Sunday, June 26, 2011

Sunday of the Annual Meeting of the Maine Conference,

United Church of Christ

A Laity Sermon Provided to the Churches of the Maine Conference

Introduction

Today’s sermon comes to Maine Conference churches on the occasion of the Annual Meeting of the Conference, held this weekend in Farmington. On this Sunday many clergy gather with lay leaders from churches small and large from throughout the Conference, Kittery to Fort Kent, Bethel to Machias, to guide the Conference in its ministry for the year to come.

The Spiritual Life Commission of the Maine Conference arranges for a Laity Sermon to be prepared for Conference churches. The sermon may be read aloud by a lay leader, or otherwise used by local churches in publications, bible studies, and other gatherings, at this point in the church year. The author is the Rev. Doug Dunlap, who lives in Farmington, Maine, and is a member of the Spiritual Life Commission.

Doug is away himself on this weekend, not because he is at the Annual Meeting, but because he is on a 2178 mile hike of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. He began the hike at Springer Mountain in Georgia in April, and his destination is Mt. Katahdin, in September. Doug is hiking to raise funds at a suggested penny a mile to benefit the CEVER (sev-er) vocational school in Honduras which helps young people to learn skills for family-sustaining employment.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Matthew 10:40-42

The Least We Can Do

Greetings, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ! Grace, and the peace of Christ be with you! As you read or hear these words I expect to be somewhere at the northern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, with a thousand footpath miles behind me, 12000 more to go, as I walk home to Maine from Georgia on the Appalachian Trail. Behind me lay the high peak and ridges of the Southern Appalachians, and their still and misty valleys; the Great Smokey Mountains National Park , Shenandoah National Park, George Washington National Forest; intriguing place names like Plum Orchard Gap, Charlie’s Bunion, Pickle Gap, and Beauty Soft Gap. Ahead lies high country that looks out on sites of Civil War conflict: Antietam, Gettysburg, beyond that the well forested ridges that arc through and around New Jersey and New York, then on to New England, the Green Mountains, the White Mountains, the Maine mountains and home.

It is a lot of walking. This walk brings home to me how much the ministry of Jesus Christ and the men and women who followed Jesus and ministered in his name, was a walking ministry. From Jerusalem to the outer points of the Galilee, and the most distant locations of Jesus’ ministry the distance is over 100 miles. How many miles Jesus traveled altogether, we do not know, but the Gospels tell us that as a child he walked with his family to Jerusalem and back, and that Jesus was on the move constantly in his ministry because he brought that ministry to the people. His was not a place-bound ministry, not one in he had a headquarters of some kind to which people themselves walked. No, instead, Jesus’ ministry was located where Jesus – or those he sent out - happened to be: in homes small and large, on a hillside by the Sea of Galilee, aboard a fishing boat, in open-air markets, at the edge of the desert, on a mountain top, or simply along the footpaths that crisscross the Holy Land. Imagine what that was like: church in homes and public squares, in wild places and along well-traveled roads. How in the world would Jesus, and followers, get the word across, in a walking ministry? What might they do or say that might cause those who encountered them to be touched, transformed? What could or would be different, distinguishing, transforming, about encounters with Jesus and Jesus’ followers?

Today’s Scripture from Matthew is from what is called the Missionary Discourse. Jesus is speaking to the named disciples, and to other followers who will make their own walking ministries. This is a kind of chalk-talk before the event, and it contains warnings about people who will criticize, and those who will be unwelcoming, along with exhortation to convey words and acts of faith and of healing with good will, courage, even cheerfulness. And then we have Jesus speak of the sacredness of welcome: whoever welcomes you welcomes me. Jesus uses the word welcome six times in these three verses, and when Jesus does that, Matthew wants us to pay attention to welcome. There was, and is, in the Middle East, a tradition of welcome, a welcome not only of family and friends, but most definitely of the stranger. The climate can be harshly hot, harshly cold, harshly dry, and even on occasion harshly stormy and wet. No motel chains, no campgrounds, no roadside rest areas, no fast food establishments. What sustained the wider community of people was hospitality, and hospitality meant welcoming the stranger, the immigrant, the unknown person passing through. This meant sharing of a roof, the sharing of food, and the sharing of one of the most precious and life-giving commodities in this part of the world – water - and the height of hospitality was to offer cold water. To obtain family water might require walking for miles; to keep it cold required building a household storage well away from the sun. To share it was to share life, and affirm life, and affirm a virtual kinship even with the stranger. In a difficult landscape people survive on hospitality.

Jesus says that those who offer even a cup of cold water to these disciples and followers, these newcomers, these courageous new voices and new hands for the ministry of Jesus – those who offer welcome in this way – they will be blessed, they will experience in that moment of hospitality, the in-breaking of the kingdom of God. Jesus uses the Greek word mikros, translated as little ones, to refer to these new and courageous followers who are setting out on the daunting. The message is as much for the world who will encounter them, as it is for these disciples themselves. A cup of cold water, self-less hospitality, the least that anyone can do, such an act as this stands as a gesture of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God.

For those of us on the trail this simple reaching out to the stranger is nothing less than a Godsend. We walk from water source to water source, and sometimes in dry regions, hikers share their water. We share information about trail conditions, steep sections ahead, or muddy sections. If someone is not well, we offer assistance. If someone is running low on food, we share. We virtually never pass anyone without speaking, without asking how they are doing. This is so simple, so basic, the least anyone can do, but it is life-affirming, and it contributes to the creation of a trail community. It is just not possible to walk over 2000 miles completely on one’s own. On trail, people welcome the stranger, extend hospitality. And truly when this happens it is like experiencing the in-breaking of God’s way.

So what may we make of Jesus’ proclamation that those who act in hospitality to the stranger, literally the one from a distance are blessed, find favor in the eyes of God? Who in our own lives thirsts – thirsts for our presence, a word from us, a welcome, a forgiven and merciful word, a word of reconciliation, a healing word? Who thirsts for our reach, our touch, the nourishment of a word, a phone call, a house call, a reach across whatever separates, divides? From whom are we at a distance – someone different from us who does not know us, or someone from whom we have become estranged? How might we startle, and transform, in a God-blessed way, both ourselves and one whom we do not know, by a simple act of bold hospitality? Jesus’ earth-shaking word is that we might bring forth the in-breaking of the kingdom of God by such a bold and basic act – celebrating the very sacredness of the least we can do. Amen.

Let Us Celebrate God’s Gift of Prayer

God – ever-present, ever surprising, ever manifesting in everyday places and everyday moments - so touch us by Your word and Your way that we may both know and share the sacred hospitality to which You call us, on the road to which you call us, on the road where we may meet you in the guise of the tsranger. Amen.