5th Sunday after Pentecost Sermon
Our gospel reading today continues last week’s story where Jesus was sending the disciples out on a mission trip and preparing them to be ridiculed and scorned, and rejected by their families.
But there’s a different tone this week. Sure, they’ll experience rejection and hostility from some people. But there will be others who receive them, who show them hospitality, who will bless them in small ways, like giving them a cup of cold water on a hot day.
And if you’ve ever felt loneliness or rejection or isolation, and then experienced kindness (even the smallest act), then you know just how sacred a gift that can be.
I visited South Africa in 1995 – just a year after Mandela had been elected president. And as jubilant a time it was in South Africa, it was also a time of enormous turmoil and social change. In fact, Johannesburg was then ranked the most dangerous city in the world; and I was staying right in the city-center, visiting a missionary friend of mine. On my first day there I went to the grocery store and was walking home down a crowded street in broad daylight when I was violently mugged by five men. I wasn’t badly hurt, but I was badly shaken.
Dazed and shocked, I stood up and started walking away, forgetting my groceries that lay scattered on the street. Then an elderly African woman who had witnessed the whole thing (but was powerless to stop them) gathered up my groceries and hurried after me. I can still picture her face as she handed me my groceries. She didn’t say a word, but her eyes looked deeply into mine. They were filled with sorrow and shame that such a thing should happen in her country in broad daylight. They were also filled with kindness.
Although I’d just experienced great violence, her simple act was an extraordinary gift. In Jesus’ words, it was a cup of cold water. And, in the end, it proved to be the more powerful act. It was her kindness that healed me and saved me from the fear and prejudice that could so easily have taken root in me.
In the face of hostility and isolation and fear, the simplest of acts of kindness arrive with extraordinary power and authority – an authority that affirms the fundamental worth of a person, of a soul.
But sadly, the reverse is true. It is as we say in the confession each week. Our sins are things “we have done” and things “we have left undone.”
When we withhold kindness, especially when someone desperately needs it, our inaction becomes a kind of “anti-gospel.” And we become complicit in perpetuating the lie to which we are all so vulnerable: “I do not belong; there is no hope for me.”
When I was in junior high a boy was caught doing something shameful and soon the whole school knew. And that afternoon when that same boy walked onto the bus, the mocking and jeering was merciless. And as he made his way down the aisle, looking for a safe place to sit, there I was, a generally kind person, with an empty seat beside me. I can picture him to this day, gesturing to the seat. Could he sit there? Slowly I shook my head back and forth. No. Not today. I couldn’t bear the stigma of sitting beside him. So I sent him back, deeper into the bus, where all the meanest boys sat.
Of all the cruel things I have done in my life, something about that particular episode registers most keenly in my memory. I had an opportunity to show mercy, but I was afraid. I withheld the cup of cold water from a boy who was thirsting desperately for anyone to offer him the slightest glimmer of hope that he was anything other than the laughing-stock he’d become.
What power for good we possess wherever people are suffering from ridicule or shame or whatever dehumanizing burden they carry. We might not have the power to eradicate suffering and evil, to say nothing of the sources of suffering and evil. But we do have the power to speak a word of truth – or to live a gesture of truth. And when we do, it is not our word speaking alone. Our word is aligning with the Word of God. We are becoming participants in the gospel itself.
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
We have great potential to be the hope of Christ in this world. And I would say, especially of St. John’s, more and more, I see you doing this very thing. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear some story – or several stories – of you living out this kind of kindness for one another.
And so today, rather than continuing with my sermon, I would like to invite you to share with us, stories of how you have been given a cup of cold water in this church, and how it has brought you life and hope as we seek to be like Jesus for one another, for Gig Harbor, and for the world.