Proper 20
Sunday, September 20, 2009
St. David’s Episcopal Church, DeWitt, NY
The Rev. James C. Bresnahan, Interim Rector“
"Welcoming Jesus”

The following brief sermon was preached outdoors at St. David’s Annual Fall Picnic:

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

 

“Whoever welcomes a small child welcomes Jesus.” So says Jesus.

 

How is that so?  What is it about young children that to welcome them we welcome Jesus?  Or put an other way, What is it about Jesus that we are welcoming him when we welcome children?

 

To answer that we need first to ask not what children have or what children do or what children think.  Quite the opposite!  We have to think about what they cannot do because they don’t have the wherewithall to do it. Or what they don’t have because they have not yet acquired it.

 

Children cannot find you a job when you’re out of work; they have no jobs to offer; they cannot do big favors for you, because they have no favors to grant.  They cannot lend you money or broker deals for you, they have no resources for that.  Nor can they introduce you to all the right people. Because they don’t know them. There’s precious little if anything children can do for you to advance your fortune in life, your career, your status, your wealth, or whatever.

 

In welcoming a child, then you are stepping into a relationship that is pure giving and pure hospitality on your part without any reward and payback. You are demonstrating the love that the New Testament in Greek calls agape – love with no desire or need to get anything back for what it gives, love that loves for its own sake, love that loves because the heart is filled with love.

 

Contrast this with the attitude of Jesus’ disciples in our Gospel text who are arguing over who is greatest as if greatness resides in what one has, who one is near, or the praise, fame, or honor  that comes one’s way.

 

Who is greatest, asks Jesus? The one who welcomes a child.

 

Churches in decline, numerically and financially, often ask the question: How can we get more members so we can have more income.   As if we reach out to others for them to solve our financial problems, as if others are there to help us, and not we to help them, as if people don’t matter, their money does.

 

That’s not welcoming.  That’s not radical hospitality. That’s not agape.

 

Relationships of genuine love are not grounded in what I or we can get out of it but in being a vehicle of God’s love, God’s hospitality, God’s welcoming. Which is why marriages that survive and deepen are not based on I do for you if you do for me, but on sheer love.

 

In Holy Communion, we say that in receiving the bread and the wine we receive Jesus. True, but not any Jesus but the Jesus who is the one for others, who said, “When you give, don’t let one hand know what the other hand is doing.”

 

In receiving Jesus we are being drawn into his life, his love, and into his being the one for others.  We find, in feeding on him, that God is not an explanation for the inexplicable, not some distant first cause or primal mover, but the one revealed in love that loves freely and loves unconditionally. For God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God.