Trinity 4
Sermon preached at the Parish Eucharist at St Benet’s, Cambridge
on the Fourth Sunday after Trinity, 2023 (proper 8a).
Lections: Jer 28:5-9, Ps 89, Romans 6:12-23, Matt 10:40-42
Fr Robert Mackley, Vicar, Little Saint Mary’s Church, Cambridge
‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me’
In nomine…
Our Gospel this morning, a short gospel reading by any standards, still manages to use the word ‘welcome’ no fewer than six times. When first writing this sermon I began by saying thank you for your welcome to Saint Bene’t’s this morning but since my colleague is now on crutches and so I can’t be with you, all I can do is thank Olga for preaching my sermon and you for being willing to listen to it!
Yet perhaps it was meant all along that someone else should preach this sermon as a sort of visual example of Our Lord’s words ‘whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, and in welcoming me, they welcome the one who sent me’. In other words, ‘You’re getting rather more than you bargained for’, and especially since in our Gospel reading the people whom the apostles will be approaching may not have even asked to have been approached in the first place. It’s like a random itinerant fisherman turning up uninvited at your wedding and announcing that in welcoming them you’re actually welcoming the King. You can imagine the embarrassment and incomprehension – not to mention the scandal…
Having celebrated Pentecost a few weeks ago with the giving of the Holy Spirit and the disciples being sent out to baptise all the nations and teach them all that Jesus taught the disciples, this morning’s Gospel picks up the point. The twelve apostles and the wider group of disciples are sent out to preach the Gospel, the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. And, rather astonishingly, Jesus says that in receiving, in welcoming an apostle, people are welcoming, receiving Jesus – and not just Jesus but the Father too, ‘the one who sent me’, as he puts it.
Now the Apostles of today are the Bishops (and their delegates, the priests), these are the successors of those first apostles. And on this weekend when so many people are being ordained in cathedrals up and down the country, and above all with the gift to us of a new priest in Ed Green, it’s worth reflecting on the weight of the ordained calling – that in receiving and welcoming us, people are receiving and welcoming – in the Holy Spirit – Christ and the Father. The 20th century theologian Austin Farrer put it well, when he said that a priest is a ‘walking sacrament’ – a walking sign, a carrier of something beyond him- or herself. And at a rather odd and amusing level, you can see that’s true in the way people peer into your shopping basket in Sainsbury’s to see what kind of food it is that priests eat, or stare at you in the street, quite oblivious to the fact that you are not oblivious to their staring at all…
And whilst Bishops and priests and deacons – the ordained – have a distinctive ministry, a particular way of carrying and offering Christ, that commission to baptise all the nations and teach them is one Jesus gives, of course, to the whole church. The Holy Spirit of Pentecost comes on everyone at their baptism and confirmation, all are sent out.
And in our Gospel Jesus goes on to talk of some of those sendings: ‘He who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward’. So some of us are called, are sent, to be prophets. In fact all of us, at times at least, have that calling.
And then Jesus goes on to say ‘whoever receives a righteous person because they are a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous’. Well, who are these righteous people? Well, we are. He is talking, surely, of all those made righteous by his coming death and resurrection, the healing of the rupture and separation between earth and heaven, God and man, that’s caused by sin. And all who are baptised into him, all who share his life, as we will do again at the altar this morning, he makes Righteous. So, in other words, when someone welcomes us as Christians, when someone sees, receives, welcomes us as redeemed sinners, as those whom Jesus Christ has made well again, when they see that in us, they will receive the same thing.
And again, Jesus ends this passage by saying ‘whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I tell you, none of those will lose their reward’. Now he’s talking to the twelve apostles at this moment and he’s talking to them about ‘these little ones’ – in other words, an affectionate term for the rest of the disciples, those whom the apostles will care for, guide and teach. Anyone who gives to the apparently anonymous Christian, the most recently baptised, the least experienced disciple, anyone who gives to that person even a cup of cold water, on account of their being a Christian, will not lose his or her reward.
Recognise someone as a prophet, even if you aren’t; recognise someone as a righteous or little one, a Christian, even though you aren’t, and you will be rewarded. Indeed, you will receive the reward the prophet or the righteous person is going to get.
And it’s here we really ought to pause. Welcome someone on account of their being a prophet, or a Christian, and you will receive the same reward the prophet or Christian is going to receive. Why?
Because to recognise that someone is a Christian, not because they have a cross round their neck or even a dog collar, but because you see something in them of Jesus Christ; or to recognise that a person speaking unpalatably is speaking truth, is a prophet, is to be, as it were, half way there.
Now, the word of course is not ‘recognise’ so much as receive or welcome. It’s not enough to say ‘well, I think that person’s a prophet, but I’m not going to listen to her’. Obviously, that’s not to receive or welcome.
Yet at one level Jesus this morning is indeed speaking of almost how easy the gospel is to receive, its contagiousness if you like – merely to welcome prophecy, merely to welcome a Christian, to do a disciple the smallest good deed, is to begin to share in the life of faith, to begin to reap the rewards of being a Christian. You may not think you believe in God but you are very glad that someone else does – and Jesus tells us that that person’s gladness, is already in some way a sharing in the good news and won’t by any means be counted against them on the day of judgment.
But what all this reminds us of is that Christianity isn’t a philosophy than can be learned separate from those who live it, who embody it. If the truth that is Christ were a truth that could be known ‘in principle’, as it were, then we would not need apostles or prophets or priests or, for that matter, Christ. But the reason why Jesus is emphasising the significance of personal contact and what is conveyed in our encounters with others – ‘they will receive me and him who sent me’ he says, remember – the reason Jesus tells us this this morning in the light of Pentecost, of our sending out, is that the way the Gospel is known is by one person being for another person the story, the embodiment of Jesus Christ. It’s why we get so excited about the saints, for they are ‘other Christs’ for us. They make Jesus alive for us, they embody him for us.
And that’s what we are all called to be – ‘other Christs’, saints, making the Gospel known by people encountering Jesus in our lives. And you don’t need me to tell you, that this is a tough call. The ease of which Jesus speaks, the generosity of the reward, reflects the demands that are placed upon us. No wonder someone will receive a rich reward for recognising Christ in me. Often enough that really must be quite an achievement. And so it’s also why we gather Sunday by Sunday, day by day, to confess and seek healing for our sins, our obscuring from others of the image of Christ in us. It’s why we need the very life of Jesus conveyed in Holy Communion, again and again, it’s why we need to hear the scriptures, the words of Christ and the saints and it’s why we need to do this together, aware of our mutual frailty, our need of support and forgiveness and endless fresh starts. For it is a high call. Indeed, the highest. But it’s also the only call worth having and so it’s why he gives us priests such as Ed to feed us with word and sacrament, that by the grace of God, we might in the end reach that reward of which Jesus speaks, that reward which is heaven, where we will welcome and love and be welcomed and loved by him who has sent us, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns ever one God, world without end.