When Not?
Rev Dr Mark Porizky
11/25/07
Matthew
25:31-46 (Thank you to Nancy Parent and One Sabbath)
‘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.’
Since the start of the holiday season is now just around the corner, it
is likely that at least a few of us will soon watch some or perhaps the entire
classic holiday movie It's a Wonderful Life, my
all-time favorite movie.
In the story, a man named George Bailey despairs that his life is so
worthless that it would have been better had he never been born at all. In order
to prove him wrong, Clarence the guardian angel lets George experience what the
world would have been like had the man George Bailey never existed. As most of
us know, George discovers that his seemingly humdrum life affected far more
people than he could have guessed. A myriad of little, and not-so-little, things
that George had done over the course of his lifetime combined to make his
hometown of
A similar point is made in Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play,
Our Town. The play's central character, Emily, is given a chance,
following her death, to view a scene from her past. She is told that it cannot
be some obviously important day but should be a fairly ordinary time from her
bygone life--indeed, she is told that re-visiting even the least important
day of her life would suffice to teach Emily something very important.
Emily chooses to re-visit her 12th birthday, only to discover
a vast array of things about that day she had completely forgotten. More than
that, however, she is stunned to see how fast life moves and how little she or
anyone paid attention to what was happening as her life was happening. In the
end, Emily cannot bear to watch. "I can't. I can't go on," she cries.
"We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that
was going on and we never noticed . . . “
She end by asking, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they
live it?" The answer is no.
Instead, Emily is told that, for the vast majority of people, to be alive is
"to move about in a cloud of ignorance."
Emily didn't realize. George Bailey didn't realize. They simply were not
aware of the larger meaning around them every, the larger meaning of every
minute of every, every day.
This phenomenon of meaning plays a surprisingly large role in Jesus'
words about the sheep and the goats. It
fascinates me that whatever else may distinguish these two groups from one
another, they do share at least one thing in common: both had lived their lives
without realizing something. One group had, the King declares, ministered
directly to Jesus himself while the other group had, essentially, directly
snubbed Jesus. The righteous group is commended whereas the other group is sent
packing; the first group is welcomed into a pleasant-sounding kingdom whereas
the other group is shuttled off to a decidedly hellish-sounding location.
Strikingly, however, before that happens, both groups ask the exact same
question: "When did all that stuff happen?" Jesus tells the righteous
folks that he was grateful for all the ways they had nourished, welcomed,
clothed, tended to, and visited him. But the righteous cannot for the life of
them recall doing any of that for Jesus, and so they ask, "Well now, when
did we do all that for you, Lord?" Conversely, the wicked cannot for the
lives of them recall ever seeing Jesus anywhere, much less in need of anything,
and so they ask, "Well now, what day was that when we missed seeing you,
Jesus?" One group did the right things to Jesus, the other group failed to
help Jesus, but neither realized it.
The reason is because Jesus identifies himself with the hurting of this
world so that whatever we do, or fail to do, in relation to those hurting people
directly affects Jesus. But we forget. We don't realize life while we live it.
But we should at least try.
That's why Matthew 25 is here. We, as Christians, should be more aware of
what is going on around us, where Jesus is to be found, and how we are to treat
him. In our lives, do we see the
marginalized of the world? And when we see them, are we moved to help them, even
if it is through relatively modest ways of serving?
Because notice that the words of the King in these verses do not point to
some heroic life of magnificent or miraculous deeds. The kinds of ministries
Jesus highlights are what we could call quite ordinary. He does not say that the
sick must be healed by us but that it is enough to look after them. He
does not say that those in prison must be liberated by us but that it
is enough just to visit them in prison. The other items are
likewise matters of common sense and decency: when someone is hungry, you do
what you can to get her food. It's basic. A thirsty person needs water. Someone
shivering in the chill of a
But in Matthew 25 Jesus is taking us down to the street level of both
seeing and then ministering to ordinary situations. Jesus is saying that poverty
and social dislocation are present in life and are likely to remain present so
long as this current order of the cosmos goes on.
No matter what we do, no matter what kind of political system we live
under, no matter which party is in the White House, somehow for whatever reason
there will always be hungry, thirsty, ill-clad, homeless, sick, and imprisoned
people. That's what's out there, Jesus says. How will you respond? It's a vital
query because somehow they are all Jesus.
But we forget. We don't realize life as we live it. Then again, in this
particular situation, realizing the Jesus-connection may not even be necessary.
Remember: in Matthew 25 both groups say they didn't realize that the poor of the
world all represented Jesus. Both missed that connection, but that ignorance
doesn't matter.
But if so, then suppose that those who had failed to do ministry were to
ask the King a counter-question. First they ask, "When did we brush you
aside, Lord?" and the Lord replies, "You did it every time you brushed
them aside." But suppose these folks countered by asking,
"Well, how were we supposed to know that? If we had known it had been you
all along, Lord, why by God we would've acted differently!"
At some point we've probably all watched a TV show in which a character
behaves rather rudely toward some stranger only to realize at some point that
this person is someone famous. The waiter at a restaurant is being rather snappy
with the person who seems to be having trouble deciding what to order. But then
the waiter realizes that this hesitant diner is none other than Clint Eastwood,
and instantly the waiter has all the patience in the world as he fawns over the
famous man.
Couldn't the wicked say something like, "Well, dear Lord, why didn't
you tell us it was you all along? We would have done things different
if we had known." What might the Jesus’ response to that be? Maybe it
would be along the lines of this. "You didn't have to know it was me all
along--the righteous didn't either. It should have been enough to realize no
more than that this other person was a human being created in the very image of
God! If you had known no more than that (and you did!), that would have been
enough. You didn't need to know it was me. Had you simply acknowledged their
humanity, their God-likeness, you would have been led to do the right
thing."
Someone once suggested that it would be a good spiritual discipline for
all of us to go to a place like Stop and Shop, sit down somewhere, and just
watch the people go by. You maybe know up front what you'll see: you'll spy the
harried mom with three little kids under the age of 6. Two of the kids are
hollering or begging for this or that toy, the mom is snapping in anger and
maybe even being a bit profane. You'll spy the rather obese person who lumbers
along short-of-breath as she piles her cart high with Twinkies and cheap beer.
You'll see the more well-to-do person waiting in a checkout lane behind the
young couple in tattered blue jeans who are furtively paying their bill with
food stamps. You'll see a little bit of everything eventually. But in your
heart, it would be a good discipline to say of each person, "Jesus died for
you."
Jesus died for him, for her, for that skinny one, for that chunky one;
for that stressed-out mom and that arrogant-looking teenager because each one of
them, somewhere under all that exterior stuff, is made in the likeness of
Almighty God himself. We dare not reduce them to statistics alone.
Friends, Jesus is not suggesting that we begin excessively creative
programs, that we do the social equivalent of a circus high-wire act or that we
perform miracles. He simply asks us to see God (and by extension, Jesus) in the
people around us. And so perhaps it would be a useful exercise for us to try, as
often as we can, to say an actual person's name whenever we are dealing with
broad categories of social problems (as inevitably we will do).
When someone begins talking about "the homeless," say the name
Juanita to yourself, because maybe she's a precious person you met one night
when volunteering at the New London Community Meal Center Whenever you hear
people speaking generally about the education deficits of inner city youth,
speak the name of Jeremy, because maybe you met Jeremy when volunteering as a
mentor at one of Groton’s middle schools.
When you hear someone talking about kids on welfare, summon to your mind
and to your mouth the name of Selena--see her pretty little face, recall the
sweetness of her voice, and act based on the knowledge that every kid out there
on welfare is like Selena (and so like God and like Jesus).
But suppose you find you can't do that. You can't repeat the name of a
hungry child because you've never met one. You can't see in your mind's eye the
face of a homeless mother or father because you've never spoken with one. That
alone may indicate the first thing you need to do, and I also can hardly claim
that for any category you might name, I myself have a batch of real names
ready-to-hand. We all have work to do, it seems, really to know and then care
for the other in our midst (who is also Christ in our midst).
If we take Matthew 25 seriously and more-or-less at face value, then we
cannot help but be reminded of the famous line from St. Francis of
Jesus' answer will quite probably be, "When not?"
Will you pray with me now?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church, Groton
,
Web Site: WWW.SAPC-CT.ORG
Office Email: OFFICE@SAPC-CT.ORG
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