"A Cup of Cold Water"

Deacon: The holy gospel of our Lord

Deacon: Jesus Christ, according to

Deacon: Matthew.

Bishop Knisely: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Deacon: Jesus said, whoever welcomes you

Deacon: welcomes me, and whoever

Deacon: welcomes me welcomes the one who

Deacon: sent me.

Deacon: Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will

Deacon: receive a prophet's reward.

Deacon: And whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a

Deacon: righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous.

Deacon: And whoever gives even a cup of

Deacon: cold water to one of these

Deacon: little ones in the name of a

Deacon: disciple.

Deacon: Truly, I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.

Deacon: The gospel of the Lord.

Bishop Knisely: Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Bishop Knisely: May I speak to you in the name

Bishop Knisely: of God, who is father, son, and

Bishop Knisely: Holy Spirit.

Bishop Knisely: Amen.

Bishop Knisely: Amen.

Bishop Knisely: Go ahead and now be seated.

Bishop Knisely: One of the things you learn

Bishop Knisely: really early on when you're

Bishop Knisely: ordained is that people sort of

Bishop Knisely: look at what you're wearing and

Bishop Knisely: behave differently.

Bishop Knisely: I notice that if I have to fly and I'm wearing clericals, if

Bishop Knisely: I'm in my black suit or a purple shirt and I go to get on the

Bishop Knisely: airplane, people are either going to be really happy I'm

Bishop Knisely: sitting beside them or they're going to be very uncomfortable.

Bishop Knisely: People will sort of scooch away from you in line at Dunkin

Bishop Knisely: Donuts and at McDonald's.

Bishop Knisely: It's a whole thing, trying to

Bishop Knisely: order your Big Mac and your

Bishop Knisely: French fries.

Bishop Knisely: People project on you because of what you're wearing.

Bishop Knisely: And you learned that early on.

Bishop Knisely: As clergy, and sometimes that's helpful.

Bishop Knisely: And sometimes that can be a challenge.

Bishop Knisely: One of the things you notice when you walk around inner city

Bishop Knisely: inner cities, and I, as a priest, always served in inner

Bishop Knisely: city parishes, is that people will see you walking by and

Bishop Knisely: depending on their circumstances, will come up and

Bishop Knisely: want something from you.

Bishop Knisely: And sometimes that's wonderful.

Bishop Knisely: And sometimes it's like, oh, how

Bishop Knisely: am I going to disappoint you

Bishop Knisely: today?

Bishop Knisely: So when I was living in Phoenix,

Bishop Knisely: my wife and I are not very good

Bishop Knisely: cooks.

Bishop Knisely: And so we're really good at getting prepared foods from

Bishop Knisely: little grocery stores.

Bishop Knisely: We love Dave's.

Bishop Knisely: I just got to tell you, we would

Bishop Knisely: starve to death if it wasn't for

Bishop Knisely: Dave's.

Bishop Knisely: But there was a version of Dave's much smaller called Fresh

Bishop Knisely: and Easy in Phoenix, and I was on my way home from the office

Bishop Knisely: and Karen was still at work and she said, would you swing by

Bishop Knisely: fresh and easy and get some dinner for us?

Bishop Knisely: And I said, sure, sure, sure.

Bishop Knisely: I'm trying to get in and out the fresh and easy.

Bishop Knisely: That was close to where we were living.

Bishop Knisely: It wasn't the best part of

Bishop Knisely: Phoenix and it was kind of

Bishop Knisely: sketchy.

Bishop Knisely: And I'm like, okay, I'll get in.

Bishop Knisely: I'll get into the place.

Bishop Knisely: It was a guy standing around

Bishop Knisely: outside looking at people and,

Bishop Knisely: uh oh.

Bishop Knisely: So I get out of the car, I go

Bishop Knisely: into fresh and easy, I get out,

Bishop Knisely: I don't know what it was

Bishop Knisely: probably something wonderfully

Bishop Knisely: healthy and fulfilling, like

Bishop Knisely: clergy eat.

Bishop Knisely: And and I came out of the store and the guy looks at me and

Bishop Knisely: says, you're a priest, right?

Bishop Knisely: Like, oh, yes, yes.

Bishop Knisely: He said, I bought two of these.

Bishop Knisely: Take this one.

Bishop Knisely: And he gave me a bag of oranges.

Bishop Knisely: And I thought, well, that's not what I expected.

Bishop Knisely: And I said, well, thank you.

Bishop Knisely: He said, no, no, no, no worries.

Bishop Knisely: And he walked off and I realized he had done something for me,

Bishop Knisely: not because of any relationship I had with him or anything I'd

Bishop Knisely: done to deserve it, or the kindness I had shown him.

Bishop Knisely: He just did it for me because of

Bishop Knisely: a relationship I had with other

Bishop Knisely: people.

Bishop Knisely: I don't know, maybe it was something in the air in Phoenix,

Bishop Knisely: but something similar happened not too long after I came out.

Bishop Knisely: And one of the things you learn

Bishop Knisely: in Phoenix is because of the

Bishop Knisely: heat and everything and the

Bishop Knisely: thorns, you get a lot of flat

Bishop Knisely: tires.

Bishop Knisely: And so I came out to my car and I had a flat tire.

Bishop Knisely: Oh. All right, well, I'm sitting there.

Bishop Knisely: I'll just pop the trunk, get the spare out, change the tire, and

Bishop Knisely: I'm getting ready to do that.

Bishop Knisely: And, and I, I guess a guy was a delivery driver saw me and said,

Bishop Knisely: father, father, let me change your car tire.

Bishop Knisely: I said, no, no, I can do it.

Bishop Knisely: I'm fine.

Bishop Knisely: God bless you.

Bishop Knisely: Thank you.

Bishop Knisely: But I got this.

Bishop Knisely: No no no no no no. Your hands

Bishop Knisely: are the hands that serve at the

Bishop Knisely: altar.

Bishop Knisely: Don't get them dirty or hurt them.

Bishop Knisely: Changing a tire.

Bishop Knisely: Really?

Bishop Knisely: I was not expecting that.

Bishop Knisely: And I tried to talk him out.

Bishop Knisely: He wouldn't hear it.

Bishop Knisely: He said, no, I want to change your tire.

Bishop Knisely: So he changed my tire.

Bishop Knisely: He did a very good job of it, and I'm trying to take out money

Bishop Knisely: and give him a tip or something.

Bishop Knisely: I said, please let me say thank you.

Bishop Knisely: And he wouldn't hear a word of it.

Bishop Knisely: He did that not because he knew me, but because of who I knew.

Bishop Knisely: In the gospel reading today,

Bishop Knisely: Jesus is saying something very

Bishop Knisely: similar.

Bishop Knisely: He's saying that if you do

Bishop Knisely: something kind for someone

Bishop Knisely: because of the relationship they

Bishop Knisely: have with me, Jesus is saying,

Bishop Knisely: you shall get an extraordinary

Bishop Knisely: reward.

Bishop Knisely: He's talking in a crowd of people and he's talking about

Bishop Knisely: the little ones.

Bishop Knisely: You think he's talking about children?

Bishop Knisely: The best we can tell from the text, he's not.

Bishop Knisely: He's talking about the disciples

Bishop Knisely: and the apostles who were with

Bishop Knisely: him as he's going about

Bishop Knisely: teaching.

Bishop Knisely: And he says to the larger crowd,

Bishop Knisely: look, if you give even a cup of

Bishop Knisely: cold water, That's not very much

Bishop Knisely: right?

Bishop Knisely: That's a pretty easy lift for most of us.

Bishop Knisely: If you give even a cup of cold water to one of these people

Bishop Knisely: because of their relationship with me, then you will receive a

Bishop Knisely: reward that is great in heaven.

Bishop Knisely: How do you feel about that?

Bishop Knisely: Because you're one of the little ones.

Bishop Knisely: Think about that, right?

Bishop Knisely: What if someone came up and said, hey, you're a member of

Bishop Knisely: Saint Peter's, right?

Bishop Knisely: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bishop Knisely: Have a cup of water on me.

Bishop Knisely: What would you think?

Bishop Knisely: Right?

Bishop Knisely: You belong to Jesus.

Bishop Knisely: If we could see you as the angels see you.

Bishop Knisely: We'd see the shining cross that's there on your forehead.

Bishop Knisely: That was put there when you were baptized.

Bishop Knisely: And the priest drew the sign of

Bishop Knisely: the cross in holy oil on your

Bishop Knisely: forehead.

Bishop Knisely: If we could see with the eyes of angels.

Bishop Knisely: We'd see the cloud of white

Bishop Knisely: light that surrounds you simply

Bishop Knisely: because you are one of the

Bishop Knisely: baptized.

Bishop Knisely: I mean, wow.

Bishop Knisely: What if you could see each other that way?

Bishop Knisely: Or what if you could see the people that you meet every day

Bishop Knisely: and see in them the image of God that they carry simply because

Bishop Knisely: they are human?

Bishop Knisely: The Pope talks about in his latest encyclical, The

Bishop Knisely: Magnificence of Our Humanity.

Bishop Knisely: And he's referring to artificial intelligence.

Bishop Knisely: But but I think he's also just

Bishop Knisely: making the point that one of the

Bishop Knisely: things that's extraordinary

Bishop Knisely: about our incarnate selves, our

Bishop Knisely: fleshy human nature, is that we

Bishop Knisely: carry the image of God within

Bishop Knisely: us.

Bishop Knisely: And because we carry the image

Bishop Knisely: of God, We look like Jesus to

Bishop Knisely: the universe.

Bishop Knisely: We all do.

Bishop Knisely: Simply by being human.

Bishop Knisely: It's extraordinary when you think about what it means to be

Bishop Knisely: made in the image of God, and the recognition that the rest of

Bishop Knisely: the universe gets a blessing simply by our presence in it.

Bishop Knisely: Now, you'd think we'd live up to that, right?

Bishop Knisely: And we'd live our lives in such a way that the relationships we

Bishop Knisely: have would typify the blessing that we are to other people.

Bishop Knisely: But we don't always do that.

Bishop Knisely: I was looking at the comment section of the New York Times

Bishop Knisely: articles this morning.

Bishop Knisely: I should not do that before I go to church.

Bishop Knisely: There was not a whole lot of recognition of the image of God

Bishop Knisely: in those comments.

Bishop Knisely: I got to tell you.

Bishop Knisely: People were arguing and they

Bishop Knisely: were biting, and they were

Bishop Knisely: pulling at each other just as we

Bishop Knisely: humans do.

Bishop Knisely: And in spite of all that, we are still made in the image of God.

Bishop Knisely: But what would it be like if we

Bishop Knisely: could actually live our lives

Bishop Knisely: that way?

Bishop Knisely: What would it be like if we

Bishop Knisely: actually saw each other as being

Bishop Knisely: created in the image of God, and

Bishop Knisely: treated each other with that

Bishop Knisely: kind of respect and dignity that

Bishop Knisely: is ours, not because we deserve

Bishop Knisely: it, but because of who we are in

Bishop Knisely: relationship with.

Bishop Knisely: I mean, that's kind of the point of the ecclesia.

Bishop Knisely: The word ecclesia is the word Paul uses for church.

Bishop Knisely: He uses it in Romans a number of times.

Bishop Knisely: It's not a new word.

Bishop Knisely: He's not making it up.

Bishop Knisely: Ecclesia is a Greek idea, and it means a crowd of people.

Bishop Knisely: And it's usually described by

Bishop Knisely: the teachers and the

Bishop Knisely: philosophers as being a

Bishop Knisely: fractious bunch.

Bishop Knisely: When an ecclesia is gathered, you know, there's going to be

Bishop Knisely: arguments and there's going to be pushing and shoving.

Bishop Knisely: And Paul uses that word for church.

Bishop Knisely: We tend to dress it up and we make it into ecclesiastical and

Bishop Knisely: we use fancy language.

Bishop Knisely: But but it really just means a crowd of grumpy people.

Bishop Knisely: And that's what Paul was

Bishop Knisely: describing and is describing all

Bishop Knisely: of us.

Bishop Knisely: And yet, because we're part of

Bishop Knisely: that crowd, if someone gives us

Bishop Knisely: a drink of water because we're

Bishop Knisely: part of that crowd, they get an

Bishop Knisely: extraordinary reward.

Bishop Knisely: You know, it's not like what it was with Abraham, who had to put

Bishop Knisely: everything on the line for his faith with God.

Bishop Knisely: Everything, everything he had been told, everything he

Bishop Knisely: believed, everything he and Sarah had hung their hopes on.

Bishop Knisely: He was asked to put on the line for God.

Bishop Knisely: And that faith is what makes him a hero.

Bishop Knisely: A hero whose memory has been preserved for all this time.

Bishop Knisely: We have it much easier or much harder.

Bishop Knisely: I don't know, because we have to do an easier thing and believe

Bishop Knisely: that the same consequence applies for us.

Bishop Knisely: We're celebrating our two hundred and fiftieth anniversary

Bishop Knisely: as a nation later this week.

Bishop Knisely: Hooray!

Bishop Knisely: We're not all excited about it.

Bishop Knisely: It's not like seventeen or nineteen seventy six.

Bishop Knisely: I remember what the Bicentennial was like.

Bishop Knisely: I'm older than I look, and I remember how we got dressed up

Bishop Knisely: and the way we celebrated it for the whole year.

Bishop Knisely: And here we are in the two fiftieth, and I feel like my

Bishop Knisely: daughter, who probably won't see the three hundredth, is getting

Bishop Knisely: cheated because she's not seeing the same thing.

Bishop Knisely: It's a moment.

Bishop Knisely: We're divided.

Bishop Knisely: We are at each other's throats.

Bishop Knisely: We're biting and sniping and pulling at each other.

Bishop Knisely: Just like in the comment sections of The New York Times.

Bishop Knisely: And yet that Ecclesia is all made in the image of God.

Bishop Knisely: You want to heal that?

Bishop Knisely: Try treating each other as if

Bishop Knisely: their dignity is not dependent

Bishop Knisely: on what they say or do or how

Bishop Knisely: they behave, but simply because

Bishop Knisely: they exist.

Bishop Knisely: And they were created in the image of God from the beginning.

Bishop Knisely: I have noticed it changes you.

Bishop Knisely: That guy who changed my tire changed my whole week because I

Bishop Knisely: saw myself differently.

Bishop Knisely: I don't usually think of myself

Bishop Knisely: as a person who serves at the

Bishop Knisely: altar.

Bishop Knisely: I think of myself as the person who worries about how we're

Bishop Knisely: going to pay the bills.

Bishop Knisely: He didn't see me that way, and

Bishop Knisely: because he didn't see me that

Bishop Knisely: way, I started to see myself, at

Bishop Knisely: least for a little while, in a

Bishop Knisely: different way.

Bishop Knisely: The guy who waited around outside the grocery store.

Bishop Knisely: I've never forgotten it.

Bishop Knisely: Clearly.

Bishop Knisely: What if you people of Saint Peter's could change?

Bishop Knisely: Maybe not the whole nation.

Bishop Knisely: Just change your neighborhood.

Bishop Knisely: Just change your neighborhood by

Bishop Knisely: treating each other as people

Bishop Knisely: who are worthy of dignity and

Bishop Knisely: respect.

Bishop Knisely: Not because of how you vote or

Bishop Knisely: what you believe, or the flags

Bishop Knisely: you fly or anything else like

Bishop Knisely: that.

Bishop Knisely: But simply because you are a human being and you are a child

Bishop Knisely: of God, and you glow with light by virtue of your baptism, and

Bishop Knisely: there is a shining cross on your forehead that the angels can see

Bishop Knisely: and long to witness.

Bishop Knisely: What if just being human is enough?

Bishop Knisely: That would be something.

Bishop Knisely: It might change your day.

Bishop Knisely: Amen.

Bishop Knisely: Amen.