"When Was It?" given November 23, 2014

          This morning is the Last Sunday After Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Christ the King, the closing Sunday of our current Liturgical year. This is the Sunday that sums up our previous year's journey of faith, as we have followed the Gospel accounts of the life and ministry and teachings of Jesus, according to Matthew.  As such, it's appropriate today that the framers of our Common Lectionary have chosen this particular text

from Matthew to bring our year's journey to a resounding climax. The reading is a familiar one. You’ll hear me preach more than once while I’m here, I promise you. And it also happens to be one of those choice juicy passages that I quote or refer to in sermons all the time.

          The scene is the last day-- the Last Judgment, the day of the final blow of the trumpet, the Day of the Lord.  It's one of the best known scenes in the Bible. Christ the Final Judge and Eternal King, is seated on the Throne of Heaven, judging not only the pagans, not just Israel, not just the USA, but all the nations.

          Jesus uses one last parable to describe the scene, to prepare his listeners-- and us-- for it.  As usual, He uses a parable from nature, from every-day life. During the daytime, shepherds in Jesus' time would allow their flock-- sheep and goats both-- to graze together.  Probably it was too much trouble to separate them. At night though, the shepherds would have to sort them out-- the goats needed shelter from the chill Palestinian night, but the sheep were hardy enough to survive out of doors. Since sheep are basically sort of off-white, and goats come in a variety of colors, that wasn't really too hard a task.                                                                                                                         It's that act of separating that's the heart of the parable. We all know it.  We're all familiar with the norm that the King on the Throne will apply. I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked, I was imprisoned, I was naked and alone and oppressed and powerless..

          "Sir, When did we see you? Sir, when did we not meet you or feed you or minister to you, or feed you?"

          Ann Weems writes,

"Inherit the kingdom prepared for me?

Why didn't somebody tell me?

"God, I'm sorry, but inflation has really hit me!"

"And taxes... Washington depends on me you know.."

"I promise you I'll have something for you God,

as soon as Tim and Grace graduate from college..

or if not then, as soon as Myra and I

finish paying for the house."

"God you know above anyone else, how sick I've been.

Hospitals cost so much...

maybe next year, I can afford You."

"Lord, you know I'd give the shirt off my back

to someone in need.. that is real need.

I just don't want anybody taking advantage of me,

that's for sure.

Some of these bleeding hearts in the church these days...

well, I'm just not all that sure where my money's going.

If I could be sure that it was going to help..."

"Lord, when did I see you so bad off?

When did I see you hungry or thirsty or and naked

and a stranger and in prison?

Lord, I would have done it to the least of these,

but how was I to know it wasn't somebody

taking advantage of me?"

          Lord, why didn't You tell me?

          Why didn't somebody tell me?

          "Sir, when did we not meet you? Sir, when did we not feed you or care for you, or reach out to you, or stand up for you, or empower you, or offer you health or hospitality?"

          That's a terrific scene-- an uplifting scene, even in some ways a terrible scene. It's filled with awe, and yet, despite it's power, despite the clarity of Jesus' injunctions to us in it, despite the straight-forward simplicity of His language-- we have persisted, through the ages, in taking that parable— the purest and most basic of Jesus’ teachings— and re-interpreting it, and twisting it, and using it to justify our own half-hearted response.

          At our best, we who bear the name of Jesus, have taken that scene, that commandment, and tried to tone it down, dilute it, institutionalize it, and transform it into a vague kind of give-charity-to-the-deserving- poor semi-guideline.

          I recall a wonderful woman at a previous church named Daisy. She came out of the deep South. She used to brag about her mother. Even in the depths of the Depression her mother would never turn away a tramp at the door, never let a hobo or an Okie go away hungry or without giving that person an old coat, or a patched but usable pair of pants.          And it didn't matter if that person was black or white, or any other color, young or old, man or woman-- they could always get a hand-out, at least a hot meal at that farm.

And Daisy's mother raised her children to do the same thing when they grew up and had homes of their own. Because, as she told them,

          "you never know-- that tramp might be the Lord in disguise."

          That's charity-- pure and simple. And charity is a wonderful thing. But it's not quite what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 25.

          Daisy's Momma gave charity because that hobo might be Jesus in disguise. But Jesus never said that He was going to go around in disguise to check out how hospitable and charitable His followers were to strangers. And Jesus doesn't want His followers to give hand-outs simply because we want to be counted with the sheep on the last day rather than the goats.

          Hand-outs aren't enough. Charity isn't enough. Hospitality motivated by fear of hell, or even pity isn't enough. You and I are called, as followers of Christ, to move beyond those things. We are called, as followers of Christ, to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and visit the sick-- because we love them.

          . Because, in this suffering and hungry world-- the needy, the miserable, the imprisoned, literally become Jesus— when we encounter them in our lives, and give them our love. The sad fact is that charity, hospitality, hand-outs, are simply not enough in this misery filled world.  All the give-a-ways, all the food programs, all the welfare, all the soup kitchens, all the sandwiches handed out through kitchen doors are not enough for all the hungry, starving people in this world.

          If we understand and believe that for us as Christians, the hungry and the needy and all the rest literally become Jesus Christ— calling out to us in our lives— then charity on its own, can never be enough.  If every Christian in the world practiced charity-- really practiced it-- like Mother Theresa's sisters, like Francis of Assisi-- it still would not be enough.

And if every single hungry person on the planet was fed as a result of that charity-- it still would not be enough.  It would still fail to purge the hate and inequity and violence and misery from the heart of this world. The Reign of Jesus Christ would just barely be getting started.

          The real purpose of the parable of the “Sheep and the Goats”  is to call us first to charity, and then beyond it. It calls us to transform our world.  It calls us to join in preparing our world for the day when our Sovereign shall indeed sit upon the Throne and judge the nations, and the peoples.

          In this passage, and indeed in the entire Gospel of Matthew, whenever Jesus uses the term "sisters and brothers", He's speaking of His followers, His disciples, His apostles who are charged to bring the Good News to the world. So Jesus is also speaking here of the reception of those who He sent out into the world with His mission and His message. To reject Christ's messengers, is to reject the message, is to reject Him.

          Thus, the poor, the suffering, the hungry, the needy, the naked, are Christ's messengers to us-- His agents among us-- His agents-- present day apostles carrying to you and to me the message that we are to participate in the salvation of the world-- in order to alleviate their misery-- and His.

          They carry a message to us, by their suffering, that is just as much the Word of God as any verse or passage of Scripture, just much the Word of God as any sermon preached in any pulpit over the past two thousand years. They are Jesus for us.

          Simply giving food aid to starving people is not a solution to the world wide problem of hunger. It would be a good start—but no more than that. Hungry people, from families to villages to nations need to develop self-reliance-- through the development of training and  resources today that will allow them to feed themselves tomorrow. It's easy in time of emergency, or natural disaster, or war, or famine for that concept to get lost. But we must strain to get beyond hand- outs and charity.

          That's hard to do, and hard to sell. Giving charity--quick food aid-- a buck to CARE or a sandwich at the door-- makes us feel good about ourselves.  But the truth is, that those things are ultimately ineffective on a long range global scale.

          But when we see every hungry person as Jesus Himself-- in person-- not might-be-Jesus-in-disguise, but as Jesus Himself-- if we see His face in the faces of starving babies, dying elderly, malnourished children with distended bellies, we can do no less than attempt to tackle this problem on a deeper scale-- the scale of love.

In the Gospel Lesson, Jesus asks us to accept His person, to accept His mission,

to accept our role as partners in building His coming Realm. In the Gospel Lesson for today, Jesus asks you and me to join Him in His fight against sin and against all the evil structures--political and corporate and religious-- and all the organizational patterns and attitudes that keep one third of humanity naked, hungry, thirsty, powerless and homeless. 

In the Gospel Reading for today, Jesus calls us to join Him in His struggle to cleanse and reform and renew this broken world that God has given us.

          For every donation we make to a local church pantry, we ought to also make one to UMCOR or CROP. And for every donation we make to fight world hunger, we ought to be sending letters to Congress on behalf of Bread for the World, and for every letter we send to him, we ought to be sending one to the President, to make clear our understanding as voters and as Christians that our country's domestic and overseas food policies need to change.

          That the use of food as a weapon or a political tool must stop. That the use of economic boycotts kill children.  That we as a nation will be called to account one day-- and that the answer to I was naked, I was hungry, I was thirsty is not: "well gee, after all, our government sold you guns. We trained your army and police in crowd control and torture and assassination."

          My brothers and sisters, when we finally come to understand that it is Jesus looking out at us through the eyes of that dying child in North Korea or Iraq. It is our Lord and Savior and King who is sorting through the rubble to find his lost family in the aftermath of

every earthquake, or tsunami or hurricane or tornado or forest fire—anywhere on this planet.  At this moment in time, it is our Redeemer who suffers and is being murdered or tortured by corrupt political regimes that our government supports. It is our Savior who comes to our pantry, hungry and without a referral.  Maybe if we could that straight in our minds and in our hearts,  we could begin to catch hold of the real meaning of Matthew 25 for our lives at the cutting edge of the Third Millennium of our faith.

          "I was hungry and you fed me and fought for me and helped me provide food for myself. I was thirsty and you gave me water, and helped me dig a well.  I was naked and clothed me, and you showed me how to build a loom. I was ill and in prison and you visited me, and built a hospital and you lobbied for me. I was in need and you cared for me and ministered to me without asking any questions.

          And you did it-- not just because it was me. You did all that because that's the sort of person that you are. You did it, because you loved me."