It is easy for us to focus on the last verse in this passage and forget about the first one. With that last verse, we can picture what to do: we are called to give a cup of cold water to a “little one”—and if we are picturing a child here, that would be right. Or if we are picturing those whom Jesus in Matthew 25 calls “the least of these,” the stranger, the hungry, the oppressed, those who need healing, that would be right also.
Indeed we can just about know for sure that God will be pleased if we give a cup of cold water to anyone, anyone at all, even if the person isn’t thirsty, because after all, it’s the thought that counts. . . it’s the love that counts, it’s the welcoming of God within each other that counts.
And that’s what the first verse of the passage is about. Jesus says, “whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me”—and that would be God! So when we welcome each other, we welcome God. It’s right there in Matthew. And I think this is a highly underrated passage because welcoming God’s presence in each other changes us, heals us, takes us where we have been hoping and dreaming to go.
The longtime Dean and Professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Dr. Emilie Townes, a celebrated womanist theologian and ethicist, writes: “As we extend hospitality to others we may well find that we experience new insights and hear new stories of faith that redirect our perceptions. Such witness can stimulate our theological and spiritual imaginations so that we become new beings. This is the reward we will not lose.”
(pg. 192, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 3)
Thank you Dr. Emilie Townes for helping us dare to dream. This dreaming is an act of faith. We’re not always sure of ourselves and that’s all right. Our dreaming sets us in motion. And God, who is at work and at play in all our changes, meets us in our dreaming too.