Jeremiah
28:5-9
5 Then the prophet Jeremiah spoke to the prophet
Hananiah in the presence of the priests and all the people who were standing in
the house of the Lord; 6 and the prophet Jeremiah said, "Amen! May the
Lord do so; may the Lord fulfill the words that you have prophesied, and bring
back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the Lord, and all
the exiles. 7 But listen now to this word that I speak in your hearing and in
the hearing of all the people. 8 The prophets who preceded you and me from
ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and
great kingdoms. 9 As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of
that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the
prophet."
Romans
6:12-23
12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion
in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. 13 No longer present
your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God
as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to
God as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you,
since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Should we sin
because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know
that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of
the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience,
which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you, having once
been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching
to which you were entrusted, 18 and that you, having been set free from sin,
have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of
your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves
to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as
slaves to righteousness for sanctification. 20 When you were slaves of sin, you
were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what advantage did you then get
from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.
22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage
you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is
death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Matthew
10:40-42
40 "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and
whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet
in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes
a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of
the righteous; 42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these
little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose
their reward."
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever
welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
·
How do we see ourselves before God? If we even
think about it, I’d bet we see ourselves as at least humble creatures and at
worst wretches without hope. We’ve been taught that or at least I should say I had
been taught that. There are those, however, who think that they are God’s gift
to reality. Their thinking… is another sermon for another time.
·
Now with that in mind, here’s something more to
think about. Francis of Assisi told his brothers that “What a person is before God, that they are and nothing more.” You
see, what we really are before God is probably more important than what we
THINK we are.
·
Yes, I hear you thinking or muttering under your
breath… “So what am I before God?” This passage from the Gospel says a lot of
it. It doesn’t scold us for sin or comfort us in our sorrow and pain. There are
other passages for both of those intents. What it says it that God trusts us
enough to give us the mission of reflecting God’s presence in the world.
Actually it goes further; We don’t just reflect that presence, we ARE to be
that presence.
·
In any understanding of this, we are not worthy
of it. And that makes no difference. God chooses who God will. We will all be
that presence of God in different ways. It is true that one person might not
see God’s presence in us but may well see it in another. That’s just fine. For
my own self, one of the frustrations of preaching is the reality that what I
say may not reach everyone who hears it. The fault could be mine or there might
be no fault at all. Those whom I cannot reach may well be reached by another.
The preacher’s business is to preach; God sees to the results. With that in
mind, the same goes for each and every one of us.
·
Despite all of that, when we are welcomed as
those who carry the Word of God and the grace of God in some way, it is Jesus
who is welcomed. When Jesus is welcomed, the One who sent Jesus, the Father, is
welcomed. There are days when we might not feel like a blessing to others and
we still are… because of whose life we bear within us. Jesus even says whoever
gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a
disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.
·
It may seem strange to speak of ‘reward’ when
talking about being received as a disciple. Yet that is what the presence of
God and the life of the Spirit in us carries with it. Last week we heard of
God’s concern for even the tiniest of birds and how none fall from the sky
without God’s knowing. Here we see that even the smallest act of welcome and
kindness is worthy of reward.
·
There will not be a welcome in every meeting and
in all circumstances. As disciples who are not greater than our Master, we
should probably expect, but no one says we have to like it.
·
If we are to carry the presence of God to all we
meet – relative or friend or stranger – we can count ourselves blessed to be
part of the over-flowing love of God for it is that love we are given to share,
in word and in action. It overflows through us.
·
Amen.
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