We can feel unwelcome and unwanted in many ways at many times. Because of our skin color, our challenging thoughts or perspectives, physical or mental health, what we can afford, orientation, different language, our marginalized identity of religion or gender For some, if you encounter a physical disability such as visual sight loss or hearing loss, or perhaps a large step up into a door when in a wheelchair, your welcome ends. What about our lives, welcoming the unintentional barriers to the good news, to participation in the church, to abundant life in Jesus Christ?
Most churches like to think of themselves as welcoming, whether they are actually able to welcome someone or not. In many a church, you will find a sign that says, “All are welcome here!” But we can forget what it means to welcome each other fully into our worship and community? Jesus makes it clear that when we welcome him, we also welcome the one who sent him, just as when we welcome someone into our worship space or into our lives, we also welcome whatever sent them. Maybe they are new to the area and looking for a new church; maybe they didn’t feel welcome in their former congregation because they are divorced, gay, or any other number of things we sometimes hold against another person. When we say all are welcome, that means welcoming people as Christ himself.
Jesus says, “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”. “Little ones” refers to those who are young in faith or particularly vulnerable. The statement about giving a cup of cold water to one of these little ones points ahead to the a later parable in Matthew where Jesus says, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink” (25:35), and “truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”.
In hot summer afternoons, we know the welcome of Christ’s love by drinking water and knowing you are cared about and loved. Of course, it doesn’t always have to be water. It can be any gesture that communicates, “I see you. I’m present, aware of your needs, and willing to respond to them.” The origin of the symbolic importance of a glass of water can be traced to universal hospitality codes. For thousands of years, offering a glass of water has been a core act of welcome. Good for all sorts of wellness: organ function, acid digestion, better physical and mental health; water is a symbol of hospitality, a stress reliever and comfort, building connection and rapport.
There are a variety of cultural differences, but also cultural similarities in together sharing in a drink. The toast “cheers” or “prost, l’chaim, kanpai” with a drink across time and culture is a gesture of camaraderie that creates goodwill, health, and a show of good cheer extending gladness and joy.
Welcoming another requires attention to the other. It means often setting aside our discomfort with how one may be different or strange to us and meeting someone else as they are. Hospitality makes Christ’s presence known. Indeed, the other teaches much about ourselves and helps us welcome parts of ourselves we are not always ready to accept.
The word welcome appears five times in two verses. Eugene Peterson’s The Message provides this paraphrase: “We are intimately linked in this harvest work. Anyone who accepts what you do, accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts my Father, who sent me. Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God’s messenger. Accepting someone’s help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I’ve called you into, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. It’s best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing.”
Hospitality is about both giving and receiving. For Saint Benedict, welcoming the stranger into the monastery is welcoming Christ himself. Benedictine writer Joan Chittister writes: “Come right on in and disturb our perfect lives. You are Christ for us today.”
Hospitality is known in small acts of kindness and generosity. We love to be welcomed, but sometimes a welcome can be difficult when someone comes from another language, possible threats, difficult understandings, or has at times implied the possible concern to physical health, bringing possible disease, economic concerns of how goods are traded.
With the nearness of Independence Day and the Susquentienial calls to mind the Statue of Liberty and the poem by Emma Lazarus, crying out:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Of course, we know how historically core and controversial immigration is in our country. Our various welcome to asylees and refugees been a beacon of hope and welcome, yet immigrant children have been separated from their parents in detention and sent back to the poverty and danger they were fleeing. There are many nuances in the documents, procedures, policy, and politics on various legal procedures, yet for Jews and Christians, the scriptures has the message that we welcome strangers as bearing the image of God and we are called to practice learning hospitality.
Jesus speaks of the cup of cold water given to one of the little ones. And later will say, when you did it to one of the least of these, you did it unto me. In loving, welcoming and understanding one another we experience spiritual transformation and God’s presence.
We often talk about immigrants and migrants as the “other” as the “them” as if they were literally aliens. In the book They Are Us: Lutherans and Immigration, Pastor Stephen Bouman writes that we “otherize, the children of God, our very siblings. “
Martin Luther said that when hospitality is given to the persecuted and oppressed, God is in our home, is being fed at our house, is lying down and resting.
It is in this place that we share the eternal embrace of the welcome of God into the abiding life of Jesus, into one body of peace that surpasses understanding, and into an eternal community of God that will not let us go. For God has first welcomed us, so that we can love and welcome others.
May God continue to open our eyes, our ears, our hands, our hearts, and our habits to hospitality – and our very lives – to the strangers among us, so that we might be strangers no longer but welcome all in the name of Jesus Christ.
