Matthew 10:40-42
Pentecost 5A
The Rev. Dr. Bruce Roth
June 28, 2026
Beloved People of God…
What does God look like? That one of the questions I ask confirmation students. I have them draw what they think God looks like with paper and a pencil. It is always interesting to see what people come up with. It seems we have thousands of images of what God might look like in our mind. Well, I heard of a kindergarten teacher who was observing her classroom of children while they were drawing. She walked around to see each child’s artwork. As she got to one little boy who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was. The boy replied, “I am drawing God.” Well, this particular teacher paused and said, “but no one knows what God looks like.” Without missing a beat, or looking up from his drawing the boy replied, “They will in a minute.”
What do you think most of the confirmation students draw? An old man with a big beard—someone that looks kind of like Charlton Hesston when he played Moses in the Ten Commandments. How do you picture God? If you struggle with that let me ask a clarifying question that might be of some help. Can you identify one sign of God at work in your life?
If you’re still finding it hard to picture God, here is a snapshot of who and what God is. There is nothing you can do to make God love you any more and there is absolutely nothing you can do to make God love you any less. That’s the kind of God we have? How can we see that? We can picture God through the person, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God did something rather unbelievable. God put on skin in order to communicate with us and to accomplish the most important work of life, of all of life. God tried for thousands of years to communicate with his people. God chose a way to help us picture him by becoming one of us. He came to the earth and lived among us to show us the way. Think of how amazing it is and how hard it is to comprehend God putting on our skin on coming to us. There is a story by a Danish writer named Soren Kierkegaard that helps paint the picture for us.
He talks about a king who had it all. This king decided one day that he wanted to find out how people in the kingdom were living. He wanted to know what real people were like, what their real struggles and real needs and hurts were. So, He got into his chariot and rode around the countryside taking a look at the people. He went into a particular rural village and he saw a beggarly woman who looked like a rag doll. She had tattered, torn clothes and she had a begging cup out. He looked into her face and there was an interesting attraction, something happened in his heart. The next day he went to the same rural village. The king went by and sure enough, this beggar woman was sitting there, outside of the city. He did it again the next day and the next day and pretty soon he realized that he was falling in love with her.
But what was interesting was that he couldn’t figure out how to communicate with that woman. If he would get out of his chariot and command her, “You come and be my wife; I’m in love with you,” that would just be an exercise of power. You cannot force love by power. He knew that. And also he thought that if she sees all the riches and all the wealth, maybe that’s what she’ll love and she won’t love him.
And so the king did the only thing that he could do to win her love. That was to give up his position, his power, and his royal clothing. The king put on beggar’s clothes and went out in to the countryside and sat beside the beggar woman and became a beggar. And they fell in love. That is the picture of God we have through Jesus. As we get to know what God is like, we look at Jesus. As Jesus came, he demonstrated that there is indeed nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make God love us any less. That is the picture our Gospel paints for us this morning.
Our gospel lesson this morning is about how it is we can fulfill the call to help God’s people picture God—to envision the reality of the kingdom. It is about experiencing the signs of God at work in our lives. Jesus said to the twelve, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” We help to provide a picture of God whenever a follower of God is living out of intimacy with the Spirit remembers the fact that they have been marked with the cross of Christ forever and sealed with the Holy Spirit, and therefore seek to proclaim and embody the realm of God.
But what are the signs that God is at work in our lives? How is it that we can picture who God is? First, understand that we cannot picture it in its totality, yet we can catch glimpses of what God is really about. There is a brilliant summation of the entire text this morning in verse 42 that gives a great illustration: “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” The point is clear, as we realize who God is, what God has done for us, and then we’re given the opportunity to help paint the picture of who God is for others. We care called to act in a way that will advance the reality of the realm of to be a witness which means to point to what God is doing in the world. Amazing things happen when we realize who God is and seek to help others picture who God is.
John Ortberg, a great writer, described a situation when he was ten years old, in the late 60’s. He was a huge Chicago Cubs fan. One of the catchers, a start player on the Cubs at the time was Randy Hundley. John worshipped Randy. He got his trading cards and when he would go to the games, he would love to watch Randy. One day the phone in his home rant. It was the next-door neighbor girl. She said, “Mrs. Ortberg, Randy Hundley wants to come over and see John.’ Well, she had never heard of Randy Hundley and thought it was one of the kids in the neighborhood so she told the little neighbor girl, “Well, John has a piano lesson right now so tell Randy he can come and play with him at another time.” After the piano lesson was over John’s mom said, “Randy wanted to come over and play with you, but I told him he couldn’t because you had a piano lesson.” John wrote, “Mom was a pea brain! I couldn’t believe she did that. I was going to call the Child Protective services and tell them my mother was practicing child abuse! My hero wanted to come over…and she said no.”
John was in a serious depression when a knock on the door came at Five o’clock. He opened it. Guess who was there. Randy Hundley, the catcher for the Chicago Cubs. He laid down his glove and he laid down his bat and he laid down his stardom to come to a little boy that he heard was admiring him. And the reason Randy came was to encourage John to admire Jesus. Randy said, “I came by because I spoke at a little meeting and on my way back to the stadium, I wanted to tell you how important it is for you to follow Jesus Christ.” It changed John’s life. But that’s what God does. God did that through Jesus.
You may not be a star baseball player. You may not be comfortable going to someone you don’t know and telling them about your relationship with Jesus Christ. But all of us, can offer a cup—the cup of service, the cup of compassion, the cup of invitation to help others get a clearer picture of the God who came to us through the person of Jesus Christ. I pray that if you haven’t experienced God through Jesus that you would open your life because there is nothing you can do to make God love you more and there is nothing that you can do to make God love you less. Isn’t that a beautiful picture? Amen.