Matthew 10: 40-42

Matthew 10: 40-42

As I looked up the texts for today, I was struck by just how small the Gospel reading is. I thought to myself, “three verses must be awfully powerful to carry a whole Sunday.” These verses lived up to my expectations.

They certainly are powerful, and they gain more power when set in context. In the larger story of Matthew 10, Jesus and the Disciples are still in the North, up by the Sea of Galilee. He has been healing and teaching and now he calls the Disciples to him in order to give them their first assignment to go without him to preach and heal. This is a pretty remarkable moment because the Disciples are given the power to preach and heal and cast out demons. Jesus warns them that while the power might seem like getting the keys to a sports car, it is actually like being sent out as sheep among wolves. He prepares them that persecution is coming and that it is not just acceptable, but an order, that they flee persecution. He comforts them with the knowledge that God is watching and is on their side. But, this reward comes with the possibility of a certain amount of sacrifice. He cautions that the message they will give could cause families to break up (so much for Jesus as a “family values” kind of savior). And, he makes clear to them that they will need to take up their crosses and risk their lives, but the reward is eternal life.

Jesus has given them power, warned them of possible dangers, and promised great reward. Now we come to the three verses for today. He tells them about the gravity and responsibility of their mission. Whoever receives them, receives God. They are not simply good old boys from rural and agricultural Israel, trying to make people’s lives a little better. They don’t just represent an upstart prophet. They represent God. Their actions will affect the eternal disposition of the people the meet. This is a weighty responsibility and maybe more ponderous than anything else Jesus has enjoined them of. And, yet there is a great deal of grace there. Those who accept the disciples, open their hearts to God.

Part of the gravity of these verses is that there is something remarkably egalitarian in what the Disciples are charged to do. If anyone were ever to accuse Christianity of being a cult, these are the verses that should disprove accusations of that kind. Power is not limited to one individual. Even God incarnate, Immanuel, shares power. Believers have a share in God’s power. Like all good power, this is simultaneously liberating and constraining.

Knowing that most of the people in our congregations are more interested in hearing the “practical” applications of Scripture to our lives, I’ll try to keep the theology piece short and to the point. But, we cannot simply ignore what Jesus’ actions tell us about who God is. Who God is, has deep implications for who we are. God is powerful because God shares power. (We are our most powerful when we share power, but more on that later.) God is ultimately powerful because God has the ultimate ability to share power. At first glance, this seems truly paradoxical. We like to think of power as a zero sum game: more power=better, losing power=worse, all power=best. Except, that is not how it works really. This might be a great place to talk about how power in your life has been problematic. Maybe you can find a time when having more power, or most power, or all power caused trouble. Or, maybe you can think of a time when power balance or sharing power made things better. I like to use this example about the economics of power to illustrate the truth about power: Imagine yourself as the richest person in your peer group. How would your life change? Now imagine you are the richest person in your country. How would your life change? What would you do with that money? Now imagine you are the richest person in the world. Now imagine you are so rich that you have ALL of the money in existence. Seriously. Every dollar, every pound, every yuan, lira, peso, ruble, and rupee. All of it. No one else has any money at all. How much money do you have? Or, the better question, how much is it worth? (The answer is that if you have ALL of the money, then it is worth nothing and you have no money. If you have ALL of the money, then nobody can buy anything from you or anyone else. It becomes worthless.) Power is in many respects like money. If you have ALL of the power, then you really don’t have power at all.

God is ultimately powerful, in that the most power that one entity can have, God does have. And yet, we see from our passage today that God chooses to share power in order to accomplish God’s good goal of reconciling humanity. “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me.” We see in God’s actions two truths about ourselves. Power is not a zero-sum game, and we are stronger when we share power and work together.

The latter is what the last two verses of our text today address, among other things. Jesus goes onto to tell the Disciples about how their power will be different than what they’re used to. He tells them that anyone who receives a prophet will get a prophet’s reward. That makes perfect sense. Good people recognize God’s word and will get their just reward. Similarly, people who receive a righteous person will get a righteous man’s reward. Everyone listening to Jesus talk in this story is fully aware that the rewards of the prophets and righteous are often persecution in this life and eternal goodness in the next. Not everyone listening today will be aware of the dangers of prophethood, and it may serve them well to point it out.

Jesus goes onto a temper their expectations about what it means to be sent. Yes, he tells them, those who welcome you will get their rewards. But, do not expect to be making such a big and powerful, obvious impact all the time. He is warning them that a cup of cold water given to them is just as good in the Kingdom of God as being a prophet.

Caring for the “little ones” can be as simple as providing a cup of cold water. Many of your members may take for granted just exactly who the “little ones” are. Perhaps that is justified. But, you may want to linger on this point for a moment. Generally, our first inclination is to interpret “little ones” as “little children.” In Matthew 18:2-3, 6, Jesus calls young people, “little children” and “little ones.” It may be safe for us to assume that Jesus does mean children, but in the context of this passage, it seems unlikely that Jesus is referring exclusively to children. It may be helpful to look at Zechariah 13:7 to see who the little ones are. There, the little ones are the remnant of Israel that God will send through the fires of testing in order to refine them into purest silver and gold. In this passage, Jesus seems to be calling the disciples the little ones who will go through a time of testing while on this mission that will refine them. And still, it may also be helpful to hold that tension over the meaning of the “little ones” too. When we read this text as referring not just to the disciples, but to all of the vulnerable, then we see the focus of the Kingdom of God on all of God’s people, and not just the ‘power players’ like prophets and the righteous.

There is so much grace wrapped up in just three verses: God is a power sharing God, which means we are power sharing people. It means that we have a stake in the Kingdom of God, and our stake means sharing that goodness with anyone who will listen. We are the sent church. Here’s more grace. We are the sent church, but we are sent to do what we can do. A cup of water is rewarded as much as receiving a prophet. The grace in this is that we are not required to save the world. As the sent church we might not be required to start a revolution. While I have no doubt that God would welcome some radical change in favor of following Christ in today’s world, it’s not required in order to be a good follower. We can do what we can do. This is tricky ground to tread because we do not want to sew apathy in our Congregations. What we want to do is take away the incapacitating guilt that says, “if you are not saving the world, then you are not a true follower.” As the sent church we are sent to do all that we can do. For many of us that might be much more than we do now. But, for many of us, feelings of helplessness and guilt stymie our genuine desire to spread the good news and touch people’s lives.

As preachers, we can emphasize the grace in these verses that reveals we don’t have to save the world, but we are empowered be Christ’s hands here. This is an incredible opportunity to highlight the ministries in your church, denomination, or town that people can get involved in. Here would be a great place to illustrate the importance of a service experience in your life. It will be helpful to remind them that you did not change or save the whole world, but the lives you did touch are better, and that is what we are sent to do. With a little advanced planning, you could even have a service opportunity ready for people to sign up to help with after worship.

Being a sent church means going out. It means that we simply cannot expect people to come to us. (Somehow in the backs of our minds, I think many of us secretly believe that people ought to just come.) Regardless of how self-evident it seems to us that following Jesus is the way to go, it is not self-evident to those outside the Church. This is no place for hand-wringing over the state of the Church (and neither is the pulpit in most circumstances). These are the verses and this is the place for a call to action! The beauty of the good news is not self-evident to all. It is our job to make it evident. In the previous verses, Jesus warns that this is no easy task. Regardless, it is our task and by God, we are perfectly equipped to handle it.