Sermon on June 28, 2020: 4th Sunday after Pentecost

How do you know when a Christian is really a Christian? What are the signs? How can you tell? Is it enough for a person simply to identify as a Christian? Does it depend on the kinds of things they believe—whether they agree with Christian doctrines, or can recite the Nicene Creed? Does it depend on how often they show up to service—or, these days, how often they watch them online? If they say they’ve been “born again” and have a “personal relationship with Jesus”—is that enough? Or if they can prove that they are a “baptized, confirmed communicant,” does that make them a Christian?

What is it that makes a Christian a Christian?

These are questions worth asking, because it’s quite possible to think that you are a Christian without actually being one. The German Christians of the 1930s certainly thought that they were Christians, but they weren’t. They were just Nazis, and there is no such thing as a Nazi who is also a Christian. The churchgoing slaveholders of antebellum America certainly thought that they were Christians, but they weren’t. They just used the Bible to validate their oppression of black lives. These are extreme examples, but still, they show just how necessary it is for each of us to ask the question: how do I know that I am a Christian?

Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” In these words, we begin to learn what makes a Christian a Christian, the “thatness” of the Christian life. We recall that God has appeared on earth in the person of Jesus, who is more than just the messenger of God—because he is God. Which is why Jesus says, “whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” If you are welcoming Jesus, then you are welcoming God. But then Jesus takes that connection one step further: “whoever welcomes you welcomes me.” In these words, Jesus is blurring the lines of distinction between him and the disciples who follow him. He is saying that he is somehow present in those followers, and that the way others respond to them will be the way they respond to him. To welcome them is to welcome him; to reject them is to reject him.

We do well to remember the audience of his words—the “them.” They are the twelve disciples. These were not elite members of society. They were neither wealthy nor well-educated. They were the working poor: mostly day laborers and fishermen. Which is to say, they were not the type of person that many in that day would normally care to welcome. They may as well have been invisible. They certainly would not have been seen as inextricably bound to the incarnate God. But they were. And they still are. They are the ones to whom Jesus says, “If they welcome you, they will welcome me.”

So today’s Gospel lesson helps us answer the question “what makes a Christian a Christian?” by reminding us that a Christian is someone who will welcome the poor and lowly people who are the primary audience of the good news of Jesus.

And then Jesus says this: “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.” When we hear little ones we tend to think of children, but Jesus uses this term to address his disciples, as he does elsewhere in the Gospels. They are his little ones. To give one of them a cup of cold water would not be a grand gesture—anyone can do it, whether rich or poor. It shows that even a small act of welcome is a significant act. And yet a cup of cold water can be the difference between life and death, for someone who is dying of thirst. Even a small act can be the most welcoming act of all.

There was a story a few years ago about a young man named Scott Warren who lived in a border town in Arizona. Scott regularly traveled into the desert near his home, with jugs of water and other provisions, and would leave them for migrants coming from Central America. He was working with No More Deaths, a faith-based organization that tries to keep migrants from dying in the desert by leaving water and supplies for them. In these borderlands, water can be the difference between death and life. In January 2018, Scott was arrested for providing two migrants with “food, water, clean clothes and beds.” His case went to trial, and raised the question of whether giving humanitarian aid can be considered a crime. Eventually, last fall, Scott was acquitted.

His story raises important questions for Christians, as we consider how we will offer a cup of cold water. Scott’s case pressed the hot-button of immigration politics, on which Christians do not always agree, it’s safe to say. I happen to think that Christians can in good conscience disagree on the issue. Some Christians will say that migrants should not be arriving through desert borderlands; others will say that, in reality, it’s their only option. It’s a subject of debate. But what should not be a subject of debate among Christians is whether migrants should die of thirst in the desert, because it was wrong to offer them a cup of water. Because being a Christian means having the eyes to see Jesus even in the faces of poor migrants—and remembering that whatever we do to them, we have also done to him.

We need to remember just how radical it is to welcome. How risky it is. So often in The Episcopal Church, we pride ourselves on our welcoming nature, but we can forget the risk inherent in every act of welcome. Because the world is not a radically welcoming place. The world wants to keep the mighty on their thrones, and to give more power to the powerful, and more money to the rich. The logic of the world is a logic of exclusion, not welcome. So when we hear Christ’s call to welcome the “little ones,” we should know that safety is not guaranteed. Because to be a Christian—to follow Christ—means that we have chosen to keep company with him, even if we have to carry a cross.

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me.” How can our lives reflect the radically welcoming nature of Jesus? Do we have the eyes to see his face in the faces of the poor and the lowly? Are we prepared to welcome them, and so welcome him, and so welcome the one who sent him? Have we allowed ourselves to be welcomed by him, so that our hearts and our minds are transformed into his likeness?

If so, then maybe—just maybe—it will make us into Christians.

Let us “welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Amen.