Matthew 25:31-46
(Reading from The Message)
James 2:1-13
Rev. Ken Sauer, Pastor Grace United Methodist Church, Soddy Daisy, TN www.graceumcsd.org
“God’s Return on Investment May Not Work the Same as Your 401 (k)”
The following is a brief meditation written by Claudia Burney:
“Jesus lives next door.
He’s an eight-year-old girl and her three-year-old brother.
The Son of Man looks like those starving Ethiopian children.
Jesus only gets breakfast and lunch at school, when He makes it.
His mother is a crack addict.
Nobody knows where His daddy is.
Poor King of Kings.
Jesus is two houses down and has six children.
Now He’s pregnant with the seventh.
How does He expect His husband to feed all those babies on that salary?
That means hardworking taxpayers’ money has to go for Christ’s food stamps!
The Lord is a crazy man—paranoid schizophrenic.
If He doesn’t take His medication, He walks up and down the street, cussing and spitting on everybody He passes.
He’s homeless.
Nobody knows where His family is—if He’s got one.
Digs out of the trash cans for food.
Somebody ought to get Him off the street.
Jesus is nothing but a nuisance.
I’m starting to see the Son of God everywhere I go.
He’s always crying or begging or looking pitiful.
Why doesn’t He pull Himself up by His bootstraps?
This is America!
Makes me mad.
He’s ruining our neighborhood.
Somebody ought to do something about Him.
Somebody.”
Perhaps Jesus lives right next door to you or down the street.
He may even be in your own home.
The question I’d like us to ponder this morning is… “What are we going to do about Jesus?”
What are we going to do about the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the shivering, the sick, the imprisoned?
What are we going to do about Jesus?
Maybe we ought to start with, “What are we gonna do about these teachings of Jesus?”
Let’s consider Jesus’ parables.
A few chapters back in the Gospel of Matthew…
…in Matthew 13:24-43 Jesus tells the story of a field with some good crops and some weeds.
Since Jesus was speaking to people who understood at least the basics of farming, when Jesus got to the part about the weeds, the natural reaction of the crowd had to be, “Pull ‘em up! Plant good crops in their place.”
But Jesus has the landowner in the story leave the weeds in place.
Huh? Why?
Later on, in Matthew Chapter 20, Jesus tells an equally undermining story.
The owner hires some workers to work in the vineyard in the early morning.
Around nine o’clock some other guys show up and start working alongside them.
The same happens at noon and three- o’clock.
And they all get paid the same amount!
Scandalous!
These and other parables of Jesus inform us that the Kingdom of God looks a lot different from the kingdom of the world we live in!
Let’s face it.
In our culture, we have an understanding of a kingdom which is deeply imbedded in return on investment.
And this worldly culture-type of thinking sometimes enters our churches.
Church-growth consulting firms often provide charts and statistics showing where and how much investment will be required to “grow” a congregation.
But does this type of model, resonate with the model that Jesus Christ puts forth?
Is it what Jesus would do?
“Of course!” some of us might exclaim, as we move logically down the line in Matthew’s parables.
“What about the parable of the talents?
Didn’t Jesus talk about using our resources well?”
To that, the answer my friends is a big resounding “Yes!”
But what does that mean in God’s Kingdom?
Does it mean building fancy buildings and having the most state-of-the-art equipment in order to stay in the race with the world?
Or does it mean something more?
One thing we can see for sure as we look at Jesus’ parables is that God is already at work!
This is what the parable of the vineyard presupposes.
We don’t create the vineyard; we join as workers.
Whether you’re coming in at nine or noon, the harvest is huge!
And the Return on Investment may not work the same as the return on our 401 (k).
This is why Matthew 25 is so important as we try and answer the question: “What are we going to do about Jesus?”
Why did Matthew follow the parable of the talents with the parable of the sheep and goats, anyway?
Perhaps the answer is this: The Return on Investment for properly using the resources we have been given is determined by our ability to use those resources among “the least of these.”
Maybe the Return on Investment in the Kingdom of God has to do with how much love, empathy, money, time, and talents we use in investing in people—which is the same as investing in Jesus, is it not?
What a different model on Church Growth!!!
If our return on investment is determined by how much we invest in others how would this change how we use our time, talents and money?
For one thing, we may not be so careless with what we have.
If we were to see our stuff—our money, our time, our families, everything we have—as being given to us to use in the work of God’s Kingdom, we might be more careful with what we buy and how we use what we purchase.
We might also use a different measuring stick to define success!
How do we define God’s blessing on the church today?
More people, bigger buildings, better programs?
This is alluring…and it is easy to get caught up in all that!
Certainly we want more people!
But is that all there is to it?
I was speaking with Jeanne the other morning, and she was making some sort of statement about something having to do with church…something new and different in our household…
...and within the breath of whatever point she was trying to make she said, “Grace is a vibrant and growing congregation.”
To which I replied, well, I don’t know so much about the growing part…
To which she said, “Well, right now you may not be growing as quickly as you might want to grow in Sunday morning worship attendance and new members—but there are a lot of ministries taking place.
Grace is not a dead or dying church.
It’s alive and vibrant.”
And she’s right, although we do have a long way to go!...
…as we all know.
It would be awesome to have this building packed out every Sunday morning and all through the week, but what if God is measuring our success by completely different qualifications?
What if success in God’s Kingdom is more people being fed, less discrimination against other human beings, persons growing more and more in love for God and neighbor, less hate, taking care of the lonely or lost neighbor next door, ministering to persons living with HIV/AIDS, helping out at the Soddy Food Bank or downtown with Barry Kidwell’s ministry to the poor and homeless of Chattanooga, tithing our income or going way above the tithe because we know that in the United Methodist Church we are blessed to have a system of checks and balances…
…and we can be assured that the money we send to the District and the Conference will go to the work of the largest Christian Mission Organization in the world—The United Methodist Church!
What if success in God’s Kingdom is more about that, and less about us!
In Romans Chapter 12, Paul urges us—due to God’s mercy—to offer ourselves as living sacrifices!
That means we give all that we are and all that we have to God!!!
That is success!!!
That is the goal!
That is the measuring stick!
“What do we do about Jesus?”
We give Jesus everything!!!
And we do this through loving other people with Christ’s unconditional love—no matter whether they are rich, poor, black, white, illegal immigrants, male, female…you name it!!!
And we love them, not only by what we say to them or about them—but by what we do for them!!!
In our Epistle Lesson from James written by the biological brother of Jesus Christ Himself, James asks the question: “My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others?”
He goes on to tell us that when we discriminate by treating one person better than another—for any reason at all—we are being guided by “evil motives.”
“There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you.”
Are we merciful?
If so, how are we demonstrating this or how are we putting this mercy into practice?
This is the measuring stick of success!
Later on in Chapter 2 James writes: “What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions?
Can that kind of faith save anyone?
Suppose you see a brother or a sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, ‘Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well’—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?
You see, faith by itself isn’t enough.
Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.”
Is your faith alive or is it dead and useless?
God measures our success by completely different qualifications than that of the world.
Are more people being fed, are less people dying of AIDS, and are families being restored?
This is a very different understanding of what we should expect to receive from investing in God’s Kingdom!
It’s not a selfish thing—it’s about everyone!
What a thrill!!!
What a reason to invest!!!
The main point of the parable of the weeds that I mentioned earlier is this: “Who knows where God may be at work?”
And the best way to answer that question may be this: “God is at work when people act like Jesus.”
And we act like Jesus when we are bringing “good news to the poor,” proclaiming “release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,” and are helping to “let the oppressed go free”!
We are to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a lost and dying world!
Jesus invested in people—so should we!!!
Micah 6:8 states, “He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Act justly.
Love mercy.
Walk humbly.
These are actions.
Do these actions define you and I—do they define Grace United Methodist Church?
And you and I—we are Grace United Methodist Church—whether we are in here worshipping, studying the Bible together, or out in the world working with others one on one at work, at school, at the homeless shelter, at our neighbor’s house, in our own home!!!
Our faith and our actions cannot become two separate expressions of our commitment to God.
We can’t have one without the other.
We’ve all heard horrendous stories of leaders in the church who seem upstanding on Sundays but go home and abuse their wife and children.
Or what about those who praise God in church only to cheat customers and abuse employees in the workplace?
In this morning’s parable of the Sheep and Goats there are consequences for not caring for those at the margins.
What we do about Jesus has everything to do with how we treat those in need.
Did you give a cup of cold water, a hot meal, clothing, a place to stay, a bit of your time to sit and listen to those who couldn’t possibly return the favor?
The answer to the question of: “What do we do about Jesus” begins with the person sitting next to you, behind you or in front of you…
…it begins with the persons who live next door to us or down the street.
It begins with those who live in our own home, and it expands outward.
“Master, what are you talking about?
When did we see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink?
And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?
Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling you the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’”
May it be so!
Amen.
