As the culmination of a speech to the apostles before they set out into unknown, this is a rousing bit of courage.
As it will be heard by many this week as a treatise on welcoming strangers, it is quite effective, as well.
For me, however, I struggle to really feel both of these frames at the same time. Not that we can’t, just that the two give very different vibes. And I think they play quite strongly depending on how the hearer sees themselves in the story.
Welcomed or Welcomer?
The apostles are supposed to go out into the world to be welcomed. Most Christians, however, will be hearing this inside a church, where we expect to welcome with Jesus.
The one bearing the responsibility to be a good Christian is the guest in one context and host in the other.
I also worry that this switching of roles has the tendency to confuse the general understanding of discipleship; with some thinking that they can spend 70 years committed to the faith and be the one needing to be welcomed andreceiving of the Good News.
In other words, bearing the benefit of Christian discipleship, but none of the responsibility.
A second challenge
I’ve also noticed a tendency in the church to get rigid with our vision of welcome. Perhaps even to the point of judgement that we aren’t welcoming right.
Here, I hazard to evoke the Mary/Martha challenge in Luke. Martha gets mad at her sister, Mary, for not helping host. Because she isn’t doing the “right kind” of labor. Jesus’s frowning at Martha’s scold reveals that the problem isn’t that they welcomed Jesus wrong. But that she couldn’t see how Mary was doing it right.
The experience many in the church have around welcome can feel quite like that exchange. As we worry about doing it right, providing the right materials, and saying the right things. While welcoming well is valuable, scolding one another is far less so.
Being generous
In spite of how genuinely mixed up our experience of these three verses can be, the last one may be the most revealing.
As the apostles are allowing themselves to be welcomed, Jesus is welcomed by them. And in light of that, whoever gives a cup of cold water to them retains their reward.
There’s a beautiful, revolutionary commitment happening here in the last verse of chapter 10. An awakening of spirit. Because that reward doesn’t go to the apostles in their work out in the world. Nor is it only for the elect who win the birth lottery. It goes to the people who welcome them and show generosity to them.
The expression of a generous God to bestow such grace upon anyone who shows generosity is a compelling and transformational gospel.
A vision of faith far more compelling than, for example, using how we’ve arranged the cookies at coffee hour to define the means of grace in our world.