“Seeing Jesus Everywhere”
Matthew 25:31-46
If we were to go back and read the end of Chapter 24 and the entire 25th Chapter of Matthew we would see Jesus telling a parable about the importance of staying awake because the Master comes at an unexpected time, the importance of bringing extra oil for the long night of waiting, and using what God has given us for His Kingdom.
Today’s lesson is what it looks like to stay awake waiting for the return of Christ.
This is what it looks like to bring extra oil.
The oil has become food and drink, clothing and hospitality.
This is what it looks like to invest our talents while Jesus is away.
Investing them in those who have nothing to eat or drink, those who are naked and sick, those who are strangers or imprisoned—those who will probably not increase our portfolio.
This is what it means to live as those Who have received the free gift of faith and salvation and are being transformed through following and learning from Jesus Christ.
And I know it’s not always easy or convenient.
This past Wednesday, when I started preparing for this sermon, I had to run out the door to do a funeral.
When I got to the door a stranger was standing there.
He had a list of problems and at least three things he needed me to do for him.
I was thinking to myself, “I don’t have time for this!”
But then, I remembered the Scripture I had been studying for this morning and it helped re-orient my priorities.
But, yes, feeding the hungry who show up at our door, giving drinks to the thirsty, welcoming the strangers, clothing those who need clothes, and visiting the sick and imprisoned rarely happens on our schedules, on our preplanned agendas.
It’s rarely convenient.
But it is what it means to follow Jesus.
Why are we in such a hurry?
Why don’t we pay attention to life as we live it?
Why do we miss so much?
In Matthew 25, both groups, sheep and goats alike, say they didn’t realize that the poor of the world represented Jesus.
Both missed that connection.
Ever notice that before?
The righteous are not commended for seeing Jesus in the poor, the hungry, the prisoners.
They didn’t.
They just treated all such folks with love.
But suppose those who failed to give a drink to the thirsty and food to the hungry were to ask Jesus, “When did we brush you aside, Lord?”
And then the Lord replies, “You did it every time you brushed them aside.”
But suppose these folks counter again by asking, “Well, how were we supposed to know that?
If we had known it had been You all along, Lord, we would’ve acted differently.”
Sometimes you hear this kind of thing from people who went to high school or college with someone who went on to become President of the United States—“If I had known that was going to happen, I would’ve been his friend.”
“If we had known it was you, Lord…” the goats want to say.
“Why didn’t You just say something?”
And Jesus might reply 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 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, you would have been led to do the right thing.”
And so, here is a question for all of us to ask ourselves: Can we see the true humanity, the image of God, in the needy people of this world?
Do we take care to remind ourselves of that fundamental, basic identity of the poor and marginalized?
In our world, it seems like too often we talk in generalities—in broad strokes that conveniently let the humanity of others fall away.
We have a tendency to lump problems and people together: the homeless, the welfare class, the Third World, the mentally ill, the unemployed, and illegal immigrants.
There’s scarcely a human face to be seen in any of these broad categories.
Or worse, there is at best the caricature of a face to stand in for the whole group.
It’s like punching up “the poor” on Google Images—you’ll see lots of typical pictures of the category, but no one whose name you’ll ever know, whose story you’ll ever hear.
It’s easy to forget that the people who are homeless really are people, God’s very image among us.
Someone once suggested that it would be a good spiritual discipline for all of us to go to a place like O’Hare Airport in Chicago or Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, sit down somewhere, and just watch the people go by.
You maybe know up front what you’ll see: you’ll watch the harried mom with three little kids under the age of 6.
Two of the kids are hollering or begging to stop at the McDonalds even as the mom is snapping in anger.
You’ll watch the well-to-do person waiting in a gate area, impeccably dressed and reading something off his or her iPhone.
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 for that arrogant-looking teenager because each one of them, somewhere under all that exterior stuff, is made in the likeness of the Almighty God.
Let’s dare not reduce them to statistics alone.
The writer Jonathan Kozol, who has devoted much of his career to studying children in places like the South Bronx, says he is now embarrassed to remember some of the ways by which he himself once talked.
Kozol says that he used to march up to Capital Hill in Washington to advocate for more money for good programs like Headstart.
And when he did, he’d say things like: “Every dollar you invest in Headstart today will save the country $6.00 later in lower prison costs.”
Now he says, “Why not invest in them just because they’re babies and they deserve to have some joy in life before they die!?”
We Christians can do better than that: They’re God’s beloved, chips off the divine block as surely as any one of us.
Kozol also notes he has run across people on the East Coast who spend upwards of $30,000 per child each year to send the child to an upscale private school.
After giving speeches in which he has advocated for pouring more resources into poor areas of this nation, Kozol has been asked by some of these people if he really thinks spending more money will solve the education problems of the poor.
His reply is: “Well, it seems to do the trick for your children, doesn’t it?”
Jesus has shown us that loving God is the first and greatest commandment and that the second is very much like it: loving our neighbors.
To keep the second commandment, we must be committed to the first, having our whole selves, mind, body, heart and soul, given over to God’s transforming presence of love.
The God Who is Love enables us to love well.
In our human frailty, if we can stop living as though love is a scarce resource we might run out of, we can “risk it” on others by putting love into action—these very things that Jesus lists that will be part of the Final Judgement.
Feeding someone who is hungry, giving drink to someone who thirsts, making someone feel welcome, visiting the sick or imprisoned.
These acts of kindness communicate to someone that they matter and are worthy of love.
They are also things that all of us can participate in.
We need not be wealthy to do these things; we need not be the most educated.
It puts us all on equal ground—which is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ always does.
There were two men who found today’s passage to be so very true.
One was Francis of Assisi; he was wealthy but he wasn’t happy.
He felt like his life was incomplete.
Then one day he was out riding and met a leper whom he found repulsive because of the ugliness of his disease.
Something moved Francis to get off his horse and fling his arms around the leper, and in his arms, the face of the leper changed to the face of Christ.
The other was Martin of Tours.
He was a Roman soldier and a Christian.
One cold winter day, as he was entering a city, a beggar stopped him and asked for money.
Martin didn’t have any, but the beggar was blue and shivering with cold, and Martin gave what he had.
He took off his soldier’s coat; cut it in two and gave half of it to the beggar.
That night he had a dream.
In it he saw the heavenly places and all the angels and Jesus among them; and Jesus was wearing half of a Roman soldier’s cloak.
One of the angels said to Him: “Master, why are you wearing that coat? Who gave it to you?”
And Jesus answered softly, “My servant Martin gave it to me.”
In verse 34 Jesus says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.”
From Genesis on the message has been clear: we are blessed to be a blessing to others.
God has blessed us with mercy and when we believe and trust this to be true, we will be more merciful.
We love because God first loved us.
Being loving and kind, compassionate and merciful, can become so much of who we are that we’ll forget we are doing something extraordinary on our hate-filled world.
We’ll ask Jesus, “When did we do these acts of service to you?” because sharing love and being committed to compassion, will be so second nature that we won’t be thinking of their eternal consequences.
It’s a bit of a shock to the system.
The idea that the two greatest commandments can be so thoroughly integrated into our lives that God sees them as one!!!
Jesus describes this as righteousness.
What a goal to reach for.
The alternative is not pretty, Jesus describes it as an “accursed” state in verse 41, one that describes the devil and his minions—agents that have refused to accept the gracious love of God and act with opposite purposes to the will of God.
Dale Bruner believes “cursed” connotes “people who have been feeling or at least fighting the love of God for them and the wrath and judgment of God against their deeds.”
In other words, denying yourself God’s love is disastrous, a sure-fire way to fail, and a path to disobedience.
It’s impossible to be a Christian in name only.
Of course, we know that none of us are perfect and we keep failing in our attempts to be faithful and obedient to God’s plan for our lives.
But there is a difference in being willing to keep trying because we trust in the love invested in us by God.
Trying to make excuses, disclaimers, or limitations that get us off the hook for being loving and kind is self-deceit and will eventually make us ignorant of God’s presence in ourselves and in others to the point that we won’t know when we’ve had a Spirit-led opportunity, forcing us to ask the Lord when we saw Him in need and did not help Him.
It’s called hardening our hearts.
And there’s too much of that in this world.
The only way to live is to see Jesus in everyone and to treat them accordingly.
Some of you know that I love this poem 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.
He only gets breakfast and lunch at school, when He makes it.
His mama is a crack whore.
Nobody knows where His daddy is.
I heard His mama lets her “Johns” do things to Him.
Poor King of Kings.
Jesus is two houses down and has six children.
Now He’s pregnant with the seventh.
I don’t know if He hasn’t figured out what birth control is, or what, but how does He expect His husband to feed all those babies on that salary?
And you know with all those kids the Lord of Lords can’t work.
That means hardworking taxpayers’ money has to go for Christ’s food stamps!
He needs to get fixed.
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.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are SOMEBODY and we have a New Year ahead of us and Jesus Christ is knocking on the doors of this church every day!
What a privilege!
What an opportunity we have to serve the King of Kings!
Amen.
