Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's June 26, 2005 Sunday worship service.

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Grace Water

Matthew 10:40-42

Bethel 6/26/05

Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD

Next to the verses later on in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 25, about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prison – and thus feeding, clothing, and visiting Christ himself – I suspect that words about giving a “cup of cold water to one of these little ones” is right there at the top of our priority list for what faith should have us to be doing.

A “golden rule faith,” a faith that practices what it preaches, is what most of us value most about our own Christian commitment as individuals and as a body. It’s not that beliefs or doctrine, creeds or confessions, laws or commandments are unimportant, but the pragmatism endemic to the American experience has colored our own perception of the Christian life. “By their fruits you shall know them,” we might say, quoting scripture. Or quoting Jesus, himself quoting the commandment from his own sacred scriptures, the Hebrew Bible in Leviticus, we might say, “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

I had a chance this week to read a New York T imes editorial by John Danforth, former Republican senator from Missouri and an Episcopal priest. He notes the “culture wars” that divide sincere Christians of differing political persuasions, whether we should engage in things like stem cell research or government intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo or immigration laws or the place of homosexuals in our larger society, etc. Danforth, a self-described moderate Christian, argues that “moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings . . . the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. . . We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators (Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers, 6/17/05).

Danforth also makes the point, with which I also agree, that religion is much more than a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base, that tolerance is not an evil word, that we, as Christians, should reach out in a spirit of humility to those with whom we disagree, and that an essential function of religion is to be a bridge that overcomes differences separating or stigmatizing people.

Wherever our faith might locate you or me on the broad spectrum of the intersection of religion and politics in American life, the truth is that Christians too easily can turn to the language of “culture wars” to speak of what divides instead of what unites us within the Church.

When I look at the world through my rose-colored spectacles, I think, if we could only stand united like the popular bumper sticker says, if we could, then the solutions seem so simple – there is plenty of wealth in America alone to give every child on every continent a cup of water, that is to prevent 40,000 children world-wide from dying each day from hunger, AIDS, or some other preventable or curable disease. Just a portion of the tax money we spend on the defense industry could easily help resolve the health insurance crisis in our nation or solve the problem of homelessness. And isn’t it possible that corporate America has the wherewithal to bring about the day when every single person could have equal opportunity to learn to read and write and learn how to think for himself or herself?

Well, you say, grandiose solutions to intractable problems. And you might be right. But, and that word “but” is the hinge on which hangs the good news, but we should never have to be satisfied with the way things are.

As with all things good, the good news starts at home, that is, where we live and work and play. And, where we worship.

It is a good sort of irony that the idea of giving the cup of cold water has often been misinterpreted over the course of Christian history. Usually, this verse is cited to motivate the missionary enterprise, the missionary imperative of helping the poor or converting the unsaved, or this verse is cited as a call to do good as a way to witness to one’s faith to those whose faith is shaken or shaky. It illustrates that simple gifts, such as offering even a cup of water, go a long way. Simple acts of kindness and sharing have a power all their own.

But, really, in this passage, giving the cup of cold water is not about paternalistically or benevolently taking care of people out there, but rather, it describes a gesture of hospitality of Christians toward other Christians, in here. In this passage, Christians are the ones receiving hospitality, being welcomed, being the guests of others. Being in such a position of receiving may make some of us feel a bit awkward, but that is really the absolute and fundamental lesson of what it is like to live under God’s grace and as citizens of God’s peaceable kingdom.

To welcome a traveling prophet or a righteous person or a visiting disciple is to welcome God into the fellowship of the church. Sounds easy enough, but in first century Christianity when Jews and Christians were minority sects among the religious mosaic of the Roman empire, when to acknowledge Christ’s Lordship could easily bring threat, hostility, or suffering, there was a definite and potentially high price associated with the cost of discipleship. The biggest risk of all was to welcome a fellow believer into your home, into your house fellowship, to your table. For, God only knew not only how your life might be changed in the meeting, but also just what kind of trouble you might get into with the authorities.

And so, if the church, that is if all of us, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, conservative and liberal, those who want to emphasize evangelism and those who stress social justice . . . if people of religious faith – Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc. – if we are going to make a difference in our world, then we had best learn the spiritual practice of treating each other with dignity and respect, of learning how to give and how to receive a cup of cold water from each other, which is a gesture of love from God.

Finally, you see, it is nothing we ourselves can do, but it is the cup of grace that alone can sustain us. Whatever our political persuasion, spiritual values, or even beef with the church or with God, we all occupy the level ground beneath the cross of Christ and can ultimately be but beggars in hopes of receiving God’s mercy. If sharing the good news is, as the old saying goes, but “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread,” then simply receiving the cup of water is sometimes the best, if not the only thing, we can do.

Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift!