Sometimes I'm Just Stumped
Each week I look at the Gospel lesson in the lectionary for Sunday. I ponder it and think about what it means for me in a ministry outside the church. To do it from that perspective has become an interesting experience since it has moved me from simply looking at the world and the Gospel through the "church" glasses to looking at the church from the world and the Gospel's perspective. This week I'm stumped.

Here is today's assigned lesson from Matthew 10: 40-42-

"Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward."

Now I'm not stumped because I don't understand it. It is very clear.

I'm not stumped because I disagree with it. It is powerfully true.

I'm stumped because it seems so self-evident and true that it seems a surprise that Jesus even had to mention it. And it comes right at the end of a discussion on the missional aspect of being a disciple. The next verse says simply:

When Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities.

That's it. At the end of the teachings on being missional disciples, is a reminder of the rewards of simple, basic, needed hospitality.

Now as a preacher I could play all kinds of word games with this. I could simply look up the Greek and then talk about the role of prophets and then go into a discourse on the long Jewish tradition of the Righteous Ones. It could actually be interesting. But it wouldn't get me any closer to understanding a very basic part of mission. In mission we go to other people.

That is so important to me as I read this I need to say it again:

In mission we go to other people, not wait for them to come to us.

Even the rewards that this passage is talking about are the rewards to the people the disciple goes to in mission. Yet I have been guilty in the past as many preachers may be today, in talking about this as a call to be hospitable, after all, you never know who you're being friendly to. No. It is not what Jesus is talking about. It's not about the disciple, the missionary, the prophet, the righteous one. It's about remembering that the one to whom the disciple goes, in simply receiving the disciple, is doing God's will. They have made the first steps and will receive their reward.

In short, again and again, the work is not about "me." The work is about God going to the others. When the disciple is received, so is the master. And when the Master is received so is God the Father.