5th Sunday After Pentecost

Jeremiah 28:5-9; Matt 10:40-42

So I have been thinking a lot this week about who we welcome and what it means to be a faithful community in the midst of difficulty and change.  Because the way of the gospel is and always has been hard and not always the easy or obvious choice.  And our readings today reflect this.  But they are also a bit tricky because both are just little bits of much larger stories that require a bit of context to understand.

First, we have this little snippet from Jeremiah and his showdown with the false prophet Hananiah.  And here, God’s people have found themselves in a bit of a tight spot.  The growing Babylonian empire is threatening to swallow the land of Judah and it’s neighbors whole.  The kings and leaders of Judah and their people as a whole have turned away from the one true God to worship other gods and have put their trust in other foreign leaders.  And as a result, the old king and many of the country’s religious and political elites along with the riches of the temple have already been hauled away into exile in Babylon.

And the people who are left have to decide what to do.  And Jeremiah has already prophesied that the only way toward salvation is the long hard work of repentance, reconciliation, and recommitment to following the law and serving the one true God alone.  He has prophesied that it may take years or decades under Babylonian rule to undo the damage they have done to their relationship with God and each other.  And so, as you can guess, he was grossly unpopular.

And then there was Hananiah, Mr Shortcut.  He said that everything was fine, it’s not all that big of a deal, all they had to was band together with this bunch of other foreign counties and their gods and rebel and they could overthrow the Babylonians and everything would be totally back to normal within 2 years.

People loved Hananiah.  But, as we have all painfully learned since the start of the year, saying there is peace, claiming a cease-fire, declaring a war is over doesn’t actually make it so.

And so Jeremiah has to remind the people of Judah and us today and all the faithful people from then until now that we will have peace, true peace, when we do the work, when we do what God requires of us to build the kingdom of God, even when it is costly, hard or just something we would rather not do.

But this can be a pretty daunting prospect.  Because few of us here would style ourselves as prophets.  And none of us are likely to count ourselves among the ruling elite.  Very often it feels like questions of war and peace, welcome and exclusion, policy and national righteousness are being answered well outside of our sphere of influence.  Whether or not you agree with the direction our country is taking, it can feel like the whole process is completely out of our control.  And like we will get know say in the outcome, sometime even on the local or congregational level.

But our Gospel lesson for today tells us something radically different.  It is a continuation of the instructions that we heard Jesus giving to his disciples two weeks ago as he was preparing to send them out to proclaim the kingdom of God in all the places he couldn’t physically get to.   And remember how we talked then about how being sent by Jesus meant to be sent as Jesus, to be his hands and feet in the world and to spread the good news about the kingdom of God to all people.  And that this truth applies not just to the apostles but to all Christians down through history right to today.

Then today we hear at that end of that speech that whoever welcomes someone in the name of Jesus welcomes Jesus.  And whoever welcomes the message of the prophets, welcomes the prophets.  When Jesus tells his disciples about what they will be doing, healing the sick, cleansing lepers and casting out demons, it is all about restoring broken relationships and bring people back together.  Not unlike the work that Jeremiah prophesied. 

And today we hear that every action toward that goal matters deeply.  Not just the big almost miraculous moments, when people are suddenly healed, or big reunions happen but everything down to the simplest act of kindness.  Every time we care for our neighbor, we are bringing forth the kingdom of God and every one of those action matters deeply.

How we treat each other matters.  Every action matters, right down to the simplest of actions.  “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple –truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”  It is a precursor to what Jesus tells his followers later in the Gospel that whatever you do to the least of these you do to me.   And what it this reward?  Well it is the kingdom of God, and not just in some afterlife or future time but right here and now.  But it is built not in the great halls of power but in a million tiny actions by a million different people across years and even decades. 

It is built on literal cold bottles of water at Milford memories, and books and tiny bottles of soap and shampoo, plastic mats and bags of recycled textiles.  It is built on powerful prayers for those we love, and hugs and phone calls and shared sorrows and joys.  It is built on music that echoes through our neighborhood and meals shared around tables and riverboats and laughter.  It is built on enduring friendships and relationships and love and care.

And it is more powerful than all the political speeches and policies and wishful thinking of people in power combined.  And it can never be extinguished.  No matter what happens. 

Because you see, Jeremiah’s prophesy was the true one.  Yet the people followed Hananiah right off the cliff.  They rebelled and lost.  Badly.  And the people of God went into exile for more than 70 years.  Where they learned and prayed and repented and reimagined and rebuilt their relationship with God.  And then when it was time, they returned to there home, rebuilt the temple and set back to work rebuilding the kingdom of God.  As humans have done and will likely continue to do for of thousands of years.  Because God is faithful, even when we are not.  And so we are called to build the kingdom of God bit, by bit, act by act, again and again, in good times and bad for as long as it takes for our true relationships to be restored.  Amen.