The Gospel in Short Shorts
“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.” - Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 10:40-42, NRSV)
A pastor friend of mine tells a story (the same story as if he is telling it for the very first time) when a discussion at a church council meeting or Sunday school groups turns toward hospitality in the church and welcoming strangers. Eight years ago he went out of town for a holiday weekend and did something most clergy would never dream of doing on one of their four Sundays off per year. He went to church.
He was curious.
What would it be like, he wondered, to be welcomed as a newcomer in a congregation where not a single person knew he was an ordained elder serving a large United Methodist Church is a well-to-do neighborhood in Northern Virginia?
As he finished up his Sunday morning run, still wearing his too-short running shorts, he opened the red doors of the local United Methodist Church and made his way toward the sanctuary for the 11:00 service. Still wearing the sweaty bandana on his head and a shirt that had obviously been worn more than it had been washed, he held his hand out to the usher standing in the Narthex (the area just to the back of the sanctuary) expecting to be handed a bulletin and receive a cheerful greeting.
The usher stood next to the entrance to the sanctuary, as my friend describes it “like a member of the Queen’s guard” and scoffed at my friend’s Sunday morning best.
Then, as it seemed things could not get any worse, another usher approached the two men and invited my friend to use a separate entrance to the sanctuary that was to the far side of the Narthex. There were no signs for what laid ahead at the end of the hallway but my friend was assured he’d find a seat. He knew he was not being invited to sit with the regulars, the Sunday morning folks who had their assigned seats. As he walked through the narrow hallway and up the narrow staircase he knew he had been ushered up the balcony.
As he made his way to a seat he was greeted by a regular who had made his regular spot in the cheap seats.
“We don’t get many of you around here.”
“What do you mean, many of what” my friend replied.
“Visitors,” the balcony welcome committee of one said.
“Oh, and with the welcome I received downstairs I’m surprised they don’t come back” he sarcastically replied.
Jesus’ words in our reading today are the culmination of a larger dialogue he was having with his disciples. Being sent by Jesus, to speak God’s truth to the world would not be an easy task, and this continues to be true today. No one, especially Jesus said discipleship would be easy. Following the example of Jesus is hard work. There are times when this means we will rely on the Holy Spirit for what to say or do. Families will be disrupted - the disciples James and John left their father Zebedee standing next to a boat with fishing nets in his hands as they left to follow Jesus. The call placed on the life of a disciple is not easy.
We will be called to stand with people in distress, people who look different from us, and people who live in places we would never imagine living. But in our reading today we hear Jesus say that those who welcome the ones He calls, well, “none of these will lose their reward.”
Jesus is telling us that acts of compassion and hospitality reveal not just a glimpse of who He is but also that these acts, they are a foretaste of the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God because in welcoming the ones sent by Jesus we are not just welcoming the stranger in too-short running shorts. We are welcoming Jesus himself. And because Jesus cannot be separated from the One who sent Him, we are also welcoming God, our Creator.
We have all heard stories of people not being welcome they arrive at a church or some other Christian gathering.
Perhaps they were like my friend, not “properly dressed” for the service - and to be fair, he knew he’d be pushing someone’s buttons that Sunday morning.
Perhaps you have been ushered to the balcony, or worse, invited to attend a church down the street where you “might be more comfortable.”
Maybe you did not feel welcomed because stained-glass language was used, insider language that most people outside of the church never hear, let alone use.
Maybe it was the color of your skin that prevented you from being allowed to sit down, or it was that you were holding the hand of a person someone else didn’t think you should be holding.
Stories of the church, the body of Jesus Christ, being less than hospitable to those Jesus has called to the church are reported more often than our scripture reading suggests they should be. And please, do not get me wrong, as a teenage I was an usher, the few and the proud entrusted by the worship committee to ensure an orderly worship service was maintained. I’m not throwing rocks in a glasshouse. But there are times when people are intentionally turned away or led to a place in the sanctuary, being told they will be more comfortable there, to a place or community where they will find more in common with the people in attendance.
The truth though, the truth is that we do turn people away from the church.
We turn a blind-eye when Jesus is standing in front of us because we are uncomfortable.
And in turning others away we are able to ignore, we think, who God has called not just into our lives but into the body of the One whom God sent.
When we reject a stranger whether in the building on Sunday morning or at the intersection of Glebe and Fairfax we are rejecting Jesus. Jesus showed his disciples that discipleship requires compassion and mercy. He did this in healing the blind and lame instead of telling them their sins or the sins of their family were too many to be made right. Jesus stood beside a woman about to be stoned. After all, he called an unlikely group of disciples and followers - a tax collector down from a tree, a person who had cheated and stole from his neighbors. Jesus did these things extending compassion and mercy. Jesus offered grace and not directions to a place where the community gathered would look more like the one standing before Him.
Compassion and mercy are the model given to us by Jesus for loving and welcoming every person who comes to us in His name.
The difficult task is that it will take more than a little bit of grace to open the doors of the church that have been closed to so many people - the LGBTQ+ community, single or divorced adults, those who haven’t opened a Bible in decades or ever. Then there are the doors of the church that have been used to segregate Christ’s body simply because the color of someone’s skin does not match ours.
The task before us is monumental, and frankly long overdue in being addressed. But the Good News in Jesus’ words is not only for the ones being welcomed or ushered to the balcony. The Good News also is for the church where people are sent to the balcony to make us more comfortable, the church where a hand of welcome is not extended to someone whose hand looks different from our own, and the church where we may not participate in such actions but we certainly are not doing anything to address the actions of the larger body. The Good News is for them and for us is that we are not the Queen’s guard. We are not the gatekeepers of Christ’s body and we certainly are not the gatekeepers of the Kingdom of God!
Praise be to God that we are not!
Our work is monumental and yet it is simple: to offer welcome. To extend a hand of invitation to experience the same amazing grace that changed our lives when we ourselves were once lost and hoping to be found. The work ahead of us is to offer an embrace when an embrace is invited and to give a cool cup of water in the sweltering humidity of a Virginia summer. God will take care of the rest, even when a button-pushing pastor shows up on Sunday morning wearing too-short running shorts.
