A sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, 2 July 2023. The readings include Genesis 22:1-14 and Matthew 10:40-42

_____________________

The word of the day is welcome. Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (Matthew 10:40)

A few years ago, our Vestry considered what it means to post a sign outside the church proclaiming, “All Are Welcome”. It may be time to consider again that word, “Welcome”, as a church and as a nation. Because it is not enough to open a door and say, “Welcome” to someone who cannot get past the outer gate. What does it mean to say, “Welcome”, then, “Time’s up. Now find somewhere else to be”? It is not enough to say, “Welcome” to the parched and weary stranger, without offering them also food and drink, and a place to rest. It is a bait and switch to welcome someone in out of the cold but deny them a place by the fire. Welcome doesn’t say, “yes, I’ll help you, but then you’ll owe me, literally, for life.” It is not enough to invite someone in but then demand that they hide who they really are. It is not enough to say, “Welcome, come on in,” then leave the stranger alone while we talk to other people whom we already know and maybe even like.

I was reminded during a conversation this past week of the wonderful show, “Come From Away”. It tells the story of a small town in Newfoundland that, in the wake of the attacks on the United States in September 2001, became the destination of necessity for dozens of international flights that had made it across the Atlantic but could not land in an America that had, for sound reasons, closed down its airspace.

The people of Gander, Newfoundland, found themselves inundated with unanticipated refugees – temporarily, but in staggering numbers. These travellers, caught up in the ripple effects of extremist violence, numbered a full two-thirds of the standing population of the town. It would take a concerted and united effort to help them, house them, feed them, for who knew then how long before they would be able to complete their journeys. They were frightened, grief-stricken, anxious, stranded, and the town was overwhelmed.

Yet they found it in themselves to provide welcome. They understood that their discomfort at this avalanche of need was part of the human condition, that has to shift and find new positions and accommodations when another child of God, another facet of the image of God, finds its place among them.

This miracle of sacrifice and selflessness is repeated across our country and our globe in ways both large and small and mostly without having musicals written about them; but we hear, too, the voices of unwelcome, of irritation, voices built of barbed wire and venom, along with the voices that worry, less loathingly but with the same result, that if we offer another a cup of cold water, there may not be as much left for us; who forget who it was that set aside water out of the waters of creation for us and our fellow creatures to enjoy.

Welcome – real welcome, the kind of welcome that the prodigal father has for his son, that God has for us – that welcome when we can manage it is a form of worship, since it humbles the self before the image of God standing in front of us, and calls out of us our best approximation of the image of Christ. Whoever welcomes you welcomes me.

We are still, remember, at the tail end of the sending speech that Jesus started giving to his disciples two Sundays ago, when he began to send them forth to cast out demons, heal the sick, raise the dead, proclaim good news. He warned that there would be wolves along the way. But he also promises these pockets of welcome.

Welcome is costly. God is a gracious and abundant giver – but God also asks of us our love, our devotion, our service to one another and the creation which God made us to tend. Sometimes, sure, it seems as though God is asking a lot. Ask Abraham. Ask him.

If Abraham had gone through with it, he would have lost everything to God, everything to his covenant, everything for his faith. He would not only have given up Isaac, but his sense of himself. He would never sleep again. He could never go home. He would never be the same again. (Genesis 22:1-10).

But God – that was not what God was asking of him. God gave it all back. God proved trustworthy. God asked Abraham to lay everything – everything – on the altar of God’s covenant, and God gave it all back (Genesis 22:11-14).

“Truly I tell you,” said Jesus, “none of these will lose their reward.” (Matthew 10:42)

God commands, demands that we love with all our heart, soul, strength, mind, and being the one who has loved us into being, and that we demonstrate that love amongst our neighbours, and our enemies, strangers and people who are simply strange, sinners, foreigners, friends: everyone else who is made in that image of God. Whoever welcomes them welcomes God.

And God, God gives it all back, pressed down, shaken together, overflowing into our embrace from those prodigiously welcoming arms (Luke 6:38).