what are Jesus’ followers – his μαθηται, his disciples – what are they learning? They are learning how to walk in the way of Jesus. As Jesus did, they are going out to respond as workers in the harvest because those who need Jesus’ message are many, and the laborers are few. Jesus is asking them to walk in his way, to share the message of God’s reign that he has come to declare through his teaching / and his healing / and his willingness to stand up to the powers that wished to hold his people back. There is a sense of learning, of growing, of stretching, of continued becoming as the disciples are instructed to go forth.
And through their travels…
- Through learning how to rely on God – remember, they’re traveling lightly! – through learning to rely on God;
- Through learning not to fear and to open themselves to the power of the Holy Spirit;
- Through anticipating and braving opposition and persecution;
- Through prioritizing the sharing of God’s message above everything else…
In this way they are learning to walk in the way of Jesus.
So here we are. And this morning, we hear the last teaching Jesus gives his disciples who are going out literally to walk in this way. Today’s few short verses compel us to think more deeply about what it means to truly welcome one another. And to recognize that following in the way of Jesus – continuing to grow as disciples – requires that we truly welcome one another. And to truly welcome another requires that we, too, be prepared to change. That we stretch and grow and open ourselves to others in a new way.
That can be hard. It’s not as easy as it may sound.
There’s a groundbreaking theologian named Emily Townes who describes the challenge this way: sometimes we can be too concerned with – in her words – “preservation of order” (Source, 168). As she writes: “the one who welcomes often continues to be at home and retains a good measure of control; this causes us to welcome [others] into our own worlds on terms we ourselves have crafted” (190). Instead of adapting to reflect the gifts and contributions and presence of the one being welcomed, we may sometimes unconsciously expect them to enter into what already is. This may be subtle. We truly wish to welcome people, to share with them this beautiful community we have built over the years – over more than a century. It might be difficult to know whether we are opening ourselves up – inviting others in – risking the likelihood that we, too, will be changed. But when we miss these opportunities, not only may we not be as welcoming as we would hope, we may also be denying ourselves the practice of discipleship – of stretching and growing and changing as we practice walking in the way of Jesus. Townes suggests the following: “One response…is to realize that we must practice not only hospitality but also repentance. Turning from familiar behavior patterns… [as] we turn toward acts that signal our willingness to embrace and live out the new ways of being found in God” (192).
True hospitality is more than just welcome. It’s more than warmly receiving a new person into our community – which we do so well here at All Saints. True hospitality is opening ourselves to be transformed by the people who walk through these doors and all the doors in our lives.
We may find that if we open ourselves up to listen and grow with each new voice, those new voices we hear may, in fact, be apostles to us. They may be the ones who have been sent to share the message of God. And this / is the reward Matthew promises: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me…truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward” (10:40, 42b).
By opening ourselves to be transformed alongside those whom we welcome, we can all learn the way of Jesus and be drawn more deeply into the heart of God.
Amen.