Saint Matthew 10:40-42
This may come as a surprise to you but today, July 2nd, is the day that John Adams, really believed was the date on which colonial independence should have been celebrated.
He firmly believed that formal separation from England took place when “the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia voted to approve a motion for Independence put forth by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia” on July 2nd, 1776.
We will celebrate on Tuesday because it was not until July 4 that the “actual Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress.”
Interesting enough the “city of Philadelphia, where the Declaration was signed, waited until July 8 to celebrate, with a parade and the firing of guns. The Continental Army under the leadership of George Washington didn’t learn about it until July 9.”1
Adams not only had strong feelings about when the celebration should take place but how independence should be celebrated. He wanted more than just the firing of a few rounds into the air.
Writing to his wife Abigail on July 3 he outlined what became the formula for our celebrations.
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.2
You can almost hear him singing these words as he did in the play 1776.
We know that Adams and the other members of the First Continental Congress were not perfect. A majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence ... owned slaves. Four of the first five presidents of the United States were slave owners.3 And while “Thomas Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot,” he continued to hold human beings as property his entire adult life.”4
Flawed humans can still aspire to high ideals, yet it seems that increasingly we have become “a battleground of ideologies, ignorance in constant combat with ignorance, where the loudest, shrillest rancour wins the day? When did patriotism get whittled down to nothing more than anger, heady feelings about wars and weapons, and an edgy bias against people who are different?”5
In a wonderful Chrstian Century article Lutheran Pastor Diane Roth, gave me an entirely new perspective, when she wrote:
There is something that I skipped right over in this passage. It’s that very first phrase, “whoever welcomes you welcomes me.” Why did I skip over that very first phrase, and what does it mean?
Jesus says these words to his disciples—his particular group of disciples in the first century...I think that I blinked right over the phrase the first time because, truthfully, I don’t think of myself as being welcomed so much as being the one who welcomes.
But Jesus doesn’t imagine it this way. He doesn’t imagine that any of his disciples is in the center of society. They would not be so much extending hospitality as they would be receiving it. Jesus imagines his disciples on the edges of society, holding this great treasure, {of the Gospel} but also needing welcome: a cup of water, a square meal, a roof over their heads.6
Do you remember his instructions to them when he sent them out on their first missionary excursion? J. B. Phillips paraphrases Jesus words this way: “Don’t take any gold or silver or even coppers to put in your purse; nor a knapsack for the journey, nor even a change of clothes, or sandals or a staff...”7
Jesus is turning them into a bunch of Blanche DuBois’ and making them “dependent on the kindness of strangers.”
Now, when they offer a cup of cold water to someone in need, they will know what it is like to be on the receiving end. When they offer help to someone who is hungry, poor, with holes in their shoes they will know what it like to be that person.
They will know what it is like to be included rather than excluded.
We often forget that.
Think of moments when you have been included. In a family or a chosen family of friends. At school when a teacher appreciated your gifts and brought out the best in you. In a community where, no matter how eccentric you might be, people still love you and care about you. Think of all those times when you have been dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Yes, there will always be people who exclude you. There will always be people who say your too old or too young. There will always be people who look for some flaw and chose to exploit it. There will always be people who will exclude you because of your race, or creed, or orientation, or ethnic background.
Jesus had something to say to the disciples about this too: “Any city or home that doesn’t welcome you—shake off the dust of that place from your feet as you leave.”8 “Shrug your shoulders and be on your way. You can be sure that on Judgment Day they’ll be mighty sorry—but it’s no concern of yours now.”9
We have a privilege the early disciple were just learning about. We have power. We have power to welcome others – or to turn our backs. But there is only one right way. It is Jesus' way. It is the way of inclusion.
Dr. Michael Bos is the wonderful Senior Minister of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City.
Marble’s most famous preacher was Norman Vincent Peale of The Power of Positive Thinking fame. While Peale may have advocated seeing the possible in everyone, like the founding fathers of our nation, that positivity did not extend to everybody.
But times change, pastors come and go, some more slowly than others, so when he retired in after a relatively modest 52 years, a new Senior Minister was called who had some radical ideas. One of those was to open the church up, to extend that cup of cold water to all people.
Peale’s successor, Dr. Arthur Caliandro, started to welcome people who weren’t just “white, bright, and polite” but as Dr. Bos remembered, he led the cause to make Marble a welcoming, and affirming, and inclusive community. “And, because of that, there were people who left and not a small number. While he was including others those who left were finding a way of excluding him. But” said Dr. Bos, “he was the embodiment of the words. ‘I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.’”10
I think I just might say that again so we all can drink it in. “I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.”
A cup of cold water, a warm welcome, given in the name of Jesus will bring with it a reward to not only the giver but the receiver as well. It is a simple act of inclusion, and that water of welcome will be so sweet, and so refreshing, and so renewing that it will bring with it a moment where a real blessing can be enjoyed by all, both receiver and giver.
“I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than be included for who I exclude.” Inclusion. It is the way of Jesus and so it must be our way too.
_______________
1. Valerie Strauss, “Why July 2nd Is Really America's Independence Day,” July 7, 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/john-adams-was-right-2-july-is-really-americas-independence-day-10361356.html.
2. Jessie Kratz, “Pieces of History,” Pieces of History (blog) (The National Archives, July 2, 2014), https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2014/07/02/john-adams-vision-of-july-4-was-july-2/#:~:text=The%20Second%20Day%20of%20July,of%20Devotion%20to%20God%20Almighty.
3. Mark Maloy, “The Founding Fathers Views of Slavery,” American Battlefield Trust, June 20, 2023, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/founding-fathers-views-slavery#:~:text=A%20majority%20of%20the%20signers,the%20United%20States%20were%20slaveowners.
4. “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,” Monticello, accessed June 30, 2023, https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/jefferson-slavery/#:~:text=Thomas%20Jefferson%20called%20slavery%20a,property%20his%20entire%20adult%20life.
5. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say July 5? 5th after Pentecost.” (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 3, 2010), http://revjameshowell.blogspot.com/2010/07/jesus-and-july-4.html.
6. Diane Roth, “July 2, 2023: 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time,” The Christian Century, June 17, 2020, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/june-28-ordinary-time-13a-matthe
7. St. Matthew 10:9-10. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, in The New Testament in Modern English (London, England: HarperCollins, 2000).
8. St. Matthew 10:14. (TLB) [TLB= The Living Bible. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Foundation. 1971]
9. Saint Matthew 10:15. (MESSAGE: Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995).'
10. Michael Bos, “Free to Be Me.’ Sermon preached at the Marble Collegiate Church of New York City on June 25, 2023.
Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke
2 July 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19w4IOAScc
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