Matthew 25: 32-46
"When the Son
of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit
on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered
before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd
separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his
right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at
his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was
hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me
clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you
visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it
that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you
something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and
welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we
saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer
them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of
these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Then he will
say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was
hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to
drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did
not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”
Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry
or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take
care of you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as
you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to
me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous
into eternal life.’
SERMON
OVERHEARING
JESUS
I think that this scripture passage
is meant to tell us about how someone who does not know Christ can still
become a friend of Christ. The
key word is tenacious. The
Son of Man will come in glory; will gather all the nations together.
Now, that might mean everybody in the world.
But when the Bible talks about the nations, what they mean is the
gentiles, those who are not part of
Israel
; outsiders in other words.
Those who do not know God face to face and by name and by his law
and by his other acts. “The
nations” means that in the Old Testament; and then in the New
Testament, after the coming of Christ, the word “nations” is still
used in the exact same sense, only with the understanding that those who
know Christ have now become a part of Israel.
So the nations are people who do not know Christ.
And this teaching says that the Son of Man will gather all those
people together; and he will separate those people into sheep and goats.
And the sheep are those who enter into the blessedness prepared
for him from the foundations of the world.
I like the way that sounds. And they enter there because when
they saw someone who was hungry or thirsty or naked or sick or in prison
they took care of him. And
in doing so, the Son of Man says, they were taking care of him.
You see the kind of understanding this establishes, the idea that
you can know Christ even if you don’t know Christ’s name.
You can have a relationship with Jesus, even if you haven’t
been formally introduced. You
can be a follower or friend of Jesus, even if you are not part of the
church. A lot depends on the
individual case; a lot depends on the individual life story that’s
involved. But still the
basic teaching is that you can be united in Christ and not explicitly
realize it because in that last day, you will finally be shown that all
along, when you thought that you were caring for individual people out
there, you were also, at the very same time, caring for none other than
Jesus, himself.
If this interpretation is right, that resolves one of the really
basic issues in Christianity: What
about those who never knew? Or
what about those who were never told about Christ in a way that any
reasonable person could be expected to respond positively to?
This parable covers that; and this parable is the basis for John
Wesley himself saying that it is our duty to preach Christ to everyone;
and it is not our duty to figure out what Christ does with everyone
else. Just reach as many
people as you can; that was John Wesley’s basic motto, and let God
take care of the rest, trusting that God loves them and wants them to be
close to him. Back in the
1700’s the foundations of Methodism then provided us with some support
for this interpretation of Matthew 25.
We Christians are part of
Israel
, so we are not “the
nations”. “The
nations” are people who do not realize they are Christians and yet
through their ministry, through caring for others they have a
relationship with Christ. I’m
not saying that there are two paths to Christ that are totally different
from each other. There’s
not plan A and plan B with the understanding that they get to the same
place but by totally different routes.
That’s not what I’m saying here.
I think plan A and plan B exist; but I think they have to be
understood in such a way that they come down to being the same plan; a
unified plan. This lesson
helps us understand that, I think, by talking about how their kindness,
the sheep’s kindness, the things that the sheep did that allow them to
become sheep, caring for those who needed care was a way of ministering
to Christ. In other words,
they were having a relationship with Christ.
The relationship with Christ is the foundation for the faith we
practice in the church; but it’s also the foundation for this kind of
mysterious thing that people who don’t know Christ can still have with
him, the relationship they can have with him.
So in both cases it’s a relationship, so I think the scripture
gives us a model for understanding the two paths as really the same
path.
But I think we also need to do some honest soul searching of our
own sometimes lukewarm response to the needs of others.
I know I find so many times when I respond, it’s reluctantly or
begrudgingly or lukewarmly or distractedly to the needs of other people.
We all get barraged with so many opportunities to care for others
and we tend to regard those opportunities in the same way that the world
regards the crisis of the week.
There’s a terrible hurricane, it devastates a city and a whole
coastline and we care deeply about it.
We’re riveted to all the film footage.
We get involved in all the issues: Is there racism involved? Is
it “real looting” for one group and “just finding” for the other
group? the kinds of
things that are playing back and forth on the news right now.
Did the federal government respond quickly enough?
Should we expect the state and local governments to do more than
we traditionally expected? All
those kinds of issues are the way the world gets caught up in disasters,
in our own country. And in
foreign countries we get even less chance to do them.
But the main feature is, the everyday average citizen response to
disasters is that there tends to be a short life for the whole
experience; in a few weeks it’s become old news.
Within in a few weeks time, people are only noticing there’s an
ongoing clean up effort down there by the
Gulf of Mexico
; but it’s no longer what
chiefly concerns us. Even
this morning the passing of the Chief Justice William Rehnquist is
sharing the headlines with the disaster on the gulf coast. So if you
allow the news to form your conscience, your conscience is going to be
flitting from one thing to the other rapidly.
And that’s kind of the way it is with the world and we as
people who live in the world tend to be wrapped up in that.
But if we are really
Israel
, then we are called out in
the world. We are called to
be a covenant people with God. Our
covenant is slightly different than the covenant with the Jews; we
believe that it is founded in Christ and in his sacrificial death rather
than covenant in keeping the law. And
yet we also call Abraham and Sarah our father and our mother.
We also look to Moses and David, we look to
Jerusalem
and then finally we see
Jesus Christ as a culmination of all those things.
So we belong to the unity that’s set apart from the world that
watches the news along with everybody else; and then cares about
something else next week. I
think then, that what Christians are called to do in response to these
disasters is to keep on caring even after they are no longer pressing
matters, or matters of immediate shock value.
We need to keep on ministering even when it has moved beyond the
kind of ministry that everybody feels called to engage in.
There’s a huge worldwide effort right now.
I love to see the fact that
Nigeria
and
Cuba
and other countries have
been offering tangible aid to the
United States
at a time like this.
It’s a time when the worldwide family is responding.
That won’t last too long, and the glamour of it, if you will,
the shocking nature, the pressing-ness of it that makes it so riveting,
that will wear off. That
we’ll get used to, even if you love
New Orleans
, as I do, we’ll get used
to it. But there’s still a
need to keep on caring and that’s something the church can be doing;
and that is what I think we need to be doing.
And that makes us a lot more like the sheep who do not know Jesus
but who nevertheless do minister to him.
What I’m saying, I think, is that you can’t separate the
paths to Christ: one of them being an intellectual path where you
understand about Jesus and that’s enough to save you; and one being an
ethical path where you do good works and that’s enough to save you.
It’s not like that. It’s
all founded on relationship with Christ.
And our beliefs, if they don’t have that active relationship
involving caring for those who suffer, our beliefs are probably not
strong enough to qualify as real beliefs.
And so we need to be like the sheep in the parable, even though
they are gentiles and we are not. We
need to be like them. Our
approach does turn out to be the same approach.
So in a sense, being a member of
Israel
doesn’t get us off the
hook from caring for those who have needs.
Being a part of
Israel
means that we have to keep
on caring because we are aware of whom we are caring for.
The world knows that they are caring for other human beings, and
that’s true. We, the
church know that while we care for these other human beings, it’s
actually Christ whose face we see, whose hands we touch, whose person we
minister to. That was the
secret. It’s a gift that
all Christians of every denomination and standing and background can
share. It’s our way
of being close to Jesus.
So, overhearing Jesus, listening to him talk about those who are
not part of the Christian church and how they can still be saved by
caring for him through caring for suffering people, may help us deepen
our sense of what it means to have an open relationship with Jesus,
where we do know him by name. And
yet, for that knowing him by name to be real, we too, need to be engaged
in caring. We aren’t asked
to do less because we know Jesus; we are expected to do more.
Overhearing Jesus can help us know more deeply, more fully
exactly what Jesus wants us to be like.
Amen.
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