A CUP OF COLD WATERReading: Matthew 10: 28-42
One of the best known, best loved and most famous speeches of all time is Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. It touches something very deep within us that resonates with our own dreams and longings, even if we never remove ourselves from the sidelines of the peace lovers to enter the messy world of the peacemakers.
In this particular Scripture passage, Jesus is teaching his disciples before sending them out to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God. This is one of his ‘I have a dream’ speeches. It rises in crescendo, wave upon wave of inspiration and challenge, of warning and comfort. It culminates in something deceptively simple, but something that is the heartbeat of the gospel, at the core of the Good News – welcome and hospitality. “Anyone who welcomes you is welcoming me – and if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers you will surely be rewarded.”
In his very being Jesus epitomizes welcome, and we are called to be his image bearers. In fact, that is who we are, however marred the image. It’s quite awesome to think that if someone welcomes us, they are welcoming Jesus, and if we welcome someone, the same is true. If we had even begun to grasp a particle of this huge, mind-blowing truth, how different our churches, our communities, our work places would be. Jesus goes even further into what, for us, is the realm of mystery when he says, “Whoever welcomes me is welcoming the Father.” If we are truly welcoming that community that is the Trinity in the people who are sent across our path, we would be living life on tiptoe with expectancy, seeing the sacred in all things, and everywhere we placed our feet we would know to be holy ground.
Jesus goes on to talk about welcoming prophets as those who speak for God. You might think, “Of course we would welcome prophets. Why, that’s what we really need!’ But the long history of what has happened to prophetic voices proclaims the opposite. Prophets are not welcome. They disturb our comfort zones, rub us up the wrong way, challenge us too much. And the reward of those who do receive them will be almost as costly as it is for the prophets themselves in terms of rejection, misunderstanding and alienation. The same perhaps is true on a lesser scale for good and godly people who are so often marginalized because of their integrity and compassion.
But what of the last little postscript which is really the secret of all hospitality – ‘a cup of cold water to the least of my followers?’ Jesus is not talking here about charity or benevolence. Who are the least of his followers? The unattractive, those who make us feel uncomfortable, those who are different, who don’t fit into the norm of what we would regard as acceptable. And yet the very hairs of their heads have all been numbered, as have ours. That’s how much Jesus values and loves them – and us.
A ‘cup of cold water’ is basic and can mark the difference between life and death. How often do we deliver ‘death’ because we withhold it?