A Cup of Cold Water
Today’s Gospel gives us only a few lines, and one simple image: a cup of cold water. These are the closing words Jesus gives his disciples as he sends them out into the world: “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.” Such a small thing. But inside it is a heart that notices someone who is thirsty and refuses to look away. It is not a great gift. It is not a great sacrifice. And yet Jesus does not treat this small act lightly. He says it will not be forgotten before God. Why would that be? Because this small act is harder than it sounds. The hard part is not giving the water. The hard part is giving it to the person we would rather overlook.
Jesus says, “one of these little ones.” When we meet people, we judge them faster than we like to admit. What kind of person is this? Will they be useful to me? Do I need to impress them? Or can I simply walk past them? We may say otherwise, but some part of us has already started judging. We look at someone’s clothes, their speech, their title, their background, and our attitude shifts accordingly. That is why people try so hard to be taken seriously. They dress well. They seek out good positions. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. The problem is treating someone as small simply because they lack those things. As Christians, we cannot accept this instinct as normal. If our attitude toward someone changes—even quietly, in our hearts—because of their background or circumstances, that should trouble us. But this is not the shame that crushes us. It is the kind of shame that wakes us up and turns us back toward the heart of Christ.
The “little one” Jesus speaks of may be someone who offers us no benefit at all. Someone easily overlooked, treated as if they were not even there. Jesus tells us to give that person a cup of cold water. And then he says: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Faith is not found only in places that feel sacred or far away. It is revealed in the way we receive the person standing before us. How do we treat the person in front of us? How do we receive someone who offers us nothing in return? That is where our faith begins to show itself.
I have been reading Tolstoy’s Resurrection. In it, a man who once treated another person as small finally looks back on his own life. A young nobleman encounters a woman again in a courtroom. She had been born into poverty and worked as a servant. But his careless actions destroyed her life, and she ends up standing trial as a criminal. Too late, he understands. He sees how lightly he had treated her. He sees how deeply his status and power had wounded one person’s life. He is ashamed. But that shame finally awakens his soul. When we see a person as a person again, life itself can begin again. When we look at someone who seems insignificant and see them again as a person standing before God, that same new beginning can happen in us.
True faith sometimes leads us to face a truth we would rather avoid. We find a related truth in today’s reading from Jeremiah. Jeremiah and Hananiah stand before the people. Hananiah says what the people want to hear. He comforts them: Babylon’s yoke will soon be broken, and everything taken from them will soon return. How welcome those words must have sounded to a weary people. When we are struggling, we all want something to lean on like that. It is not that Jeremiah has no desire for restoration. He, too, longs for peace. That is why he says first: “Amen! May the Lord do so.” But Jeremiah does not stop there. He reminds them that comforting words and God’s truth are not always the same thing. True comfort does not cover over reality. God’s word sometimes makes us face the very truths about life we would rather avoid. One of those truths is this: our lives are short.
When we hear that someone has died, it hurts. We grow quiet for a moment, and think a little deeper. But before long, we return to our ordinary days. They are gone, and quietly, we are relieved that we are still here. But every one of us is living, day by day, toward an ending. To be alive means that someday we must lay this life down. That may sound bleak. But when we truly remember this, life can become a little lighter. We hold on less tightly. We keep score less carefully. We become a little more generous.
Our lives are something like riding a bus. Each of us is a passenger who has boarded for a while, and who will, someday, get off. Some carry heavy baggage; others carry nothing at all. Some are strong and healthy; others are already worn thin. But everyone gets off eventually. What truly matters while we are on that bus? Was my seat comfortable? Did people recognize me? For a time, those things may feel important. But as the next stop draws near, what remains is the warmth we have shared with others. Did I steady someone when the bus lurched? Did I give up my seat for someone who was tired? When someone’s bags were too heavy, did I help carry the load? These small things are what truly change our lives. But if everyone on that bus thinks only of themselves—if everyone believes only their own comfort matters—the ride quickly becomes unbearable. Even traveling the same road, we become burdens to one another.
That is why we need grace to be our compass on this journey. In today’s reading from Romans, Paul urges us: “No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.” For Paul, grace does not end as a private comfort in the heart. Grace touches our bodies, our choices, our everyday lives. So the question is not only what we believe. It is what we give ourselves to. Fear? Greed? Other people’s approval? Or God? A life given over to God sometimes shows itself quietly, in nothing more than a cup of cold water. It begins with the small act of noticing someone else’s thirst.
Today’s Psalm sings: “Your love, O Lord, for ever will I sing; from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness.” This is not a song sung only when all is well. Later in Psalm 89 comes lament, a broken reality, a promise that seems shattered, a painful question raised before God. And yet the psalm still sings of God’s love. Because even when the world shakes, God’s faithfulness goes deeper still. Our position, our health, our relationships, all of these will shake, someday. But God’s faithfulness runs deeper than any of these. That is why we do not have to grasp at everything. We do not have to keep proving ourselves through what we possess. When that faith takes hold, we become a little freer. And within that freedom, we stop judging others so quickly. We stop dismissing small things as small.
Today, Jesus does not ask us to do something great. He asks for a cup of cold water. What is the cup of cold water that I can give right now? It may be patience with someone who has tested us. It may be a small kindness no one else will notice. It may be simply seeing someone we usually overlook as precious before God. We are all thirsty in some way. And even so, each of us has a cup of water to offer. We are all riding the same bus. And one day, each of us will get off. While we are still riding together, may we be a little more merciful to one another. With one cup of cold water, the kingdom of God can begin among us, even now. Amen.