Sermon for Sunday, June 28, 2026

June 28, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 10:40-42



At first, this text seems like a standard hospitality text, and we’re not wrong to read it that way. It’s a familiar lesson that repeats over and over again through the Gospels, and indeed through a variety of texts both ancient and modern. Not that we agree, of course. You don’t need me to remind you of how different our opinions can be when we talk about who is welcome and who is not. Today’s Gospel reminds us of the stakes. If we’re not welcoming, we risk turning away God, who often comes to visit in forms we don’t expect.


Of course, there are other risks to hospitality. When we fling open our doors or our borders, when we are welcoming, things can get messy. Look at Jesus mentions: prophets and children. Even righteous people come with a risk: that insistence that we follow God’s law, not our own rules.


We understand the chaos that comes with children and teens. For every story that I’ve heard about how a chaotic child came to the church and by the end of the year was helping with altar guild duties, I could tell you 10 more about the grumbling and complaining that comes when we truly welcome children in a way that lets them be both seen and heard.


But today’s Gospel is an optimistic one. Look at what is missing: there’s no threat of punishment for those who aren’t welcoming. You could say it’s implied, sure. But in this Gospel, we are promised reward for right behavior. But it goes even deeper. Bible scholar Stanley Saunders says, “These three designations—prophets, the righteous, and little ones—do not differentiate members of the community so much as they describe interrelated aspects of Christ-discipleship.”


To see how that might work, let us consider an experience from a different church, one of my home churches, the one in South Florida, where we used to go to worship early because the choir rehearsed before worship. I took a book and read and sometimes talked to the pastor. One Sunday, he told me he’d gotten a strange phone call from someone who was looking for a place to worship, and when the pastor invited the person to join us, the person on the phone asked, “Would your church be welcoming to a transgender person?”


“What did you say?” I asked the pastor, who would know the hearts of the members better than I did.


My pastor said, “I said ‘Of course you’d be welcome.’” He waited a beat and said, “I hope I’m right.”


When my pastor tells the story now, he’s very honest that he didn’t know for sure. Many of the members were older, and one had a habit of saying outrageous and moderately offensive opinions at coffee hour. But those older members turned out to be the most welcoming, which helped other members to be welcoming too. We worked through issues of rest rooms, updating our 1970’s era bathrooms to become single use bathrooms, which let us put a changing table in them and have a bathroom that a person in a wheelchair could use.


Ellen, the church’s first openly transgender member, helped the church be more open minded, and the church transformed into a place that was welcoming to more members who hadn’t always felt welcome before. We gave her a safe place as she figured out the ins and outs of her transitioning. In turn, she invited us to ask her any questions that we had—and members did. She, too, asked questions. We all came to understand each other better.


In this story, we see discipleship in action. The church had been participating in county-wide justice events, where 25 or more churches gathered to demand justice for underserved populations. These actions led to more oversight in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, more affordable housing, a different approach to justice for juvenile offenders. The church had been prophetic on a county-wide level, and it was also able to live into its prophetic calling on a personal level. Similarly, the church had declared commitment to righteous living, following the ways of Jesus. In its acceptance of Ellen, the church practiced what it preached. Ellen came to the church needing the cup of cold water that is acceptance and welcome. We gave that to her.


She also gave us a cup of cold water, a cup that many of us may not have known that we needed. She showed us what prophetic righteousness looks like on a personal level. She gave us the opportunity to practice radical hospitality. Years after Ellen first came to worship, the church became a Reconciling in Christ church, which is the designation that many LGBQTIQA+ people look for when they are determining if a church will be a safe space. Many churches say that all are welcome. But it can be hard to put that into practice, especially when the visitor may look so different. It might be easier if it’s a cute child. But it’s harder if we have to adjust to people of different cultures, different practices, different clothing choices, different tattoos and piercings.


When we can practice radical acceptance, that’s the space where radical hospitality can take hold. We do this by offering a cup of cold water, which seems like such a simple thing in our day of refrigerators and ice. But it would have been a different symbol in the time of Jesus, when cold water came from a well, and quickly grew warm.


We’re to give a cup of cold water—not stale water that’s been sitting under the hot, desert sun since we drew it out of the well yesterday, not water that’s been sitting in a jar. We’re to give the cup of cold water to little ones, an inversion of the hierarchy that comes with many human relationships. Here, the vulnerable, the expendable get the water—a child, not a person in charge.



The world needs the cup of cold water that each and every one of us can offer. And we, too, are in need of a cup of cold water. Jesus came to give us that living water. And thus, transformed by the living water of Christ, we can go out renewed and refreshed. We can welcome the prophets, the righteous, the vulnerable ones. We can live into the life of renewal that Jesus came to give us, the life that radical hospitality makes possible. That’s the reward given to prophets, to the righteous, to the little ones. That’s the reward that can be ours too.