The Cup

June 27, 1993

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Scripture: Matthew 10:40-42

I didn’t pick this passage for today. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that. It’s the lectionary reading for this Sunday, The Gospel reading for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, which is today.

It was given. I didn’t choose it. I don’t know if I would EVER have chosen it, or at least not in the first round. Left to my own devices, my own inclinations, I probably would have passed over it. I would much more likely have selected a story, a parable, perhaps, or a narrative event first....I would have selected something with some movement and action before selecting a bare, propositional teaching.

But this is the assigned Gospel reading for this Sunday. It’s from Matthew the ecclesiastical

Gospel. It’s part of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ discourse to His disciples, and thus, to the Church. In the setting it’s a training discourse in preparation for sending them out on a mission.

He’s been giving them instruction, telling them what to expect, what to look for, and this winds it up.... only 3 verses, a short, pithy statement.

When I read it the first time, I thought, “Oh, my gosh, what in the world am I going to do with this? What is there here to get hold of, to wrap your hands around? How can I develop it so that it’s interesting and pertinent, so that it lives?

I read it over and over, turning it this way and that---that’s the fascinating thing about the Bible, why it’s so bottomless....you can go past a Biblical corner everyday of your life for 50 years, maybe, thinking you know everything that’s there. And one day the whole neighborhood lights up with a resplendence you never saw before.

Well, I brooded over this passage, these 3 verses I guess one entire workday.... ask the people in the office. They can tell you. They were witnesses to the brooding process. Throughout that entire dismal day, they had to shiver under the cloud of gloom that permeated the atmosphere. By 5 o’clock, they were gasping for breath, begging pitiably for relief from the brooding.

Nothing would come, at least nothing useful, nothing right. I almost gave up on it to go on to something with more apparent fruitfulness. “I’ll just forget the lectionary suggestion this week,” I said. I’ll start again somewhere else.”

But that image of the cup in the passage kept lingering, that cup of cold water Jesus referred to. I kept seeing that cup in my mind. Sometimes in my imagination it was an old, battered tin cup, the kind we used to have at Boy Scout camp. Sometimes it appeared as a porcelain cup, and then as a glazed ceramic cup, baked in a kiln.

Sometimes it was more like a chalice, with a stem and a base....I kept seeing that cup. It’s one of the most vivid images Jesus ever employed. What a master of picture words He was....He made pictures come to life in your head. People heard Him speak, and said, “Of course. I see it clearly. I understand.”

And that picture of the cup, that image of the cup, representing simple, basic, fundamental Christian hospitality, is still vivid. It’s no less graphic now than it was 2000 years ago when Jesus first drew it. I went to the Bible Dictionary and found that the Greek word translated “cup” is “poterion”. You don’t have to write that down. We’re not going to have a test. But that’s the word. POTERION. The Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary said it was usually a simple, shallow, earthenware bowl, maybe decorated, often not, sometimes with a handle, but more frequently without. That was the common drinking utensil of the day. In the Greek text, it even says,

“mikron Poterion”---a MICRO—small----poterion....just a little thing.

“Whoever gives even a tiny cup of cold water (even that) to one of these little ones because he is a disciple, I tell you, he shall not lose his reward.” Well, by that time I was hooked. That dumb lectionary wasn’t so dumb. Here is something I can relate to, something everybody can relate to.

Some of us have trouble relating to the arcane mysteries of ethereal theology. I do. It’s hard to get close to some of the profound depths of incarnation, and atonement.... or to the subtle meanings resident in ideas about the Trinity, or Eucharist, or realized eschatology. Some of that gets pretty complicated.

But every Christian, from little children right on up....or down, if you rank children first in the Kingdom, as Jesus did....EVERY DISCIPLE OF CHRIST, of whatever age or experience, can relate to this picture of the cup---the symbol of practical kindness to another human being.

“Whoever gives even a “poterion” of cold water to one of these little ones.... shall not lose his reward.” THIS SEEMED PRETTY IMPORTANT TO JESUS.

Have we gotten away somehow from this basic underpinning of the Christian ethic? Church

life is so complex now, so big and booming....There are so many programs and activities; we think in terms of hundreds of people at a time, and tens of thousands of dollars. We organize like business, keep records like business, evaluate our progress with measurable statistics----the more the better----and all of that efficiency has its place....Jesus would say it has its reward...

BUT UNDERNEATH ALL THAT, FOUNDATIONAL TO ALL THAT, AND EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL THAT, when you get right down to the essence of what Church is supposed to be doing, is this cup of cold-water thing.

WE’RE IN THE POTERION BUSINESS, we people of God, sometimes on a larger scale, sometimes on a smaller, but always on an individual basis, as we seek to relate helpfully to “one of these little ones” because we’re disciples.

Now, obviously, I’m using cup in more than just a literal sense. See it embracing hospitality in any of its dimensions, both within the Church, and without.

1. Let’s look first at WITHIN. Are we a friendly church here, this congregation? Are we an inviting, warm church? Do you ever think about what kind of aroma of cordiality we emit to people who come to visit? Does it make any difference to a stranger, a new comer, a first-time visitor how he’s responded to when he comes in? Is it even important?

The Church Growth people tell us that usually a visitor coming into a church for the first time will decide within the first 5 minutes whether or not he or she wants to come back again. 5 minutes! I had hoped it would be the sermon that was the critical factor. No way. In the first 5 minutes, they haven’t heard the anthem, or the morning prayer... They haven’t had a chance to put anything in the offering plate.

The architecture speaks before that, the parking opportunity, and the people they bump into at the very beginning. You have enormous influence over who comes, and especially over who comes back. I know some people slip in and out who don’t want to be noticed, who don’t want to talk to anybody, that day, for their own reasons. I respect that, and to be honest, I despise forced cordiality, saccharine, superficial hugging and kissing, when it’s programmed because it’s something you’re supposed to do.

I think the word for that is hypocrisy, but people can sense sincere warmth, immediately. They know when you’re glad to see them, when the door is really open. Coldness, unfriendliness in a church is sort of like certain forms of a tumor. There may not be any pain at all. You may not even know it’s there. Nothing warns you. People don’t tell you. They just slip away and don’t come back. Do you ever wonder how many times it happens? “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones....shall not lose his reward.”

I HOPE WE’RE A CONGREGATION OF “WHOEVERS” ....I hope I’m one. You don’t have to know the Discipline by heart to shake somebody’s hand.... You don’t have to be up on the Graf-Welhausen Documentary hypothesis[1] to smile at a stranger.

Maybe we should hang a cup on a nail at the front door to remind us when we come in of

that attitude of hospitality that’s at the heart of Christian fellowship.

2. It could also remind us of our responsibility, to go out of our way to help people in need. Who are we, after all? We’re “poterion” people. That’s who we are. WE’RE IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY. Sometimes we forget it.

The Church is not a money-making institution. Sometimes during the long, lean summer months, it’s really not, but it’s not even supposed to be a money-making institution... We have to have money to operate, to keep the doors open, and pay salaries, and maintain programs. No apology for that. Nothing wrong with that. But the money-making is not an end in itself. We’re not here to make a profit---we’re here to BE a prophet...that’s too cute.

I’m trying to say, our purpose, our bottom line purpose, is not to be in the black, but to spend ourselves in love and service to people, just as our Master did.

If there is anything in the Gospel accounts about the life of Jesus of Nazareth that comes through unmistakably, it is the amount of time he spent and the attitude he had toward people who were hurting.... Go through the Gospels sometimes and list all the examples--- the daughter of Jairus, who had fallen asleep; the blind man by the roadside, Bartimaeus; the man with the withered arm; the woman with the flow of blood.... countless individual people.

Even---remember---even when He was impaled on the Cross...He couldn’t move His arms at the time, but even in that condition, He reached out symbolically in compassion to a thief who has hanging alongside Him. “Today thou shalt be with me in paradise.” His whole life was a life of cup giving.... bestowing practical help to people in need. Isn’t this, therefore, our mandate, as the extension of the Incarnation? Shouldn’t this be at least near the top of our agenda? Who are we?

Ken Jensen’s son, Dick Jensen, sent me a copy of an article in the Nashville, Tennessee paper about Bishop Kenneth Carder, the new Methodist Bishop of that state. Bishop Carder was elected to the episcopacy in 1992 at Jurisdictional Conference, and I’m proud to say I voted for him. He’s making an impact in the Nashville area by calling the Church back to some primordial priorities.

Says Bishop Carder, “Laity (too often) view the Church as something they belong to rather than as something they are. Loyalty is defined in the same way as it is expressed in the Rotary Club---frequency of attendance, payment of dues, and participation in some projects.

Conferences and meetings resemble secular corporate strategy sessions...Pastors function more as CEO’s than as prophets and priests, or visionaries of a new heaven and a new earth, or facilitators of grace-filled communities of faith.” Does that relate to our theme? How about this, to make it more specific?

“The poor and marginal people are at our gates and doorsteps. Don’t kid yourself. They sleep at the Church’s doorways but seldom are seen in its pews. All the while, others sit in our pews on Sunday mornings, victims of the destructive, life-denying power of the idols of success and achievement.”

Imagine a Bishop of the United Methodist Church talking like that?

How do you measure the effectiveness of a church program in Gospel terms? Not annual

conference statistics, but Gospel terms? What kind of criteria do you use? Was First Church, Orlando downtown any better by Gospel standards when it had a membership of 4000, and an average worship attendance of twice its present rate.....Was it any better then, by gospel standards, than when it opened its doors one night a few years back to let homeless people come in from the street to sleep on its fellowship hall floor? I wonder.

Out of that “reckless” and hardly conventional action, has now emerged the Orlando Coalition for the Homeless, to which a number of our members contribute, and which provides a dry, safe place to sleep each night for persons. That’s a big cup of cold water, distributed individually, one by one, in lots of little cups.

Do you know the one word in the Gospel record that makes me personally more nervous than

any other? It’s in the 25th chapter of Matthew, the same Gospel our passage is taken from

today. It’s that word in the parable of the sheep and the goats, where the Son of Man divides the people, some to the right, some to the left, some for approbation, some for condemnation...

Both groups were surprised by the judgment in that story, remember, both those who HAD done what the Lord wanted, and those who HADN’T, both those who visited the sick, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and those who didn’t, both those who gave a cup of cold water, and those who didn’t. BOTH GROUPS WERE SURPRISED, because the larger implications of those actions hadn’t dawned on them.

The word in that story that gives me nervous tremors sometimes, especially when a transient

appears at the door over there, or somebody comes by asking for food, or a box of diapers for the baby, is that word INASMUCH. That may be the scariest word in the Bible if your conscience is operating at at least 50% capacity. “Inasmuch as ye have done it (or not done it) to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, ye have done it (or not done it) unto me.”

That seemed pretty important to Jesus. Now, does that mean you should plunder your treasures to give handouts? No, you can’t do that and stay in business long. You have to think about the long haul; you have to be experienced enough not to be taken in by a song and dance; Jesus Himself told us to be wise as serpents out in the world. I confess it galls me more than I can tell you to be lied to and fleeced by someone who makes a living out of deception.

But I’ll never forget that man who asked me for help one day, whose story I didn’t quite

believe, whose demeanor I didn’t quite trust, and whose credentials I couldn’t quite check out..... I helped him a little, reluctantly, and I guess grudgingly, never expecting to see him or that money again, only to receive a letter the next week with a thank you note and a full reimbursement. You can’t be sure. Not all poor are deadbeats, any more than all rich are virtuous.

And anyway, if I understand the Gospel correctly, just as the rain falls on both the just and the unjust, with total disregard for merit, so should the charitable acts of the people of God. You don’t help people because they deserve it, you help them because they need it. Anything else subverts the whole meaning of GRACE,WHICH IS THE VERY BASIS FOR OUR ACCEPTANCE AND REDEMPTION. Think how it would be for US if it were otherwise.

It’s hard to see the Christ in some people. Some stifle it so well as to virtually extinguish it. AND WHAT PEOPLE ASK FOR IS NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY NEED. All true.

But the Christian ethic didn’t ask us to judge. That’s why it’s so radical, so revolutionary.

It tells us to give because we’ve been given to. It tells us to bless because we’ve been blessed.

It tells us to be generous because generosity has been lavished on US. It tells us to remember the prodigality of God and to see His image in even those who seem to have defaced it. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.”

Would the Church be stronger,have more influence, make a greater impact on society if it gave away a tenth, a quarter, a half of what it had in some form of ministry to others....prisoners,

the poor, the homeless, the marginalized? I don’t know. Maybe that would be irresponsibly extravagant for a church. Maybe it would be irresponsibly extravagant for a PERSON.

I only know Jesus lived on the basis of that kind of extravagance. And so did the people in history I admire most---Albert Schweitzer, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, John Wesley---It was said of Wesley that one year he made 20 pounds. He lived on 15 and gave the rest away. The next year he made 70 pounds. He lived on 15 and gave the rest away.

Call it financial absurdity, if you like. I wish I had the guts to live that way, for something inside me whispers that that resonates in perfect harmony with the wacky, wonderful economics of eternity.

What you save is what you give away. What you gain is what you lose. What you keep is only what you share, and even the minimal gift, even the cup of cold water, offered in love, comes back in multiple blessing.

And what is that “blessing”? What is the reward Jesus talks about? Whoever gives.... shall not lose his reward”. Did he say reward? Doesn’t that cheapen it? Doesn’t that reduce it to a quid-pro-quo thing? Is it finally compensation for generosity? In the end, doesn’t that bring it down to that level? Is that why we give, for what we can get out of it?

Do you know what I think the reward is for giving a cup of cold water? I hope you’ll not be disappointed, but I think the reward is simply the desire to give another, and then another, and then another after that. POTERION SHARING BECOMES ITS OWN REWARD.  That’s it.

If your giving is for pay back, pretty soon, you’ll be empty. If the reward is your motive, you’ll soon be as dry as your thirsty recipient.

But when you share without keeping score, when you offer your cup without worrying about who’s watching, or who gets the credit, or what the results might be, when you give it simply because there’s need, it’s easier to give it the next time, and the next, because the very act of giving stretches the capacity of your heart, and that’s the beginning of LIFE.

Bishop James W. Henley used to tell a story about an incident that happened to him in his very first appointment: In the little town in which he was serving in the mountains of Tennessee, there was a river that ran through the center of the town, and every spring when the snows in the mountains melted, the river would overrun its banks. This particular year, it had rained

all spring long, on top of the melting snow. The water level was the highest in memory. The river couldn’t hold all the water, and the town was flooded. Jim Henley said he stood on the porch of the parsonage and watched the destruction. Houses were carried away, washed from their moorings.

He said he watched one house get swept away by the rampaging flood, saw it cascade against the bridge that crossed the river and break into pieces. It was a perilous situation; people’s lives were in danger.

There was an old fellow in that town named John. The townspeople called him John the River Rat. He lived, or had lived in a little wooden shack down by the river’s edge. His flimsy place of residence had long since been washed away.

John was an unsavory kind of character. Nobody had much to do with him. He was dirty. He was often a foul of the law. He drank to excess. He was just around, overlooked and poorly thought of.

But there at the height of the flood, when the thing most people were thinking about was survival, was old John, John the River Rat, out in his little boat, going from place to place rescuing people.

He made a number of trips, picking up people and taking them to the safety of higher ground. Each time he went a little further, and each trip was more dangerous. Finally, after one particularly hazardous sortie, when his little boat nearly capsized, Jim Henley said he went over to where he landed and said to John, “John, don’t try to go out there anymore. You’ve done what you could. It’s too dangerous. Leave well enough alone.”

He said old John, John the River Rat, looked at him for a couple of seconds, giving him the most contemptuous look he’d ever received, spat on the ground in disgust, and said, “Preacher, shut up! This is the first time in my life I’ve ever really lived.” I think that pretty well expresses it. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Are you tired of merely existing? Would you really like to live? “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is a disciple, I tell you, he shall not lose his reward.”

That seemed pretty important to Jesus. And I just have an idea He was right.

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[1]  The Graf-Welhausen Documentary hypothesis is a model used by biblical scholars to explain the origins and composition of the Torah.