Oh, the disciples had a long way to go yet.

Last week they were arguing about who was the greatest. And this week, they are back to exclusion and enforcing the ‘we’re in—you’re out’ rule of middle school cliques.

I preached last week that the business of the church was to make saints. The task of religious institutions, the job that is ours alone to do is to create a holy people -- God’s people. People who live an alternative life style: a counter-cultural life style. People whose lives are conduits of God’s grace, love, peace and justice. I believe that with my whole heart.

I believe that was God’s desire from the beginning and I believe Jesus understood that as his mission, his work with the disciples.

The story of Esther, is a story of intrigue, pride and a plot to destroy the Hebrew people. Esther saves her people by risking her life.

But the real threat to God’s dream of a counter-cultural people is more often than not the people themselves.

Truth is, we are far from the people for whom God longs, and the saints that world and the church needs.

We are more like the disciples than we care to admit.

Last week, after telling them he was going to die, they were arguing about who was the greatest. His response was to tell the disciples that “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” then he picked up a child and put it in his lap and said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

This week, “John tells him that they saw someone casting out demons in his name, but they tried to stop him because he was not following us.” (Note how John includes himself in the same stroke in which he excludes someone else.)

Jesus was a very patient teacher.

 “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

In that first sentence he is apparently saying that a self-avowed, practicing Christian is good enough for Jesus, whom we will know because they are doing deeds of power: helping, healing, promoting wholeness. My question is ‘Where does that leave me? One who professes Jesus, but doesn’t do much in his name. So, while I am left wondering if I am truly ‘with’ Jesus, I am pleased to know that Jesus does not claim those who hurt and wound in his name.

Being progressive, I love this text: it seems tailor made for liberals: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” It’s so –well -- inclusive! Such a great text for World Communion Sunday, and the big Amos event, where people faith come together to stand on the side of the poor and marginalized for justice, especially economic justice.

Peacemakers know that if we want peace we will work for justice, which is why we are receiving the Peacemaking Offering today, and why our portion of the offering will go to Amos. “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

But wait! Jesus says something quite different in the gospel of Matthew (12:30) when he says,  “Whoever is not with me is against me.”

What do we do with that verse so fully embraced by those who tend to the conservative side of things? Those who guard the boundaries and keep the gates, and are ever vigilant of orthodoxy?”  That doesn’t sound very peaceful to me. It sounds like a defensive circling of the wagons. But according to B.A. Gerrish, these may not be as contradictory as they seem: he says “(not to) overlook an important difference between them . . . (which) . . .  is this: the first saying tells us how to think of the other person, while the second tells us how to think of ourselves. The first, “Whoever is not against us is for us,” calls for generosity in our estimate of others; the second, “Whoever is not with me is against me,” calls for honesty in testing ourselves. By the one, we accept the profession of others, by the other, we try our own profession. One says, “Judge not”; the other says, “Examine yourself.”

That seems consistent with the teachings of Jesus: the mote in the eye of another, the log in my eye!. Jesus is consistent in asking the disciples to be mature and focus on what they are doing.

Jesus continues, “For truly I tell you, whoever gives a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.  

 “It would be better. . . . than to cause one of these little ones to stumble”

Perhaps because in our text last week Jesus picked up a child as an example, when we read ‘little one’ here, we think he is talking about children again.

But there is no mention of children in this text.

The word used here is micros, as in our prefix ‘micro.’ It means ‘small’ or ‘short’ when used to refer to quantities and distances. But when it’s used to describe people, more often than not it is used to name adults of lowly status: widows and orphans, those in poverty and those whose life situation shuts them out from what they need to get by and from the communities that might otherwise receive them. Those who are outsiders not insiders. This is beyond the term we often use: ‘the little guy.’ It denotes ‘the least.’ The ones who don’t count. The ones Jesus seems especially concerned with and wants us to be concerned about. The same people Amos stands with. These are the people for whom Jesus hopes we will do powerful deeds.

Most of the time I have heard this text interpreted that we are to be the ones who are offering water. As a call to serve others. Not that there is anything wrong with serving – there are lots of calls to serve.

But, again, that is not what Jesus is saying in this passage. Jesus is saying that anyone who offers you a cup of water . . . Jesus is talking about being able to receive from the least. To be open to them serving you! That offers it’s own paradox!

Jesus is turning the tables on the disciples. He is trying to get them to switch role. To step down. To be humble.

This is hard for us. It’s hard for me. I live in a building where there is a person who opens the door for me, carries my groceries in, and will walk the ten steps to the mail drop for me if I ask.

I eat in restaurants, shop at the grocery store, and am constantly being waited on. I have expectations of the kinds of service I receive, and am critical if it is not forthcoming. I pay for it, after all. I deserve it.

But with the least, with the poor,  I want to be the one in the giving position. It makes me feel good. There is, I hate to admit, an arrogance in that, a patronizing attitude. It says I have something to offer you. Not the other way around. There is no mutuality in it, no reciprocity. I like feeling good and generous, often while infantilizing and demeaning the very people I wan’t to “help.” There is no humility in the patron’s chair.

One of the hardest lessons for us is often simply learning how to receive.

To be family with other servants, to be on the same level, seems a stretch from my own existence.

Yet, I think I am beginning to understand why it is so important.

 The Way Jesus professes is one of deep humility. The Way he professes sees the connections in all things, and seeks to heal breaches when they exist.

He wants us to side with the poor and the outcast as God does. For our sakes, as well as theirs. He wants us to be able to receive the gifts they have to offer. Those gifts are important to the whole.

There is nothing more counter cultural than this. nothing more counter-intuitive. Nothing more radical. Nothing harder.

The Way of Jesus is humility and mutual servanthood. The goal, remember, is to be a holy people. In order to do that, we must let go of all illusions.

How hard that is for us!

I believe Jesus came that we might have life abundant, and I believe God wants us to enjoy life, but I do think there is a paradox here: there is danger of losing our souls, when our affluence separates us from others, giving us the illusion of being better than other people. There is a danger in the pursuit of the good life as it is defined by our culture.

Because so much of the culture is really about fear, not faith.

We follow the crowd by trying to accumulate increasing wealth, power and status in hopes that it will insulate us from what we fear. Our culture has taught us that the good life is the ultimate good. And the good life as defined by our culture is very narrow indeed: the good job, the good house, the good school, the good retirement plan, the good doctors, and the good lifestyle that will guarantee that we will live a good, long time, free of pain and worry, secure that we have finally accumulated enough and that we deserve it all.

It’s illusion. It’s denial of the fact that we are vulnerable. That we are going to die. It just doesn’t work. Nothing can make us as invulnerable as we like to pretend we are. We are human, and humans die. We are humans and life is hard.

I think we know it down deep, and that’s why it is so very painful to be reminded of this fact by our encounters with the ‘lowly ones’ at the margins. Those folks we spend so much money moving away from and against whom we lock our doors. What we are really trying to flee, trying to lock out is our own vulnerability. We are also uncomfortable because we don’t know what to do to fix things, to make it better . . . we feel overwhelmed. Again, pride and arrogance have slipped in. We like having the power to control things, to create in our own image. I am not saying that we don’t get involved. I am saying that one of the things I love about Amos is that it is not rich white folks with all the answers. In Amos, we have the opportunity to let the least tell us what they want to do. And we assist. We work with—not for – them. There is  a profound difference, and comes much closer to what I think God has in mind for God’s people and the world. But it isn’t easy for those of us who have enough power, privelege, means and influence to think we are above others., to think we have the answers.

That’s why those five things Richard Rohr said we should teach our children are so very powerful no matter what our age:

1. Life is hard

2. You are going to die

3. You are not in control

4. You are not the center of the universe

5. Your life is not about you

We need those correctives to be able to live more fully.

Jesus asks us to do the very things which we most fear. He asks us to be last, and he asks us to die.

To take the Way of Jesus is to begin to understand what it means to be human. Something we would rather avoid. And yet, unless we can embrace the reality of our vulnerability, the fragility of life, we cannot fully live. Haven’t you wondered why people who have fought with potentially terminal illness often seem more alive? How those who move toward death shine with a quality of life we all desire? We may say: “They have been brought low by illness, but we see that in reality, it is not low . . . there is something freeing about it. The illusion is gone. They have learned how to receive help. They have accepted mortality. In other words: they are real. What matters is made clear. They are closer to full humanity.

We may know that no amount of money or goods, education or status can shield us entirely from danger and disease. That isn’t what our culture tells us, but we know it. Madison Avenue has tried to convince us that if we sock enough away in our IRAs and if we purchase this or that that we can buy ourselves some security. In our best moments we see through it, but we still suffer from that creeping anxiety that there won’t be enough to protect us from suffering. That one day we are going to die. I don’t think it is accidental that the disciples fell into their argument of who was greatest right after Jesus told them he was going to die. It was a form of denial. A technique not all that alien to us.

When we spend time with the least, it is hard to maintain the illusion that we have created for ourselves, which is why I think we are often uncomfortable with adults who are very sick or very poor, or God forbid, both. We don’t like to be with the least. We fear them. Because we certainly don’t want to be them. At the same time we know, underneath it all, that we, too, are vulnerable. That we could be in their shoes. That life can deal us suffering and will deal us death. We might one day be placed in a situation where we must receive.  A situation where we can no longer deny our need of others. Our need of community. We want to put a wall between them and us. Between ourselves and those possibilities. We want sides. Their side and our side. We want to be the insiders. Inside where it’s warm and safe and nothing can hurt us.

This side thing is interesting to me. The idea of a line, a threshold, a door, a boundary separating us from one another. The insiders and the outsiders. Them and us. Friend and foe. Family and stranger. That’s what the disciples were playing.

My previous congregation had a number of members from Cameroon. When I called on them in their homes, I could barely get inside before I was offered food and drink, and then led to a place of honor. I learned a lot about hospitality from them. There was a mother with two grown daughters who were also members of the church. The mother would move between her two daughter’s homes, and as she did, her last name changed . . and then would change back. We were confused until she explained:

The tribal custom in Cameroon, is that home is for family. So when you are in someone’s home you are their family. Literally. So when she was with her daughter, Hope, she took the surname of Hope’s husband. And when she was in Comfort’s home, her surname became that of Comfort’s husband. When I was in their homes, I was in their family. 

Stranger or family from other parts, to cross the threshold is to cross into a new relationship. Into family. ‘My house is your house’ was not just a saying.

To serve as host is to welcome a stranger and potential enemy into one’s space, and make of them family. To welcome them to our side. That is what hospitality is about. To receive the gifts they have to offer us.

Hospitality is at its heart a form of healing; of reconciliation. It heals the imagined divisions between people, and it heals the chasms in our own psyches that keep us from being fully conscious and fully human.

Gracious hospitality is peacemaking. It leads to shalom: wholeness. Jesus knew that. Jesus knew the importance of eating together, welcoming strangers to our tables, being on the same side, so we might recognize our humanity, our vulnerability, our need for one another. There is an intimacy in dining together that can change things. Hospitality requires mutual servants, willing to welcome others and their gifts, their insights, as precious and life-giving.

We forget that the root of the word ‘gracious’ is ‘grace.’

No small matter, this cup of water. 

Water.

That’s what our bodies are made of for the most part, isn’t it? All of us. What can be a more humbling reminder that we are all the same. A cup of water. It is a holy thing, a precious gift.  It is a reminder of communion. Common union. Our connection. We are in our essence the same.

Sometimes I think we balk at small acts we find insignificant because we so want to do grand, wonderful, important things. We may want to give lots of money to the church. We may want to be involved in ministries that draw attention and amaze others. How much of that is pride?

What is often lacking, what is needed is a cup of water, offered by one willing to serve. And those who are willing to receive that water, receive those gifts. I had not noticed before how profound a text this is for the ordination of GLBTQ people. . . but it is. And so much more: it speaks to how we welcome children, and people of color, and people who are not as physically able or those with mental illness. We affirm the inherent value in others when we receive the gifts of others, however ‘small’ they might be. The church can’t afford to overlook the gifts of anyone.

Radical hospitality has the power to turn strangers and potential enemies into family. What is lacking is giving what we do have, no matter how little. Giving joyfully. giving because we are enough and God can make that enough. Receiving what others have to offer including their help.

These things are connected: the move from fear to faith. It is an affirmation of the enoughness of the giver, and the enoughness of God.

Offering water in a dry, desert land is an act of faith that God will continue to provide more water, that God provides enough for all, that the thirst of everyone can be quenched, through God’s grace.

Small tasks of love are acts of faith: hosting a coffee hour, praying for the church and for one another, helping with a funeral meal, teaching a Sunday school class, painting a classroom, making a banner, practicing music, writing a letter to your congressperson, cleaning the kitchen, recycling papers, tutoring children --  all those things that take our precious time are acts of faith in the God of our days that there is enough time, as well. That we are more willing to invest our time in serving than in trying to pursue the illusion of the good life as promoted by our culture.

Giving proportionately to the church - or tithing -- ten percent of one’s income-- is an act of faith (no matter how little one’s income may seem.) It is an act of faith that God will provide enough for our needs.  There is more where that came from. Abundance. So we need not grasp. It is an act of faith that says our real security, our only security is found not in our bank accounts but in God.

We don’t need to wait for the big, grand opportunities: we can start with the cup of water. Would there be wars if we really embraced the enough-ness of God?  The abundance that is there for all? We can open ourselves to receiving.

This table is bread for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, it is a celebration of God’s hospitality and God’s providence in all times and all places. In ages past and those to come.  Food and grace and love enough to go around. All around the world. It is crossing the threshold and being the family of God. Taking the name of Christ as our own. Here, there is enough for everyone and everyone is good enough.

At this table, especially today, we step inside for a foretaste of God’s kin-dom, where we belong to God’s family which excludes no one. Here we eat and drink and share the joy of being on God’s side: the side of justice, peace, radical hospitality, and unfettered joy. Come and eat.