Written on June 20, 2008

[For the June 29, 2008 lectionary: Matthew 10:40-42]

"GLASS OF LEMONADE" by Larry Patten

I wonder where Henry and Ella Mitchell are now?

In my second year of seminary, while I lived on campus, Ella and Henry settled in next door for a semester-long sabbatical. Henry was a professor and author, an expert on “black preaching.” Ella, like her husband, taught and published. Her expertise was Christian education. They were weary from the pressures of preaching, academics, and leadership.

Sabbatical = rest.

So, they moved next to me. I was white; they were black. I was in my mid-twenties; they nearing sixty. I was a student; they were nationally known scholars. How different we were.

One of the activities I did while living by the Mitchells—no surprise to anyone who knows me—was a backpack. Ella offhandedly asked what I enjoyed after a strenuous tramp through the woods.

I said, “An endless glass of lemonade.”

Which is exactly what she handed me when I returned. Fresh-made lemonade. A whole pitcher. Not endless, but close enough.

Over three decades later I can still taste it! It was Ella’s way of saying she knew me. Welcomed me back. She—accomplished and respected, even famous in some circles—handed me a cold glass of squeezed lemons.

Once, according to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus talked about the importance of giving “even a cup of cold water” to another. A simple gesture. An act of kindness. In Jesus’ day, hospitality was an essential value. Strangers were cared for. Neighbors supported each other.

We still do that. But I also think it’s more difficult to be neighborly in the fractured, stressful, and isolated lives most folks lead. In Jesus’ day—indeed throughout most of history—people were more dependent on each other. The stranger—or enemy—would be welcomed for a meal, for a cup of water, because there weren’t fast food joints around the next corner. The next source of water, maybe a well or an oasis, might be too far away.

In this essay so far I’ve used “welcomed” twice. In Matthew’s passage about the cup of cold water, the word welcome was used—in three short verses—six times.

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I looked up the word in its original ancient Greek (dexomai). I found that “welcome” and “receive” are interchangeable.

Welcome another. Receive another.

Since I was staring at books with geeky Greek words in small print and recalling bygone seminary days, I discovered variations of dexomai were used at least sixty times in the New Testament (so said my tattered copy of Bruce Metzger’s Lexical Aids For Students of New Testament Greek). Welcome appeared more than “sword” (twenty-eight times) but less than “angel” (over a hundred and fifty). Welcome occurred as frequently as “worship” and “teacher.” I like that! Which is to say, when you think how important worship and teaching were to Jesus’ ministry, dexomai ranked high.

Welcome another. Receive another.

* * * * * *

Since the beginnings of my own sabbatical, these last few days have been the most difficult. Right now, I want to be an appointed, official pastor. Right now, as of June 17, 2008, California is allowing same-gender couples to legally marry. In other words (even if you completely disagree with same-gender marriage) some folks are being welcomed. California, according to the state’s Supreme Court, must receive both different-gender and same-gender couples . . . equally.

I would like to be in a county clerk’s office with church members who happen to be gay (but are first human and Christian). I would like to be part of their welcoming.

But I can’t be. Mary Cartledgehayes, in her memoir Grace, summed up the reality of a pastor leaving a church: “the day the church door closes behind you after you’ve preached your last sermon, your relationship with the congregation is severed as completely as though you’d never been there at all.”

And yet I rejoice, severed and distant, as I watch the news. Some good folks I know are being welcomed.

I started with a memory of Ella and Henry. Once I didn’t know them. They were strangers and so different than me. But they welcomed me. And I, them. Am I making too much of a fuss over lemonade and not enough about marriage licenses? Maybe, but I don’t think so.

Any change for an individual or society—like the acceptance of “gay marriage”—comes from knowing people. When another person is part of a relationship, they are no longer a label or an object of fear.

How do we get to know another who is “different?”

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

in Peace,

Larry