Sermon 06 28 2020

P4A 2020: Matthew 10:40-42
I started the process of buying my new home right before the pandemic hit, which meant everything took a little longer than usual. So I was pleasantly surprised when I finally closed and called the moving company and they gave me a moving date within a week. But that meant I had to paint the bedroom very fast, before moving day, because I knew I’d never be able to haul the really heavy furniture away from the walls and back on my own. Thankfully, the paint was, as advertised, truly one coat coverage, so a couple hours taping and a couple hours painting and it was all finished, with plenty of time to spare. The guest room was a lower priority, because I haven’t even ordered the furniture that is going in there, and nobody can visit in the middle of a quarantine anyway. But it has so far proved a much greater task. It was painted a bright blue over thick striped and flowered wall paper…and right over the switch plates and electrical outlets. When I tried to pry off the painted-on plates, chunks of paper came right off with them. It was actually easy to tear off full strips of wall paper from the floor right up to the ceiling in one pull. What has been harder is working around a strange repair job where an air conditioner had once been removed, scraping off the glue and another layer of paint, covering multiple unusable phone and cable jacks, and spackling over a bountiful and baffling collection of holes. My bedroom, where I’ll spend about third of my life, took a few hours over two day. That guest room, where I’ll hardly spend any time, is taking two months and counting. But that’s OK, because when we can move around more freely again, I’m going to want a nice place to welcome out of town guests. It has been strange, really, not being able to offer hospitality in this time. At first glance, it would look like that’s what our gospel reading today tells us to do—to make sure we extend hospitality and welcome people. In fact, that’s the opposite of what Jesus is saying.
The last couple of weeks we’ve worked our way through this section of Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples out, with minimal provisions, to extend his ministry in the towns and villages of Israel: healing the sick, raising the dead, and casting out demons. He warns them that he’s sending them like sheep among wolves and that their message will not always be accepted; instead their freeing work will lead to division and resistance, just as Jesus’ ministry resulted in his persecution on the cross. Good news—you have the power to drive out demons; bad news—you’re going to make a lot of enemies by doing the right thing. Here Jesus comes back around to good news again: there will be people who reject you, yes, but there will also be people who welcome you, and welcome me through you, people who welcome your prophetic words and righteous deeds and offer you comfort because you are my disciples. You will be welcomed.
Churches love to be places of welcome, and so we should be. When visitors join us, we want to offer hospitality in the name of Jesus, because the visible love and care we show is how people learn that the invisible God loves and cares about them. As the church, we understand this responsibility of welcoming, and so we greet people and feed people and invite people to come in, and right now we feel like we can’t do what we’re supposed to do because we can’t gather together and offer welcome. But welcoming others is not our primary calling as disciples, what I sometimes call Venus Fly Trap Evangelism, where we create a warm and welcoming space and hope that someone wanders in so we can close the door behind them and keep them. Quite the opposite—Jesus sends us out to be the guest, not the host, to be welcomed, not to do the welcoming. And that’s not as easy as it sounds.
Think way back to life before March of this year, and think of it this way: Which is more comfortable for you: bringing a friend or neighbor with you here to this church, your church, for worship, or going with your friend or neighbor to their church where you’re the new person, and people wonder who you are, and you’re not familiar with their hymnal, and you don’t know when to stand and when to sit, and you don’t know until you get right up in front of everybody whether communion is bread or a wafer and whether you’re supposed to dip it or get a little cup or drink right out of the chalice? Church aside, which is more comfortable for you: cooking a meal that you really like in your own kitchen and serving it to a guest in your own home, or going to somebody else’s house where you have to decide if you’re parked in the right place and guess whether they’re a shoes on or shoes off at the door kind of household, and you eat food that they’ve prepared, hopefully without the ingredients that make you break out in hives, and when you use the restroom you have to guess whether you’re supposed to use the fancy soap or if that’s just for show and is it worse to use it when it was just supposed to be decorative or not use it and later have the host wonder why you don’t wash your hands? Being the welcomed guest takes us outside of our comfort zone.
We are called not just to welcome but to be welcomed, not just to teach but to be taught, not just to share the good news of what God is up to in our lives and our community but to discover what God is doing in, with, and through others—even and especially others who are different than us. That is how we learn and how we grow. I will be so grateful when you all are back here with me; but be prepared: Jesus is just going to send us right out the door again, because out there is where we’re called to be.