Matthew 10:40-42   David Orendorff

Today’s lesson is translated “Whoever welcomes (or receives) you welcomes (or receives) me….” The word being translated as “receive” or “welcome” is δεχεμαι. When the object is a thing it means “to accept.” When the object is a person it means “to welcome.” It carries with it the connotation of hospitality and refers to accepting, receiving and welcoming someone into your home and your life. I am going to spend most of the sermon on understanding hospitality in Jesus time and place. I believe this background information will help bring this scripture alive.

Every culture has its understanding of what makes a person important, what confers status. This is called an honor code. In the first century Mediterranean the honor code dictated who can or cannot be welcomed into your home or life. Honor (value or stature) was based on family, wealth, education, work and friendships. To associate with someone with more honor than you was to raise your honor. And likewise, to associate with someone of lesser honor was to lower your own honor.

For instance; let’s say we are Jews and you are not. You would not be welcomed into our homes. You have less honor and are perhaps unclean to us and we will not eat with you, pray with you or marry you. Of course some who call themselves Christian have turned this one around and to be Christian is to have more honor points than non-Christians. And for some it goes further, to be a “born again” Christian, a progressive Christian, a United Methodist/Catholic/Baptist/non-denominational/evangelical Christian is more honorable. But I digress.

Returning to the Mediterranean honor code: Let’s say we are Roman citizens and you are not. This means you are beneath us and are not welcomed. Or perhaps you are a child and not an adult. Even in the family you must eat last and be satisfied with the remnants of the meal. Or if we are rich and you are middle class or poor you are not one of us and you are not welcomed into our home. Or if you are a woman among men, or if you are diseased, blemished, a little crazy or any of a thousand other things that would make your honor lower than mine, you are not to be received, not to be welcomed.

Now we are ready to understand why it is so important to know that Matthew was a tax collector. He lived in the dark under side of this caste system. Unlike today, collecting taxes was not the job of a civil servant, but of a public extortionist. Tax collectors got money in whatever way they could from the occupied citizens of Palestine and gave much of it to the Roman occupiers, keeping as their salary whatever they could overcharge. If you were efficient at tax collecting you might get wealthy but you were hated by Jew and Roman alike.

You were hated by the Jews because you had forsaken your faith to serve the Roman emperor who claimed to be god. You were to no longer be received in Jewish homes or at synagogue. You would be as dead to your family and your former friends.

And Roman homes wouldn’t receive you either because no citizen of Rome would dishonor himself with such business. Tax collecting was not the absolute bottom, but it was down there pretty far.

The story goes that one day Jesus saw Matthew, called to him and invited him to be a student, a disciple of The Way; that is, Jesus welcomed Matthew the tax collector into his intimate circle of friends.1 Matt. 9:9-13 Jesus honor points went down and Matthew’s came up. Then Matthew took Jesus home to dinner with him, along with some other tax collectors and sinners. Jesus honor points went down some more and the dinner guest’s points rose.

Apparently the honor code meant nothing to Jesus. The honor code put everyone in their place. Jesus lived by a kingdom honor code which found a place at home and table for everyone. Jesus lived by God’s universal grace. Grace doesn’t have an honor point system. In grace everyone is a beloved child of God.

Hanging out with Jesus Matthew learns to eat not only with the sinners and lepers (the bottom of the honor code), but also with the priests and centurions (both are pretty high on the honor code list). Matthew hears Jesus scatter words of compassion among Jew, Roman, and Samaritan, without distinction. Matthew sees Jesus heal men, women and children, as if God cared equally and fully for each without discrimination. Jesus blesses the poor, blesses sinners, invites them to dine as honored guests, and offers them first access to the reign of God. It is craziness. It is all upside down from what Matthew has previously learned about how the world functions. And it is his and the world’s salvation.

With this understanding we are ready for today’s passage. At some time in Matthew’s following of Jesus, Jesus called him and some of the others to be apostles. The title apostle simply comes from a Greek word meaning “sent”. Jesus sent Matthew, and many others, men and women, Greek and Jew, slave and free, into the world to teach and heal the world.

This “sending” is also related to the honor code. To welcome the one sent, the apostle, is to welcome the actual sender. So the king’s apostle/messenger was to be treated as if he were the king himself. To refuse to welcome the king’s messenger was to refuse and deny the king. So a good rule of thumb was that if the person at the door is of equal or superior status (according to the honor code) they are welcomed in, have their feet washed and are invited to dine. If they are of lesser honor then they are not received, not welcomed in.

In sending the apostles Jesus says to them, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” This is completely consistent with the rules of Palestine’s honor code. Having negated the status part of the honor code, Jesus now keeps the hospitality portion. You can understand why those bound by the honor code would be scandalized. Jesus has just equated, in Matthew’s case, welcoming a tax collector into your home with welcoming God. To welcome a sinner sent by Jesus into your home is to welcome God. No longer are the criteria for hospitality the relative honor points of the one at the door. Now whoever welcomes someone who comes as the messenger of Jesus welcomes God. Now when someone comes to our door the question is not are they worthy to enter but are they sent by God.

Our world could stand to be turned upside down, to be stood on its head. The heart of our world needs to have its door knocked hard upon. Too long the poor, the outcast, the ill, the “doesn’t fit here” folks, and so-called sinners have been pushed to be without honor, respect or status. Because of the circumstances of their life they have been locked outside the gates of grace, mercy, justice and lovingkindness. This is not the honor code of those who follow Jesus.

If our world and we operated by the honor code of Jesus then it is not money, family, friends, state of health that matters. The only thing that matters is if they have been sent by Jesus and hence by God. Perhaps they have something to teach of us grace. Perhaps they have some healing of body or soul we need. Or perhaps they are the one in need and we are the ones sent to them for teaching and healing.

I pray daily that we at Bear Creek are ever more like Jesus. I pray that those who come in contact with us here, at home, in Safeway, or a work know that we were sent by Jesus because we welcomed and served them well. I want them to know that they are loved by God and by us (may God’s grace make this ever truer). I want them to know that we practice open communion as a sign of radical hospitality. I pray we practice coffee fellowship and small groups with the same open invitation. I pray we define each other not by the world’s honor code but by as children of God; brothers and sisters of mercy. I would like us to always meet the world’s suffering with a radical welcoming, sharing God’s love as it has found us, turned us upside down, and made us into the apostle and compassion of Jesus.

The love we take into life is Jesus’ love. With this gift, just where we are and with whom we are, we become Christ to the world. We become the one who sends us and if we come with the love of Jesus then the ones who receive us also receive Jesus and the one who sent him. Such receiving changes lives and brings both the guest and the host closer to the kingdom of heaven. One of my favorite stories goes this way:

On a quiet street in the city a little old man walked along shuffling through the autumn afternoon, and the autumn leaves reminded him of other summers come and gone. He had a long lonely night ahead, waiting for June.

Then among the leaves near an orphan’s home a piece of paper caught his eye, and he stooped to pick it up with trembling hands. As he read the childish writing the old man began to cry ‘Cause the words burned inside him like a brand.

“Whoever finds this, I love you, whoever finds this, I need you. I ain’t even got no one to talk to,so whoever finds this, I love you!”

The old man’s eyes searched the orphan’s home and came to rest upon a child with her nose pressed up against the window pane. And the old man knew he found a friend at last, so he waved to her and smiled and they both knew they’d spend the winter laughing at the rain.

And they did spend the winter laughing at the rain. talking through the fence and exchanging little gifts they had made for each other. The old man would carve toys for the little girl. She would draw pictures for him of beautiful ladies surrounded by green trees and sunshine, and they laughed a lot.

But then on the first day of June the little girl ran to the fence to show the old man a picture she drew, but he wasn’t there. And somehow the little girl knew he wasn’t coming back so she went to her room, took a crayon and paper and wrote…

“Whoever finds this, I love you, whoever finds this, I need you I ain’t even got no one to talk to so whoever finds this, I love you!”2 Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen, (Deerfield Beach, Florida, Health Communications, Inc. 1996) 65-66.

It is hard to tell in this story who is the apostle, the one sent, and who is the one offering hospitality. This is true in most cases of kingdom hospitality. We are never quite sure if we are being Christ to another or if they are being Christ to us. Even our enemies bring us gifts.

A friend keeps a little poem upon her desk that I like very much. I don’t know its author.

He drew a circle that shut me out!
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took him in.

Places like Bear Creek where we are devoted to drawing circles of love are essential to a suffering world. I pray that in your going about life you know you have been sent by Jesus and the one who sent him. Remember you are Jesus’ apostle sent out to teach and heal; to share the good news of God’s forgiveness and lovingkindness. Whoever receives you receives the one who sent you and so receives God. And when you have welcomed another into your life you have welcomed God.

Amen and Shalom.

[1] Matt. 9:9-13

[2] Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen, (Deerfield Beach, Florida, Health Communications, Inc. 1996) 65-66.