HELLO!

I hope to see you at 10 am on Sunday, either in person or online. Some will watch the service later in the week. I will wave at you.

Our Gospel story this week focuses on the disciples, who are going out in mission. They don’t know who they will stay with as they travel. Earlier Jesus told them how they will have to depend on the hospitality of strangers. Practically, they must take no extra supplies. Instead, they are to find someone “worthy” and “greet” the person’s house and let their “peace” rest upon it — or not, if they are not offered a “welcome.”

“Welcoming” is very important to Jesus, witness the “Last Judgment” in Matthew 25, “where were you when I was a stranger”, did you welcome him? “As you did to one of the least of these, you did to me”. And it isn’t just welcoming those who are just like you. We all have been on the receiving end of “welcome”, and we all have been on the giving end, too.

When I hear this sacred story, I am reminded of the challenges they offer to me, to the church, to the wider world. The first is the danger of ignoring the need. Many of us have “enough”, enough resources, enough friends and family, enough life, we have “plenty of water”. But just because we’re doing okay, we assume anybody who works hard and follows the rules should also be doing fine. The second challenge is thinking ourselves the arbiter of the water. We decide who gets help and who doesn’t based on our need to define who is deserving of assistance, and who isn’t. And the third challenge is thinking we’re not thirsty.  Most of us find it difficult, I think, to be on the receiving end of another’s generosity. It seems to go against our sense of self-sufficiency to be vulnerable in ways that would cause others to freely offer us welcome. But admit we, ourselves, are thirsty? Admit we, ourselves, are struggling or lonely or broken? Maybe we’d rather just be thirsty.

May we be part of the outpouring of “welcome” to all who walk through our doors, to those who walk by our sacred space, to all who we meet, inside the church, outside the church. May we help to open the floodgates of that “living water” the Samaritan woman identified when she met Jesus that hot afternoon (John 4). And may we all get drenched.

Peace, Kevin