Matthew 10:40-42 (NRSV)
Matthew 10:40-42 (Year A June 26-July 2) conclude the missionary discourse with legal style sayings that offer a prescription for the Christian community[1] on hospitality. These sayings make one think about how even the smallest acts of kindness can carry so much weight. Like, a cup of cold water in a desert is a huge deal, but even in our everyday lives, those "random acts of kindness" can truly make someone's day, or even change their life. It's not just about grand gestures, but about being open and welcoming to others, seeing the divine in the stranger, and understanding that what we offer to others, we're ultimately offering to something bigger than ourselves.
Introduction
Such sayings express the prophetic self-consciousness of Jesus and relate to the inner life of the church.[2]Fulfilling this mission is not always about grand gestures but can reflect itself in the smallest acts of kindness. While Matthew has just constructed the discourse to focus on the dangers involved in uniting oneself with the mission of Jesus, as well as the likelihood of rejection, these verses open the possibility for positive contact. In a sense, qualifications for acceptance within the circle of Jesus drops dramatically. The tiniest hint of respect and interest for those who witness for Jesus qualifies as inclusion. Such persons are not opponents. Jesus elevates the virtue of hospitality among his followers and promises that those who practice it will receive a heavenly reward beyond what is owed. Just as those who work only the last hour of the day will receive the full day’s wage (Matthew 20:1-15), so will those who offer simple acts of hospitality receive their heavenly reward. Jesus promises a reward for even the most modest gesture of hospitality toward the disciples. There is no emphasis on a particular duty.
Verse 40 (Luke 10:16, John 13:20), suggests that anything which is simply a hospitable exchange between two persons is an exchange between four - the host or hostess, the disciple, Jesus, and the one who sent Jesus. It expresses the prophetic self-consciousness of Jesus.[3] Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The disciples are divine messengers whose hospitable acceptance is equivalent to being visited by the superior power that first dispatched them. Sayings about welcoming a messenger were common in the Mediterranean world. One’s agent is like himself (Mishnah, Berakhot 5.5). Paul had to rely on this cultural convention to ensure the proper delivery of his messages among his churches (Philippians 2:25). To welcome an emissary was tantamount to welcoming the person who had dispatched the emissary. With the messenger of Jesus, Jesus himself and therefore his Father, enters the love of whoever welcomes the messenger. Jesus explains the inextricable bond between a master and an apostle, the sender and the messenger (John 13:20). To receive the disciple is to receive Jesus, which is also to receive the Father. The magnitude of the authority of the messengers is clear. This saying takes up the established right of the messenger, according to which the messenger is as the one who sends the messenger. Similarly, in the person of the messengers, Jesus comes. The nature of being a messenger is to represent Jesus. The second part of the saying says the Father enters houses with the messengers of Jesus.[4] This means that even in the simplest relationships, the Father is the one who initiates by sending Jesus, and then Jesus sends the disciple. Strangers are not always a threat or a nuisance. Anyone can assume the stance of those who welcome guests into our lives. The ethic behind these sayings is that of reciprocity. In tracing the welcome back to his Father, Jesus stresses that he is not alone. Thus, while Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, he is not alone. He has witnesses and can therefore come to all people.[5] Such witnesses enter the gap created through the temporal limitation of revelation.[6] If Jesus truly is the light of life, we can believe this promise today. The Word of Jesus Christ is stronger than the power and hardihood of the mixed and relative secularism that confronts the Christian community in our time.[7]
This chain of senders and sent ones became the backbone of the early Christian idea of “apostolic succession,” which was articulated especially by Irenaeus of Lyons in the second century. In that era, when Irenaeus perceived the threat that unsubstantiated teachings were to the Christian message, he defended and traced an unbroken line of authority from the current bishops back to the apostles, Jesus and God. Thus, we have an important statement for the future of the church in that Jesus sent out and authorized his disciples so that those who heard them also heard him. While the church has often applied this to clergy, it applies to all followers of Jesus.[8]
Verse 41 (unique to Matthew) encourages followers of Jesus to welcome others. However, in the context Matthew has placed it, those who receive those who Jesus is sending are receiving prophets and righteous ones, and they will receive a reward from the Father. 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.The saying reassures Christians that, under the laws of hospitality, they would receive rewards commensurate with the people they welcomed. The earliest church had wandering missionaries, prophets, and righteous people, who had authority to teach. They moved from one congregation to another, often despised and persecuted, always dependent on hospitality. however, in the context Matthew has provided, it encourages the prophets and righteous ones whom Jesus is sending now to trust that the laws of hospitality in that ancient culture will provide some positive contact with strangers they encounter on the road. Even today, one can often rely upon the basic kindness of strangers when one is in need.
Verse 42 (Mark 9:41) is a proverb that drops acceptance into this network dramatically, for all Jesus requires is the tiniest hint of respect and interest, a cup of water to the little ones, the ordinary member of the community, is hardly being a measure of exuberant hospitality, in those who witness in his name. The Father will not forget even a drink of water. The cup of cold water may be a symbolic metaphor representing any small but crucial act of charity. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, (the sole ground of his authority for the demand of God expressed through him[9]) he will by no means lose his reward. Jesus elevates the virtue of hospitality among his followers and promising that those who practice it will receive a heavenly reward beyond what is owed. These sayings encourage simple acts of kindness. Such hospitality is a way the follower of Jesus can show the world a unique way of relating to the strangers that come into our lives. The cup of cold water may mean little to the owner of a home, but much to the traveler. However, in the world of the eastern Mediterranean, a cup of cold water might not have been such a small act. It might have been a potent symbol of salvation in those arid desert landscapes. However, in the context Matthew has provided, those who offer the simplest hospitality to the ordinary member of the Christian community will receive a reward from the Father. Even the smallest act of hospitality to a “little one” is an act the Father will not forget in eternity. In the context of the ministry of Jesus, such a little one is a follower of Jesus. Yet, such a little one is also the one the beatitudes describe. They are the poor, the pure in heart, seekers of righteousness, and merciful. They might be the one who needs the welcome of forgiveness, as in the parable of the prodigal son. If we pay attention to the teaching of Jesus, such “little ones” will become quite broad and inclusive. The Father will remember those who offer such simple acts of kindness. Even if such persons have never heard of Jesus, they are living their lives in the way Jesus counsels here. The one who has heard of Jesus needs to hear these words and live in them. God has some surprises for those who do simple acts of kindness to the little ones of this world. We have the promise of Jesus that the Father will remember them in eternity.
The theology of “random acts of kindness” has its support here. At one level, these sayings encourage followers of Jesus to focus upon simple acts of kindness as an expression of their discipleship. If the churches focus only upon the great themes of the Bible, it would bypass this passage, and would be poorer for doing so.
However, these sayings also encourage an open stance toward the world by the follower of Jesus. Strangers are not always a threat or a nuisance. Anyone can assume the stance of those who welcome guests into our lives. Ideally, of course, even the distinction between host and guest will evaporate into a new bond of unity. The messenger of Jesus is offering a gift through preaching, teaching, and actions. Some people will respond with the gift of welcome and a simple act of kindness that will bring refreshment. In general, the one who offers hospitality to a stranger is willing to welcome something new, unfamiliar, and unknown. Strangers have stories to tell that may stimulate the imagination in new directions. Coming from a different life-world than our own, hospitality to the stranger opens the door to a novel perspective that may expand us.[10]
Application
I know this must seem a strange message from a not particularly religious writer in an utterly secular newspaper, but I am increasingly struck by two phenomena. The first is the growing sense that America's major failings are not political or economic, but moral. The second is the discovery that most successful social programs are those that are driven ‑‑ even if only tacitly ‑‑ by moral or religious values .... Marvin Olasky, the University of Texas journalism professor, says he recently spent a few nights as a "homeless" person on Washington streets. Every shelter he visited plied him with as many sandwiches and soft drinks as he wanted, he told me. But nobody ‑‑ even at a church‑run shelter ‑‑ asked him the first question about how he became homeless or what he thought might help him toward independent living.
Doesn't this neglect of the spiritual at least help explain the persistence not just of homelessness, but also teen pregnancy, substance abuse, school failure and the whole range of problems that we tend to see as stemming primarily from bad economics or racism? Shouldn't organized religion take the lead in doing what the rest of us fear to try?
"We have," says Robert L. Woodson, Sr., head of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (and a layman), "been looking for cures in all the wrong places. We don't have a crisis in recreation, or social services, or consumer capacity. Certainly, our children need these things and need jobs, too. But these things have no redemptive quality, and what our young people need above all is to be redeemed."[11]
Offering the cup of cold water, offering hospitality in a way that opens your life to the stranger, can have political ramifications.
Amazing Grace is a 2006 movie. Ioan Gruffudd played Wilberforce and Albert Finney plays John Newton. The film has grossed $21,250,683 domestically as of June 14, 2007. Worldwide box office as of August 26, 2007 stands at $29,949,690. "Amazing Grace" was named "Best Spiritual Film of 2008"in the third annual "Beliefnet Film Awards".
The movie tells the story of the life of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), who was responsible for the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807. At that time, the British Empire was heavily dependent upon the slave trade. Wilberforce dedicated his entire life to fighting the injustice. Wilberforce was idealistic, compassionate, eloquent, and tenacious. Being the heir to a sizable fortune, he was elected to parliament at 23 years old. He experienced a dramatic spiritual conversion a few years later. He struggled with his political vocation. He was not convinced that he could serve God and Parliament at the same time. He met John Newton, a former slave ship captain and author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.”
It might be helpful to cover some of the story of Newton at this point, something only hinted at in the movie. Newton was born into a seafaring family in England. His mother was a godly woman. Faith gave her life meaning. She died when he was 7, and he recalled as the sweetest remembrance of childhood the soft and tender voice of his mother at prayer.
His father soon married again, and John left school four years later to go to sea with him. He quickly adopted the vulgar life of common seamen, though the memory of his mother's faith remained. "I saw the necessity of religion as a means of escaping hell," he would recall many years later, "but I loved sin."
On shore leave, he was seized by a press gang and taken aboard HMS Harwich. Life grew coarser. He ran away, was captured and taken back to the Harwich and put in chains, stripped before the mast, and flogged. "The Lord had by all appearances given me up to judicial hardness," he recalled. "I was capable of anything. I had not the least fear of God, nor the least sensibility of conscience. I was firmly persuaded that after death, I should merely cease to be."
The captain of the Harwich traded him to the skipper of a slaving ship, bound for West Africa to take aboard a human cargo. "At this period of my life," he later reflected, "I was big with mischief and, like one afflicted with a pestilence, was capable of spreading a taint wherever I went." John's new captain took a liking to him, however, and took him to his plantation on an island off the African coast, where he had taken as his wife a beautiful but cruel African princess. She grew jealous of her husband's friendship with John, and was pleased when it was time for them to sail once more. But John fell ill, and the captain left John in his wife's care.
The ship was hardly over the horizon when she ordered him from her house and threw him into a pig sty, and gave him a board for a bed and a log for a pillow. He was left alone, in delirium, to die. Miraculously, he did not die. She kept him in chains, in a cage like an animal, and fed him swill from her table. Word spread through the district that a black woman was keeping a white slave, and many came to watch her taunt him. They threw limes and stones at him, mocking his misery. He would have starved if the slaves, waiting for a ship to take them to the Americas, had not shared their meager scraps of food.
Five years passed, and the captain returned. When John told him how he had been treated, he branded John a thief and a liar. When they sailed again, John was treated ever more harshly. He was given only the entrails of animals butchered for the crew's mess. "The voyage quite broke my constitution," he would recall, "and the effects would always remain with me as a needful memento of the service of wages and sin."
Like Job, he became a magnet for adversity. His ship wrecked in a storm, and he despaired that God had mercy left for him after his life of hostile indifference to the Gospel. "During the time I was engaged in the slave trade," he would write, "I never had the least scruple to its lawfulness." Yet the wanton sinner, the arrogant blasphemer, the mocker of the faith of others, was finally driven to his knees: "My prayer was like the cry of ravens, which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear."
Rescued, he made his way back to England, to reflect on the mercies God had shown him in his awful life. He fell under the influence of George Whitefield and John Wesley, and was born again into the new life in Christ. He began to preach the Gospel, which at last he understood.
Two days short of Christmas 1807, he died, at the age of 82, and left a dazzling testimony to the amazing miracle of the Christmas story. "I commit my soul to my gracious God and Savior, who mercifully spared and preserved me, when I was an apostate, a blasphemer and an infidel, and delivered me from that state on the coast of Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me." This is his testimony, which, set to music, has become the favorite hymn of Christendom.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see.
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
the hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come.
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far
and grace will lead me home.
Newton convinces Wilberforce that combating slavery would be doing the work of heaven. “The principles of Christianity require action as well as meditation,” says Newton. Newton told him:
“God has raised you up for the good of the church and the good of the nation, maintain your friendship with Pitt, continue in Parliament, who knows that but for such a time as this God has brought you into public life and has a purpose for you.”
Wilberforce recalled the meeting in this way, “When I came away, my mind was in a calm, tranquil state, more humbled, looking more devoutly up to God.” In his first speech to Parliament regarding the slave trade, he described the unfathomable conditions upon the slave ships and the despicable practice of slavery. After three hours, he concluded by telling he colleagues:
Having heard all this you may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know.
Between 1787 and 1807, Wilberforce campaigned tirelessly for a legislated end to the British slave trade. He introduced the measure repeatedly, and repeatedly moneyed interests that supported political leaders defeated his “perennial resolution”.
In 1791, John Wesley wrote what be his final letter to encourage Wilberforce.
“Unless God has raised you for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”
In 1807, the vote went in his favor 287 to 16, an event historian G.M. Trevelyan called “one of the turning events in the history of the world.”
In later decades, Abraham Lincoln remembered Wilberforce, saying he recalled the man who ended the slave trade, but could not name one man who tried to keep it alive.
While the slave trade ended in England in 1807, he continued to work to abolish slavery in England. In 1833, a bill passed that finally outlawed slavery. Remember, it took a costly civil war to end slavery in the United States. Wilberforce died three days later.
Trafficking in persons is still a global threat to the lives and freedom of millions of men, women, and children, according to a U. S. State department report in 2006. burma and North Korea still sponsor slavery. Human trafficking, however, involves organized crime groups who make huge sums of money at the expewnse of trafficking victims and our societies. In his book Not for Sale, David Batstone says that 27 million slaves exist in our world today. Millions of children experience exploitation for their domestic labor.
In one scene (0:18:23 to 0:21:00), Wilberforce, in the woods, starts speaking to God that he feels as if he must speak to God in secret. Richard the Butler arrives to ask him what he is to do with a beggar. Wilberforce has him feed the man breakfast. I know that laying down on the grass is not a normal thing to do. I know I have been doing many odd things lately. I have 10,000 engagements in politics today, and all I want to do is stay out here and look at spider webs. I have found God. “You have found God,” Richard said. I think God found me. Do you have any idea how inconvenient that is and how crazy it will sound?” Richard responded, “It would be sad thing for a man to be so well known to everyone else, and so little known to himself.”
In one scene, (at 23 minutes into the film) William Pitt, who would soon be prime minister, said, “Will you use your beautiful voice to praise the Lord or change the world?” In one scene (26:03 to 30:25) a table conversation occurs around slavery. “We understand you are struggling with whether you should do the work of God or the work of an activist. We humbly suggest that you can do both.” In the following scene (until 36:05), he meets John Newton, who tells him that he still lives with the ghosts of 20,000 slaves that he delivered to slaveholders on slave ships. “Do it John, for God’s sake.”
In one scene (44:31 to 47:11) the former Equino brought William Wilberforce to a slave ship. For amusement, they chained women and raped them. During storms, they threw slaves overboard to lighten the load. Wilberforce believed that if the members of Parliament could see the horror of the slave ships, they would stop it. In one scene (55:11 to 56:51), he encourages the people who are on a tour ship to look at the slave ship Madagascar. Smell the odor of death. “Remember that God made men equal.” People boycotted sugar grown by slaves. He believed they should have the won the vote in one session of Parliament. He brought a petition to Parliament, signed by 390,000 people.
The accusation against Wilberforce is that he obeys “the preacher in his head.”
In one scene (1:25:53 to 29: 48) John Newton finally writes his confession of his complicity in the slave trade. “We were apes. They were humans.” “I am weeping. I couldn’t weep until I wrote this confession.”
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[11] Syndicated columnist William Raspberry, "Churches Ought to be Doing What Government Can’t,” Tampa Tribune, Fe 14, 1995.
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