June 28, 2026 Proper 8 First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA
40 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, 42 and 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.” (The Message Bible)
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
The single most important part of our Christian commitment is our focus on “welcome”. Jesus said, “whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” It is in the practice of welcoming that we recognize Jesus in the hearts of those around us.
When I was in fourth grade, our family moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. It was not a pleasant experience. There was a sense at my new school that I was an annoyance because they didn’t have many tranfers – they weren’t used to what that meant.
Five years later, we move to south Florida, to a school where almost every classmate had moved there from somewhere else. There was only one kid in my ninth grade who had been born in Florida. They were a lot better at welcoming newbies, and when we moved again two years later, we even moved to a school that had yet to graduate anyone (I became a member of the first graduating class).. the building wasn’t finished when we moved in. The good folks of McArthur High School had lots of practice in welcoming and they were really good at it. And it brought all the students together.
Welcoming is not always easy. I’ve lived in places, and I bet you have as well, where you weren’t really welcome if you came from away, or if you hadn’t gone to the local high school. And we all have heard the stories about the foolish people who dare to sit in the wrong pew, and are never going to be welcome.
That kind of welcome – the welcome of a new person to our fellowship is important, so important that it could be that coffee hour is just as important as Communion, and maybe even more important in our spiritual life…. But that kind of welcome, being welcome here in this room, with these people, is just one place, not the only place, where welcome matters.
Because, you see, as important as it is to welcome people here, this is really just practice for our ability to welcome out in the world.
Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to [someone in need] will receive the reward of knowing God.
As I said, it’s not just about giving water to the thirsty, but about giving people what they need when they need it. It’s about giving everyone in our community the education they need, for instance… not just providing an education to the children of the wealthy.
That fourth grade classroom into which I moved, for instance, assigned seats for us on the basis of the importance of our fathers. The more money your family had, the closer to the teacher you sat. (I was not displeased… from the teacher’s point of view, the worst seats, the ones further from her, were also the ones closest to the windows…) But there’s no doubt that the wealthy children got the largest portion of the teacher’s attention. And to the extent that having her attention was good, useful, valuable… those of us who were poorer were really not welcome in the class.
Welcome is not just first choice of the coffee hour goodies. It’s about giving everyone equal opportunity.
There’s no doubt, tho, that it’s not just my fourth grade school that sometimes struggles with welcome. It can be hard to open things up to really welcome people who are new, different, maybe even odd…. It takes intentional effort to notice when our practices exclude others. It takes even more effort when welcoming means spending money, raising taxes, installing a chair lift or hiring special ed teachers.
Our world has a lot of incentive to close our eyes to the needs of the world… and if we don’t see it, it doesn’t really exist. The church I served when we first began to talk about making the building handicapped accessible swore no one in town used a wheelchair. After all, as Paul says, we tend to say, oh well, if we missed it, God will still forgive us. And there’s a way that’s an accurate statement. But the thing is, in the process of not paying attention to the needs of our world, not working intentionally to be welcoming, to see people as they are, to notice problems, we irreparably harm our own souls. Every time we close our eyes, close our ears to pain, we build up calluses that make it more and more difficult to be caring. Yes, God still loves us, but it’s harder and harder for us to know that love. Being unwelcoming hardens our hearts.
God, however, has given us eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to ask questions. And God has given us the gift of welcome, so that we would use our gifts to pay attention, to make sure that everyone is included. So let us take up the challenge and grow into God’s call to be a welcoming people.
Amen.
©2026, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 