THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A

[cappie]

During the season after Pentecost, we focus on what it means to be a Christian. At Christmas we heard the Good News of Christ’s incarnation. The Easter acclamation – Alleluia! Christ is Risen! – is still ringing in our ears. At Pentecost we heard that we have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to be Christ’s body in the world. Now what?

Well, according to Jesus in today’s reading from St. Matthew, if we have truly heard the revelation of “these things” in today’s passage from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, then we are infants – babies.

Today’s Gospel text takes up the words Jesus tells his disciples at the end of commissioning them. He sends them out into the world, telling them how to behave—what to do and not to do—and offering them reassurance. He explains that some people will recognize them as doing God’s work, will receive them as Christ himself, and that these people will receive their reward in the next life. 

Jesus says, “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.”  

So how do we practice it?

We are trained from an early age to be kind to strangers, and we know the rough outline of how to be good hosts.  

But then we head home. Then we head off to the people who see us all the time—or we go to the family barbecue with the people that we grew up with. And then we let our guard down. We don’t need to impress them, and they don’t need to impress us, and we can easily forget that these are also the people who carry Christ. The spark of divinity is alive and well here, too. How do we see and receive it even in a grumpy spouse, or a critical parent, or an unruly child?

How do you see Christ in the people closest to you, even when you are tired? That’s the hardest call. 

 It’s so easy to look past someone who is there all the time. But Christ never invites us to a life of ease. Christ might well come to us the most in those who are the easiest to dismiss. Don’t forget how Christ shows up in the world… 

What if Christ comes to you through a person, you have already decided not to take seriously?  In the person who tell the same story over and over? 

Those people who get under our skin offer us the chance to ask ourselves about our irritation—what is it blinding us to? What are we unable to see when we centre ourselves, instead of centering Christ?

The good news—and there always is Good News in this great book of ours—is that you can start small. With “a cup of cold water,” Jesus says, or whatever a “cup of water” might mean in that relationship. 

Perhaps it means paying attention to what that critical person is saying, remembering that much of the time, people are negative because they are hurt, and recognizing how a kind word might bring healing. 

Or perhaps it means not joining into another political argument to be right, but listening to the fear behind someone’s position, in order to understand the way, they see the world better. 

You don’t have to fix all your relationships or suddenly like all people, but just ask yourself this: What if Christ comes to me in the small, ordinary, slightly annoying, very human ways that I almost ignore?

Today’s deceptively small gospel teaching reveals that for followers of Christ, transformation is necessary. We don’t get to live our lives as we did before; we certainly don’t get a life of ease and comfort. We are called to live lives oriented towards God, which means we will not be the same as before. We simply cannot encounter Christ and remain the same. 

Christ is already showing up in the people around us. 

So how do we show up for Christ? 

Christ is showing up in our lives in the people closest to us, and we are asked to recognize that presence, to let it shape how we show up, to let ourselves be transformed—in real time—by the presence of Christ in the world. Even in those right beside us.

Let us keep praying that we have eyes to see.