Very recently I was asked what I love about travel, especially travel beyond our borders. What was at the heart of my experience when I go somewhere else, somewhere new? I hadn’t been asked that question before, at least not exactly in that way. I enjoy many things about travel – trying local restaurants, visiting beautiful places, going to concerts. But the thing that speaks to me the most profoundly when traveling is coming to understand the stories of a place – learning about its history, meeting people and hearing about their lives today, walking through old churches and cities and imagining the people who have lived there over centuries, who’ve built its walls or created the paintings that hang in its museums or composed the music played in those concerts. I like to sit in a public space and hear the swirl of voices and languages, to step into conversations with strangers, to just walk and watch and listen. I learn something deeper about creation, about the wonder of the world and the people who live in it, about the communion of saints living and past, and how very narrow are the spaces that divide us as human beings. And I learn this simply by moving in the world, existing and watching and listening.
This summer – and this fall actually, all the way to Advent – we’re moving through the Gospel of Matthew. Each of the four Gospels has its own particular focus, its own way of portraying and perceiving Jesus. Each one is a lens through which we can understand Jesus, and together they present a fuller view of him and his ministry. In John, the Spiritual Gospel, Jesus is the Logos, the Word of God, living before Creation; in Mark, we see Jesus as the Suffering Servant; in Luke, we witness Jesus incarnate, human, born into the world as a vulnerable child.
In Matthew, we see Jesus as teacher, as rabbi, in lesson after lesson: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth; do not judge, so that you may not be judged; ask and it will be given unto you. “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on rock.”
Throughout Matthew, Jesus is teaching and healing and preaching, and his disciples are traveling with him, watching, witnessing, and learning. And as we’ve been reading these last few weeks, Jesus is starting to push his disciples in new directions. He is challenging them to take on the work of teaching and healing and preaching, to shoulder the authority of the Holy Spirit in doing this ministry in a world that is less than welcoming, even to the point of dangerous. And yet, in these last three verses of chapter 10, our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus talks not about the dangers they face, but the importance of hospitality, of welcoming, and being welcomed: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me,” telling his disciples that they carry God with them, and that if they are invited as welcome guests, so then is God; if they are rejected and turned away, so is God rejected and turned away.
That word “disciple” shows up repeatedly in this chapter. A disciple is a follower; Jesus’ disciples traveled with him, broke bread with him, witnessed miracles with him, left homes and families and jobs to join his itinerant revolution. A disciple, writes Baptist theologian and pastor Emilie Townes, is first and foremost a learner. “Discipleship,” she says, “is a journey that includes learning,” a journey that asks us to “pause and learn from Jesus who we are to be.” Discipleship is not just about blindly following, but about observing, listening, questioning, discovering, and then allowing the way we live to be transformed by what we learn.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes that “discipleship is about how we live,” both as individuals of faith and as believers in community with each other. Being a disciple – being a student – in Jesus’ world, Williams writes, was never just about showing up for a weekly lecture or getting to class on time. Students and disciples were in relationship with their teachers, immersed in their learning, spending long hours with their teachers, as Jesus’ disciples do, trying to understand their teachings, gather their wisdom.
And now, while Jesus’ disciples are still learning, are still students, making mistakes and trying to understand and articulate the good news Jesus is bringing, he is suddenly saying, Ok, it’s your turn. Go out into the world and do some healing and teaching and preaching yourselves. You’ve got this.
I’m not sure the disciples felt the same confidence in themselves that Jesus did.
Jesus, I believe, was inviting his disciples to stretch themselves and to engage in the world more directly, to be both learners and teachers. And in stressing how important welcome and hospitality are for those who travel and teach in his name, he was stressing that it is not enough just to listen to him, but also to listen to the world, to go out into it, face its dangers and risks, and also experience its welcome. And in experiencing welcome, we acknowledge that we are all learning from each other, that we are all disciples, learning and teaching at the same time. Discipleship, says Rowan Williams, (or learning) is about being.
Summer is, for many of us, a time for travel. Scroll through Facebook and we see our friends’ pictures of the ocean, of Europe, of cityscapes and national parks and historic monuments. Our travels are, for the most part we hope, not as dangerous as the disciples’ were in Jesus’ day. But what possibilities does our time in unfamiliar places, with strangers from all walks of life, open up for us as modern-day disciples of Jesus? What can we learn? What can we teach? How can we extend hospitality, even when we are the ones who are guests along the journey? How can we see just how narrow the gaps really are between us as human beings, despite language barriers and age differences and international boundaries? How do we find ways to exist as disciples – as learners and as teachers of the Gospel of Jesus, when we are in the world, however close to home or far-flung our travels take us – whether it’s a trip to the grocery store or a trip to the beach?
A few years ago I was in a church in Roanoke, and I noticed a sign over one of its doors to the outside. It read “You are now entering the mission field.” It was startling, this somewhat old-fashioned term, mission field, conjuring up images of missionaries going into rural villages in other countries to convert people to the Christian church, often with little regard for the value and beauty of their own indigenous faiths and cultures. The Church is beginning to understand the damage that such mission work did and still can do. We are also reminded, however, that mission, when done in love and in respect, is part of what the Church is – that Jesus’ call to his first disciples is his call to us today, especially when we keep in mind that we are as much learners as we are teachers – that our mission work is not to tear down what others have built, but to find common ground, to understand each other better by listening and engaging and respecting one another, by simply being in spaces unfamiliar to us, with people who are strangers, learning and valuing their stories and their lives. Especially in a time, especially in a week, when so many stories and lives are being silenced and pushed aside.
We live the Gospel by closing those very narrow gaps among us. We can teach by learning and listening; we can preach the Gospel by living it. And the goodness that can come out of such meetings, such moments of mission and extensions of hospitality, carry healing that reaches beyond a few people or a few moments in time, for they are the Spirit working through us and working in us.
Blessings on your journeys, wherever they may go. Amen.
— The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett, Curate, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, July 2, 2023
Reading: Matthew 10:24-39
