Matthew 10:40-42

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me,
and whoever welcomes me
welcomes the on who sent me.

When I was first working as an Engineer I was on a Graduate programme. There were around 30 of us all starting over a couple of months and we all went through various training sessions as the company tried to develop us as more than just engineers, but as potential managers and even business leaders. One of the things they asked us to do almost immediately was create a career plan –  as graduates we got the opportunity to move around the company and develop an understanding of how different parts of the business worked. If we had a clear career plan, we could choose appropriate placements to give us some of the experience we would need for the future. The difficulty was, until we had spent some time moving around the business and seeing what was possible, not to mention what different people actually did, developing a career plan was incredibly different. We needed to speak to people, 
learn from their experience, where it made sense we needed to emulate others who we saw were good at what they did, and who did things we wanted to do.

In a way we all go through this exact same exercise from the moment we are born. We don’t understand who we are, we don’t know what is possible until we see somebody else doing it and start copying. Whether learning how to eat, 
before we have any idea why it might be important, or what housework or relationships are. As children we emulate, mimic and role play. Both the good practices and the bad.

As Jesus sends his disciples out he encourages them, reminding that they are being sent out, like he himself was sent by the father. And he encourages them to be gracious to those who welcome them. These would be people they met on their travels, and who welcomed them in, perhaps they were people who had heard of Jesus, but some won’t have done. But Jesus tells them that just be welcoming them in,
even for something as simple as a glass of water, they will have taken the first steps to being a part of this new community following Jesus. By accepting that glass of water, by letting themselves be served, and by demonstrating that same service Christ had demonstrated to them, the disciples begin to shape these followers they meet. And as they emulate Christ’s service and Christ’s love, they begin to inhabit those values and they become a part of them, and they too come to know and believe.

Our services, their structure, the actions, 
the words we sing, say and pray, 
the work we do as a church working for our community, we do all these things so that as we inhabit them they will shape us into that same community. And we need to be prepared to accept that same generosity from others as they mimic the loving example of Christ and are formed into his body with us.

The Reverend Robin Sims-Williams