July 2, 2023

Proper 8, Year A

Matthew 10:40-42

The Rev. Deborah Hawkins

The Church of St. Martin, Davis, CA

8am service of Holy Eucharist

This 4th of July weekend is a long one. I think a lot of people are out of town maybe even camping.  Have you ever gone camping? Do you like it? It can be a lot of work to get ready to go camping. There is shopping, packing, filling the car with sleeping bags and tents and special stoves and lanterns and extra stuff in case you run out and toys and lots of clothes and maybe more toys and more food and maybe even a dog or two. Most people take a lot of stuff when they go camping. Backpackers will tell you their type of camping is more pristine, free, less cluttered. I have done it. It still involves a lot of stuff. 

Some people say it is so much work to get ready they don’t even know why they bother. But then, you get to the campground and maybe lay out under the stars at night staring into the sky – the sky you can’t see as well in town because of all the lights. Just lying there, looking up, knowing you are part of such beauty and vastness, that alone can make camping worth the work. It is also an opportunity to see more of life, like the life on the planet. Plants and animals and bugs and rocks and all the variety you don’t see at home in tamer environments. Most campgrounds are pretty tame really, but they are still wilder, less predictable, filled with more variety than we allow at home. Probably the best part of going camping with your family is getting to spend more time with people you love. While camping, people can be busy and off doing stuff, but it tends to be a lot of stuff you do WITH people. There is a lot less time spent dashing off in different directions to school or work or play dates or cleaning up the house or the garden or running to the store. 

All that is important, and some is even fun, but can be hectic and take away from time spent just being present with someone. Doing stuff for people is exhausting but being with them – that can be life giving. I know it isn’t always, but it can be – take a deep breath and remember what that feels like. No agenda. Walking along a trail, roasting marshmallows, sitting at a table with someone you love in the cold of the early morning watching the sun rise as you sip a cup of hot chocolate or coffee or tea. There is nothing you need to do but just be with them for a while. It is a little slice of heaven. The purpose of camping is all of that: enjoying the wonders of nature, experiencing life in a different way, spending time just being with those you love.  All of that makes all the work worth it.

For the last few weeks in the gospel readings, Jesus has been talking about sending the disciples, sending us, out on what is often called a mission trip, which, if you don’t think about it too closely, is kind of like being sent out camping. You usually pack up stuff and leave home to go out into a wider world to meet new people, to be with them and with the people you are traveling with, and learn new things, especially things about yourself. 

On the surface, the mission trip Jesus sends us out on, in the gospel of Matthew, is unlike most of the camping trips or mission trips most of us have gone on.  He tells us, ‘Don’t take anything extra with you.’ Before sending us on our way, instead of filling up our cars or backpacks with gear, he fills us up with advice and warnings. There are bears and poison oak to be aware of when you go camping. On this trip there will be people who don’t like you, some people who might want to harm you, but also people who will become good friends. So pay attention, and also be careful. Maybe this isn’t so different, after all, this part sounds like life no matter where you are. Remember, though, he says, when you are sent out you are more likely to run into people, places, and incidents that are different than what you are used to so, extra paying attention is good.

As with camping, there is a purpose behind Jesus sending us out into the world as his disciples. A few years ago Debie Thomas (June 2020, journeywithjesus.net) wrote a summary of what that is and it has stuck with me. Jesus said we are to ‘cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons’ (Matthew 10:8). Debie restated that list as ‘make believable the compassion of God.’ That is our mission in the world. Our reason to come here and to pray and be fed and have fellowship and all the rest is so when we leave here, when we are sent out from here, we can, wherever we go, even if it is home, ‘make believable the compassion of God.’

Sounds like a tall order. It is a good thing we have been given a good 3 weeks of instructions. The one we get today is really important. It is the last thing Jesus talks about in this portion of the gospel story from Matthew, the last teaching we are given before being sent out. It is about welcome. Whoever welcomes us, welcomes him, and whoever welcomes him, welcomes God. And it doesn’t have to be a big deal. Just a cup of cold water is a wonderful gift. 

What is striking about this teaching is who is doing the welcoming and who is doing the receiving. The ones who are sent out, us, we are the ones on the receiving end. It sounds kind of odd. We are used to thinking of ourselves as being the ones who do the helping, the giving, the offering out in the world. After all, we are the ones being sent out. We are the Christian ones, serving others. And we do, and it is a right and proper thing to do, but to make believable the compassion of God we have to begin by noticing those who take care of us and noticing how much we need them. That is easier at either end of life but it is oh so important all along the way. If we are only giving and never receiving, we run into trouble. Our mission in the world becomes all about us. Only giving distances ourselves from others, protects ourselves, even, from having to notice the face of Christ in them. And, frankly, any kind of one-way life gets crazy busy because you can never be done and then we have to ask ourselves, “done with what?”

I remember going on trips to visit grandparents. We would have family dinners. One of my grandmothers could never sit at the table. She was always popping up to get somebody something. A chorus would ring out from my dad and his brother, ‘mother, will you please sit down.’ My grandmother was a volunteer with a hospital axillary. One of the things she did was make little cards for people in the county hospital, something to bring a smile to their day. I cherish memories of helping her make those cards. It is those memories, of being with her, of seeing her compassion and concern for the little ones of this world, that I carry with me far more than of the parsley or whatever she was sticking on my plate at dinner. 

Jesus asks us to go and make believable the compassion of God. We can’t give what we haven’t’ received. We can’t show what we haven’t seen. We can’t make believable what we haven’t experienced ourselves. So, first, Jesus says, don’t take anything with you that way you can recognize yourself as someone who has nothing; nothing to offer, nothing to give, only open hands with which to receive and then you will have something to give back.

In the psalm we said this morning we cried out to God that God has forgotten us. God doesn’t spend any time with us. God doesn’t care about us. At least that is how the psalm starts. It ends by saying, ‘oh wait, you are there. I have been forgetting to hold out my hands to you. When I do, your help saves me like a cup of cold water on a hot day.  Now I remember why I sing of the Holy One. That is a joy to be shared with the world.’

When we are full of our own busyness, we have no time to look at the stars, no time to really notice others around us. It is only from a place of inner emptiness that the wonder of the stars, the wonder of God’s being with us and with others, can fill us to the brim and begin to flow out in love and compassion to all those we meet.