More than once, Jesus tells his followers that how they treat the vulnerable directly reflects their relationship to him. In Matthew 25, it’s the hungry, naked, sick, imprisoned and the stranger. In our gospel passage this week, it is the child, the child with nothing obvious to offer, who is raw potential.
What does it mean to welcome God in a child? It means to welcome joy and wonder, unpredictability, rule-breaking – or rule re-interpreting. It means to welcome the instinctual along with the intellectual, the emotional in concert with the organizational. It means welcoming a whole person, mind, body and spirit, just as she is, not yet fully formed but a worthy representation of the living God.
The disciples thought God was best represented in the one who could be considered greatest among them, so they used human metrics to determine who that might be. Wrong, wrong, wrong, says Jesus. The one who might be considered greatest is the one who is willing to be the most vulnerable.
What does it mean to welcome God in the vulnerable and marginalized? It goes way beyond meeting their material needs; that’s too low a bar for Christ-followers. It means engaging them as full persons, as equals, according them the same dignity as we would God or someone we consider important. It means seeking out their gifts and assets and making space for them to give to us. It means risking vulnerability ourselves by entering into relationship, not the uneven power relationship of giver to recipient, but a relationship of equals, strangers who might become friends.
Perhaps the best known example of that in our day is Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who said she met Christ in the lepers and outcasts whom she nursed and loved. Lepers and outcasts come in all shapes and sizes – some even have sizable bank accounts. It isn’t for us to determine worthiness. We just need to decide to be about the ministry of welcoming God.
What would it feel like if we went through our days not looking for God so much as looking to see where we might welcome God into our lives? “Who will God show up in today?” is a question we could ask each morning. “In whom did I welcome God?” we might ask at the close of day.
Just to ask that question will open us up. And then we are more likely to be one through whom God is revealed to another. And then we’ll know what it’s like to be welcomed in Jesus’ name.
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