Matthew 10:32-42 "The One They See " Scott Hoezee

"I have always relied on the kindness of strangers." That is the famous closing line spoken by the character Blanche DuBois in the play A Streetcar Named Desire. In Matthew 10 Jesus basically tells the disciples that they, too, must rely on the kindness of strangers when they go out to proclaim the good news of the kingdom. Jesus even went so far as to tell them earlier in this chapter that they were to set out on their first mission trip essentially under-packed. Today we would never send our youth group out on a service project without money, luggage, and extra clothing, yet that's basically the marching orders Jesus issues.

By so doing, Jesus put the disciples at the mercy of the hosts they would encounter along the way. If their message was worth hearing (and if the disciples presented that message with all the loving urgency it warranted), then people would take them in. As this chapter concludes, this theme crops back up through the now-famous image of someone handing out a cup of cold water to a disciple.

In some ways this is surprising. We tend to think that the reception of the gospel is such a spiritual matter. If someone "comes to Jesus" because of the preaching of an evangelist at a revival meeting, we expect the result of this conversion to be new patterns of thought, a new sense of morality, a new inward devotion to God. And indeed, those traits ought to be in evidence among the converted. But we don't often imagine that the first result of someone's new life in Christ would be inviting the evangelist over for supper!

But perhaps part of the reason we don't think along those lines is because we tend to separate the message from the messenger in a way Jesus does not do. Throughout this chapter, and certainly in the concluding three verses, there is a snug fit between the person who talks about Jesus and Jesus himself. "He who receives you receives me," Jesus says. He doesn't say, "If they believe the words you speak, then my Spirit will move into their hearts." No, he says that if people find cause to love the disciples enough as to welcome them into their homes, then Jesus himself will be present in all his fullness.

The reason "the kindness of strangers" receives such a high profile in Matthew 10 is because Jesus is not talking about a message to be heard but about the reception of a person, namely himself as he dwells inside the disciples. This morning we need to wonder together what this may imply for our lives as latter-day disciples. We have had the wonderful privilege this morning of welcoming into Jesus' church a new disciple named Lydia. I could not have known some months ago when I made this preaching schedule how well my selected passage for this morning would fit the occasion of Lydia's baptism. But sometimes God's Spirit directs such matters in ways that can but cause you to fall back in wonder! However, this sermon isn't just a set of marching orders for Lydia--it applies equally to every last one of us who has ever been baptized and who has ever stood up to say, "Yes, Jesus is my Savior and Lord." So let's listen to what that same Jesus says in this chapter.

Among other things in this passage, there is a curious verbal triple play in the last couple of verses. In the history of the church, commentators have spent a lot of time wondering why Jesus mentions the reception of a prophet, a righteous person, and "little ones." Do these three groups stand for certain people in the church? Some have wondered if maybe "prophets" were to be identified with the apostles, "righteous persons" with the clergy, and the "little ones" with lay people.

But that's not the point, and if you think it is, you will probably miss the real scandal of this text. It's not so important to decode just who Jesus may (or may not) have had in mind in listing those three groups. The main thing to see is that whatever group you happen to be in, the message is the same: people are to identify you with Jesus and Jesus with you!

This isn't the only place in the New Testament where this personal connection to Jesus becomes evident. Recall, for example, a most startling such instance when the apostle Paul said that when a man sleeps with a prostitute, he drags Jesus into bed along with him. In a bold image, Paul suggests that a Christian man's relations with a prostitute forced Christ to be there in that way, too, making Jesus "one flesh" with some streetwalker. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that warning goes a wee bit further than that song some of us learned to sing as children: "O be careful little hands what you do, for the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful little hands what you do." To Paul's mind (and, in Matthew 10, to Jesus' mind, too), the image of a Father "looking down" from some point "up above" is too remote a way of viewing things. Apparently, our link with Jesus is vastly tighter.

That is a thought at once glorious and daunting. Jesus once said, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." Who among us is brave enough to say, "If you receive me, you receive Jesus." If anything, many of us have been taught to see Jesus as the goal to which we aspire (but which we will never attain in this life). So we mostly focus on the disparity, the gap, between who Jesus is and who we are.

We'd rather present the gospel as something outside of ourselves instead of suggesting that people need to meet Jesus through us. We've all heard the old phrase, "Please don't shoot the messenger!" Just because I need to be the one who tells you the news that your son just flunked out of Calvin, please don't blame me! I'm only the bearer of the news, not the cause of it. But sometimes we seem to put some daylight between the gospel and ourselves, too: the shape of my life may or may not look a lot like Jesus but at least you can hear the message. Don't let me get in the way! Don't look at me as a role model or example!

Matthew 10 says it doesn't work that way. There needs to be a radical consistency between the Jesus you proclaim and yourself. And perhaps these days it is well that we recall this. Christians who are offensive in the loud, mean-spirited, in-your-face way by which some have tried to fight culture wars in recent decades have not served the cause of Jesus very well. Who wants to believe the gospel's content if the ones proclaiming that gospel are the very folks many people most want to avoid in life?! If Jeremy is such an uncouth, ungrateful, loud-mouthed fellow that no one would even want to have him over for dinner, then what difference does it make if Jeremy can reel off the Beatitudes from memory? Few people will ever be willing to receive Jesus' presence into their lives if they are not willing to receive those who represent that same Jesus.

Of course, as earlier sections of Matthew 10 make painfully clear, even those who are transparent to the Christ can expect trouble in this world. If it is true that some people get rejected because of the un-Christ-like way they behave, it is equally true that many others get spurned precisely because they are so much like Jesus. If we find ourselves on the receiving end of persecution or criticism, the first thing to check out is where the offense lies: is it my bad behavior that is putting other people off or is it the offense of the gospel itself?

Then again, if we are well-received, the question is equally valid in the opposite direction: why am I being accepted? Have I presented the truth of Jesus such that people really are seeing Christ in me, or have I watered down the truth of Jesus in the hope that I myself will be more popular? Whether we are rejected or accepted by other people, the question is the same: is it finally Jesus himself who is being accepted or rejected or something in me that is separate from Jesus in a way that ought not be?

Who among us is discerning enough to ask and answer such questions? Clearly this is no easy task. Earlier in Matthew 10:16 Jesus advised the disciples that to find their way through this world, they would have to be "shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves." It was the Master's way of predicting that a proper alignment between himself and us disciples would not be easy to achieve.

But that's the challenge nevertheless. So often when we read Matthew 10's closing words about handing out a cup of cold water, we reverse this scenario's players: we often picture ourselves as the water-givers, reveling in the fact that to serve even society's lowliest people is the same thing as serving Jesus himself. And there is something to that line of thought, as Jesus made clear in the famous verse "I was in prison and you visited me, naked and you clothed me . . ." But in Matthew 10 it may be a bit more radical than that: here in these verses it's not that when we serve others, we serve Jesus but rather that when others serve us they serve Jesus because they are supposed to see the true Christ in us.

But perhaps by now you've begun to form a question in the back of your mind: if there is to be such a snug identification between Jesus and us, how can that happen in each of our lives when we are all so different from one another? Some of you may be familiar with the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation. If so, then you know about that nightmare alien species known as The Borg. The Borg capture individual people of all races and backgrounds but then essentially wipes out their individual personalities. Through a kind of brainwashing, each person becomes just like every other person. Every single Borg looks alike, talks alike, thinks alike. If you meet one, you quite literally have met them all.

But baptism doesn't have that effect. This morning Lydia entered the rhythm of dying and rising with Christ. She died with Jesus so that the Spirit of Christ could then raise her back up to new life. But she's still Lydia. Her personality is still different from my personality or any other person here. Becoming a Christian does not make you less of an individual. We may lose our lives for Christ's sake, but Jesus also promises in Matthew 10 that once you so lose your life, you get it right back again. You are still you after baptism.

So how can each of us be the unique individuals God made us to be and each also be Jesus? If you had 100 people in a room and then told them, "I want each one of you to imitate and be just like Jimmy Carter," what would happen? Well, you'd likely see 100 people who started to speak with a soft Southern accent like Mr. Carter, who worked on smiling broadly and who would start to say things like, "Rosalyn and I would like to thank you for supporting Habitat for Humanity." If all 100 would-be-Carters did a good job, you would expect a certain uniformity and sameness among them all--the kind of thing you do see in those legions of Elvis impersonators out there, each of whom wears a sequin-studded white suit, has long sideburns, and says things like "Thankyouverymuch" in Elvis' voice. I can't imitate Jimmy Carter or Elvis and act just like Scott Hoezee at the same time.

So what about imitating and being just like Jesus? Why doesn't this result in an entire Christian community worldwide in which individual personalities are over-written in favor of a certain sameness? The answer has to do with the Holy Spirit. The answer has to do with what can be described only as a true miracle of grace. We are all different. God made us that way. Even so-called "identical" twins are not really identical. God loves variety, as Genesis 1-2 make so abundantly clear. The human face alone is one of the most amazing features to creation of which we know: each face has the same basic set of components, the same basic shape, the same basic make-up. And yet there appears to be an infinite variety of faces--like snowflakes, no two faces are ever truly alike. What's more, the personalities behind such faces are likewise highly varied.

God is not interested in over-riding the uniqueness he himself created! But by a miracle of grace God is able to place his same Holy Spirit into each one of us. Somehow or another, over and above and even through our marvelous individual variations, God is able to make every last one of us like a window on the one and same Lord Jesus Christ. Because what made Jesus the Christ of God was not confined to how he smiled, or to whatever accent Jesus' speech may have had, or to any mannerisms that were typical of that man from Nazareth. What made Jesus the true Christ was the Spirit of God in him, filling him with love, grace, compassion, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and joy. Jesus had a peace, he radiated a mercy, and he exuded a joyful love that was unique in all of human history and yet all of this can also be ours if only that same Holy Spirit of God lives in us.

That's why in Matthew 10 Jesus could look at his disciples and say, "If people receive you, they receive me." There those disciples stood: there was impetuous Peter, his eyes always darting around with excitement. There was gap-toothed Bartholomew and barrel-chested Philip. There was the skeptical Thomas who always seemed so cooly rational and then there was John who seemed to be the mushy, emotional one of the group. Some were tall, others a bit stubby. Some were quite intelligent and urbane, others simple fishermen who were terminally rustic.

Jesus didn't try to iron out the differences among them, yet still he promised that if the Spirit was in them, he'd be there, too, in all his fullness, grace, and love. Precisely how this happens is a mystery, but that it can and does happen is the promise of the gospel onto which we cling in faith. This morning Lydia became united to Christ Jesus the Lord. From now on it's the Jesus in her that will make the difference for herself but also for all she meets, for all to whom she witnesses, for all who take the time to examine the shape of her life. But it's the same for each of us: the Spirit of the Living Christ works in and through our manifold variety of talents and personalities to somehow, by a grand miracle, show the world the one and only Jesus, everywhere and always the same even though he comes through untold millions of individual disciples.

"Don't shoot the messenger" we sometimes say to distance ourselves from some bad news we have to deliver. But when it comes to delivering the good news of the gospel, we want to be identified with the message. We need to be identified with it and with the Jesus at its core. Jesus said that if people reject us and persecute us, then it should be because of the Christ in us. But if they accept us and what we have to say, then that will be no credit to us but will likewise be because of the Jesus in us. And sometimes, once in a while, when people spy that holy Son of God in something we say or do, the results can be nearly sacramental in the ways by which God's own Son is suddenly present.

Some years ago I told you a story originally told by the surgeon and writer Richard Selzer. One day, Selzer writes, he had to remove a tumor from the cheek of a young woman. After the surgery, the woman lies in bed, her postoperative mouth twisted in a palsied, clownish way. A tiny twig of the facial nerve had been severed in the operation, releasing a muscle that led to her mouth. Her young husband is in the room along with the surgeon. The woman asks, "Will my mouth always be like this?" "Yes," the doctor has to tell her, "the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent, broken. But the young husband smiles gently and says, "I like it. It's kind of cute." And all at once, Dr. Selzer writes, I know who this young husband is. The doctor saw Jesus in the man. He saw Jesus in the man's gentleness and love. And then he saw Jesus afresh as the kind husband bends down to kiss her crooked mouth, carefully twisting his own lips to accommodate her lips, showing her that their kiss still works and always will. "If they receive you, they receive me." That's what the man said. The Jesus in me. The Jesus in you. The One they must see. Amen.