Are Prophets Welcome Here?

Are prophets welcome here? If a prophet walked in right now through the red doors, would we politely explain that this is a house of worship, and that we’re in the middle of a worship service? Eastertide, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday are now behind us. We’ve put on our green paraments and vestments, and we’ve entered the season of flowering and growth – our growth as Jesus’ friends and disciples. In the first half of the liturgical year, the year that began way back last December, we focused on Jesus and his life. In Advent, while we considered the end times, we also prepared to receive at Christmas the shocking news that the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood. During our long Epiphany tide, we reflected on all the various ways Jesus’ true identity became clear to those around Him. In Lent we sorrowfully pondered our own sins and the events that led up to Jesus’ death. In Easter tide we too joyfully greeted the risen Jesus, watched him leave behind for good his earthly existence, and let the Holy Spirit blow over us.

Now the focus of the liturgical year shifts from Jesus to us. In this green, growing season, along with the flowers, grass, and crops, we too are growing and developing spiritually. We too may hope to harvest the fruits of the Holy Spirit. In the opening weeks of this year’s Pentecost season, the overarching theme of our Gospel lessons is our response to Jesus. For the next several weeks, our Gospel lessons will ask us to ponder who Jesus is for us, how and where we see him, and how we act, both as individuals and as a Christian community, on our vision of him. Today’s Gospel reading asks us to ponder how we respond to prophets, to those who speak in God’s name, who bring God to us, and who provoke us to think about what God wants for us and from us. Next week the Gospel reading will show us different ways that the people around Jesus responded to him. We will then hear several parables, illustrative stories that reflect Jesus’ prophetic ministry. You will hear the parable of the sown seeds two weeks from today, and others while I am gone. August presents us with two miracles that further confirm Jesus’ true identity: Peter’s walking on water and the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter. The final two Gospel lections in this series lead us to explicit statements of Jesus’ identity, as we hear Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus’ confirmation of Peter’s insight, with an allusion to the consequences of Peter’s confession.

So now we are at the beginning of this series of lections. We begin at the very end of chapter ten of Matthew’s Gospel. We are in the second of Jesus’ five great sermons in Matthew. If we had started at the beginning of this chapter, we would have heard Jesus deliver what is called the “missionary discourse,” i.e., Jesus’ charge to the seventy or so disciples whom he sends out to preach the nearness of God’s reign. He explicitly reminds them that they are going forth as his emissaries, and that if someone welcomes them it is the same as welcoming Jesus himself. Then, the Gospel narrative has Jesus suddenly shift gears and ask the disciples – or perhaps others standing around – to reflect on how those who bring God’s word are received.

Jesus asks his hearers – and by extension us – to consider how we receive three different kinds of people who might bring God’s word to us. The first are the prophets. How do we receive prophets? Our Hebrew Bible lesson, taken from the Book of Jeremiah, suggests that, when prophets tell the truth, they are often rejected. Indeed, much of the Book of Jeremiah deals with Jeremiah’s struggle to make the political leaders to whom he was preaching hear the truth of the desperate situation they were in. Jeremiah especially wanted to get the king and his advisors to see that the alliances that they hoped would avert conquest by Babylon and eventual exile would not work. Echoing Jeremiah’s struggle, a Talmudic saying suggests that, “A rabbi whose congregation does not want to drive him out of town isn’t a rabbi.”1 Do we do any better? Did anyone want to listen to Rachel Carson, when she warned us in Silent Spring about the overuse of pesticides in agriculture? Did those who risked – and lost – their lives in the Civil Rights movement fare any better? How long did it take us to realize that HIV-AIDS was a disease that affected everyone – and still creates thousands of orphans in Africa? Are we listening to today’s scientists who warn of global warming and climate change? Are we willing to hear that the church must do ministry in a new way if it is to survive in this century? Who are the prophets who speak God’s word for you? Do you act on what you hear?

What about the righteous ones? Who are the ones who model a deep commitment to God, and how do we receive them when we meet them? Many people thought St. Francis was insane. Even today, some people wonder whether Mother Teresa really had genuine faith. Is it OK for Episcopalians to take the writings of Evangelical theologians or commentators seriously? Is it OK to read Rob Bell’s book on salvation? Do Pentecostals really have anything to teach us about spirituality?

Most perplexing of all, who are those “little ones,” who deserve a cup of water from us as they bring us God’s word? And how do we receive them? Bryan Findlayson tells about a mission trip to a rural area on the east coast of Australia. The community was poor and isolated, and the team was put up in houses that lacked such basic amenities as indoor plumbing. The small church had long ago lost its old weatherboards and was clad in metal siding. Nevertheless the congregation flocked to the church on Sunday afternoon to hear Findlayson and his team preach God’s word. Who knows whether anyone committed themselves to Christ that day, Findlayson asks? What mattered was that the messengers – and hopefully their message as well – were welcomed.2

Sometimes too we may meet some of those “little ones” in chance encounters. As one writer suggests, sometimes God’s word comes to us when we least expect it. A sentence in a sermon may leap out at us. A chance meeting with a stranger, perhaps a comment on an elevator, or at a gas station, or overheard at dinner, may be God’s word to us. Unless we listen carefully, and attend to the Spirit working in our lives, we may never realize that the reign of God has come near to us, and that we have heard God speaking to us.3

And then there are the “little ones” in our midst. Most of us shy away from contact with those who aren’t of our own social class, who aren’t as educated as we are, who perhaps have been incarcerated, or who don’t look, act, or smell as we do. Yet many passages of Scripture in addition to this one remind us of our obligation to welcome strangers. Abraham welcomed angels, who then blessed him by announcing that Sarah would bear a child. The book of Leviticus reminded the Israelites to love strangers as themselves, “for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” On the road to Emmaus Cleopas and his friend welcomed a stranger into their home, and realized that they had welcomed the risen Jesus as he broke bread with them. Several of Paul’s epistles bid the new Christian communities befriend strangers. Monastic communities have an ancient tradition of welcoming all, and the Rule of St. Benedict is particularly explicit that all strangers are to be treated as honored guests.

So how do we welcome those “little ones?” How about those who receive our diapers at the mobile food pantry? Could any of them be Christ-bearers for us? How about the “little ones” who walk through the doors of our parish hall for Loaves and Fishes? Are they honored guests? How do we treat them? Do they bring Christ to us? Do they perhaps have even deeper faith than we do? Might we learn something from them? Can we see Christ in them? Can we join our prayers with theirs? And what other opportunities to welcome “little ones” are we missing? Are there others who need our resources of time, space, and money? What other “little ones” might the Holy Spirit be sending our way, if only we could see them? As we begin to ponder where the Holy Spirit might be leading St. Peter’s, as we continue to pray daily for our parish – are you still doing that – let us also pray that God will show us other “little ones” whom we are called to serve.

O God, you direct our lives by your grace, and your words of justice and mercy reshape the world. Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.

1. Synthesis, June 26, 2011, p.2.

2. Bryan Findlayson at lectionarystudies.com, quoted in Ibid.

3. Forward Day by Day, June 16, 2011.