“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, 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.”
Matthew 10:40-42
My sermon from the 5th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (June 28, 2026) on Matthew 10:40-42.
A couple streets down from where I live is a cat who rarely stays at home. Dusty is white with gray splotches and wears a collar that jingles when he runs. He has a habit of going out and not coming home for several days so our many town facebook pages are filled with posts wondering who he belongs to. Dusty, unlike my two cats, likes to be outdoors. And when he jumps my fence and wanders through the backyard, he does whatever he can to generate an audience. My cats are used to Dusty hanging out on my patio. But my dog Pepper doesn’t handle it very well. When Dusty comes by there is always a ton of whining, barking, growling, weeping, and gnashing of teeth. And I’m pretty sure Dusty knows exactly what he is doing. He’s the kind of cat that does this to all my neighbors and I’ve even seen him roll around in the front of a neighbor’s home for what felt like hours while their kids – and their dog – watched through an all glass screen door. Dusty has made the entire neighborhood his own because he knows we’ll keep him safe, pet him when he comes to say high, listen to all his meows, and give him a treat or two if we’re feeling generous. He, like a lot of animals, knows what it means to be welcomed in places other than his own. And Jesus, in our reading today from the gospel according to Matthew, reminds us how the art of welcome is a hallmark of those who claim to follow him.
We’ve spent the last few weeks listening to instructions Jesus gave his disciples at roughly the midpoint of his ministry. Jesus had been preaching, teaching, healing, and causing trouble all over the area. He had visited communities that he had grown up in as well as non-Jewish communities that didn’t know what to do with this wandering Rabbi. Jesus’ reputation had grown to the point where he needed help to do what he wanted to do. So he identified twelve individuals as his apostles and empowered them to be a Jesus to everyone they met. He instructed them on where to go, what to do, and what to say. And while he encouraged their initial work to take place among people who shared their ethnic and religious backgrounds, Jesus’ words served as the foundation for a ministry that would eventually encounter folks like you and me. Matthew never forgot that it was the magi – those Zoroastrian astrologers from what is now modern day Iran – who were among the very first to meet Jesus when he entered the world. And so he wanted his friends to develop a habit of discipleship that could reverberate beyond the Sea of Galilee. Jesus instructed them to go and proclaim the good news – that the kingdom of heaven – this kingdom of God – had come near. And while we sometimes reduce this proclamation to words we only hold in our heads, Jesus showed how the good news changes our bodies, hearts, and souls too. For Matthew, God’s kingdom is lived out when the sick are cured, the dead raised, those with skin diseases become whole, and demons are sent back to where they belong. Everything that divides us from God and from one another is overcome by a power that doesn’t ask for money or influence or even attention. Rather, Jesus’ friends are pushed to meet people busy living their lives and to listen to their story, their needs, their hopes, and their dreams. They were to practice the holy art of being welcomed by showing up in other people’s homes, eating their food, and getting to know who they really were. Their hosts would offer hospitality which, as we see throughout the Bible, is making sure invited and uninvited guests have all the food, shelter, and care they need. Yet unlike some other guests, Jesus’ friends would offer their own kind of welcome too. Just as they received the support they needed to be who God wanted them to be in the world; they, through the gifts Jesus had given them, would welcome their hosts into God’s kingdom by supporting them too.
Now, this welcome for welcome sounds like the kind of social transaction where what we get is equaled by what we give. We, whether we realize it or not, assume that this quid pro quo is simply how most relations work. Each time we talk or care or invite someone in, we expect to receive some kind of gift or favor in return. And while scratching each other’s backs can be a way for us to build bonds of friendship and accountability, when welcoming is reduced to merely be another social transaction, we can quickly decide that some are worth our welcome while others aren’t. Jesus, however, refused to let these kinds of transactions be the limit of who his disciples got to be. They were, instead, to practice a welcome that matched Jesus himself. This kind of generosity, though, doesn’t always sit well with us which is why we heard last week how this way of being can disrupt all the other relationships that we have. And that’s because when we move to a kind of welcome that embraces empathy and pays attention to stories that aren’t our own, we can soon discover that our priorities, expectations, experiences, and histories need to change too. Jesus wasn’t trying to tell his friends that a life with faith is mostly transactional where our suffering today is met with a future reward we can’t begin to imagine. Rather, in the words of Professor Stan Saunders, Faculty Emeritus of Columbia Theological Seminary, Jesus’ words of promise and suffering are really “the two poles that together define the singular experience of discipleship.” Following Jesus is hard and not because there are those who have a different opinion, belief, or value system than us. What makes discipleship difficult is how Christianity is a faith that will always inconvenience us. Being for one another and for those who we harm, marginalize, and push aside will always cost something because the art of welcome takes time, energy, and attention. It forces us to admit the truths about ourselves we’d rather not reveal and repent of the ways we let our kingdoms rather than God’s define our lives. A welcome that is honest, faithful, and holy will always change the lives of those doing the welcoming. The kind of welcome Jesus invites us into is a welcome that is always costly because it’s rooted in generosity rather than in any kind of transaction we come up with. And that’s because the one who has already welcomed you into what God is doing in the world through the gift of baptism and the hope of faith, trusts that his ministry of welcome healing, and grace can be your ministry too. And so that ministry might look like having to deal with a cat who always puts on a show because they know you’re already going to keep them safe from all the things that growl their way. But this ministry of welcome could also look like a cold cup of water to someone you don’t know even when your mouth is dry and dusty too. We are often told that we have to hoard our time, talent, resources, attention, focus, time, and who we listen to as a way to preserve our own sense of who we’re meant to be. Yet the Jesus who was welcomed, rejected, and rose again to keep welcoming others all the same is a Jesus who knows our life becomes more when welcome, rather than fear, is at the heart of what we say and do.
Amen.