"seeing Jesus Everywhere"

“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.