Proper 8: Jeremiah 28.5-9; Psalm 89.1-4,15-18; Romans 6.12-23; Matthew 10.40-42

THE three verses that constitute this Gospel lection get a whole Sunday to themselves; so, their key message ought to be obvious. One word leapt out at me from the page, a word repeated six times: “Welcome” (NRSV, NIV). In the AV and RSV, it was translated more neutrally: “Receive”. Other close equivalents for the Greek word, besides “Welcome” and “Receive”, would be “Accept”, “Greet”, or “Embrace”. That list of options gives a flavour of the intense positivity of Jesus’s message, even before its precise directions have been unpacked.

When teaching Latin literature, I advise students to pay particular attention to beginnings and endings of texts. As with the essays of our schooldays, so with ancient literature: introductions and conclusions are often the last sections of the text to be composed. So, they contain the harvest of the whole scholarly or imaginative process and can point readers towards the author’s point of view.

This way of reading works well with books of the Bible taken as a whole; but we can also adopt this strategy with individual sections of books. Without its context, Matthew 10.41-42 may seem somewhat lightweight for a Principal Service Gospel, but, when we consider the text in its setting, everything changes; for these three verses form the conclusion to Jesus’s speech at the sending-out of the Twelve. The words of Matthew 11.1 confirm that the whole of chapter ten is a single unit in which Jesus is “instructing his twelve disciples”.

If Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount, was Jesus’s preaching of the Kingdom to outsiders, Matthew 10 is all about his message to those in the innermost circle of his followers. When we reach the conclusion of that message, about what the disciples are to expect, and what they will endure, we find pure positivity: “Welcome”. The main substance of chapter ten was a call to the disciples to risk becoming vulnerable and facing danger, hostility, and rejection. Then, verses 40-42 draw an affirming conclusion from the midst of isolation and condemnation. It is a path leading towards recognising Christ in other people, at the same time as they are learning to recognise Christ in us.

Verses 41-42 switch the focus to those whom the disciples are trying to reach with their preaching of the Kingdom. The verses are a commentary on the moral qualities of even our simplest actions: to “welcome” a person is a Christlike action. This much is straightforward.

Less clear, though, is the fuller meaning of verse 41. The two examples given — a prophet and a righteous person — look straightforward: doing such people a service is a good thing, because those people are themselves good. But why does the one doing good receive the reward proper to the prophet, or the righteous person, rather than, say, a reward proper to doers of kindness, or proper to recognisers of prophets and righteous people? I can find only one way to make sense of this: those who do good to prophets and righteous people get the rewards proper to prophets and righteous people because, by showing kindness, they somehow also show likeness; and, by showing likeness, they become more like.

If this is on the right track, then what we have here is a set of three concrete examples (of good done: to prophets, righteous people, and disciples) of an overarching principle from Matthew 6.21: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I have said before that we cannot make ourselves have correct feelings; that sometimes we choose to act in a good way because we recognise that doing so is the closest we can get to the ideal that internal goodness of heart and intention match outward actions.

Who are the “little ones” in verse 42? The way in which the passage is written suggests that they must be the disciples, not those to whom the disciples are sent. If this is right, then Jesus’s final thought in this teaching episode has switched abruptly from disciples to welcomers. If we, as Christians, are identified as “disciples” and “little ones”, there is a reward for those who do good to us, because they are recognising the fact that we can all participate in the divine nature (2 Peter 1.4). Being a disciple of Jesus means being like a prophet or a righteous person: sharing not only in his teaching, but in his being also.