Next week is the first week in Advent,
and it has kind of a double vision, looking both forward and backward, forward
to what we call the second coming, and backward to the first. This week, we’ve jumped forward to the
kingdom’s arrival, and it’s a
well-known passage: Jesus says “just as you did it to one of the least of these
. . . you did it to me.” And we often
stop right there, and interpret it as exhortation to do good, to be all around
good people, to do social justice in Christ’s name. And that’s not a bad way to
see it, of course . . . how many of us, when we see somebody in rags, or obviously
homeless or stranded, how many of us have passed on by? No need to raise your
hands . . . I bet most of us have done that . . . I know I have . . . but how many of us, if
we saw it was Jesus trudging along Highway 4, would keep on truckin’? None of
us, I imagine. And that’s what this passage says, at least in part – refusing to help people in need is the
same as passing by Jesus. Helping
people in need is the same thing as helping Jesus.
But if we see this passage as just a
call to visit the jail once in awhile, or haul some clothes down to Goodwill,
we miss the overall thrust of
the passage. It isn’t about the righteous sheep, or the accursed goats, or even
about the needy themselves. It’s about Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, and that’s
appropriate – it is, after all, Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the
Church year. Next week, it all starts up again – the lighting of the Advent
candles, the singing of “O Come O Come, Emmanuel,” the count-down to Christmas
and then Easter . . . but this week we take a look at the person of Jesus, whom
we call the Christ.
Jesus calls himself the “Son of
Man,” and it’s the most disputed of all his titles. Just what it meant is obscure
to us two thousand years after the fact . . . but for Matthew and his readers,
it probably implies an apocalyptic rescuer who will come as a judge at the end
of time, and sure enough, our passage is
about judgment at the end of time, it’s about judgment day – the Son of Man
will come in glory, Jesus says, and “all the angels with him,” and “he will sit
on the throne of his glory.” And it is glorious, this image of the final
times . . . all the nations will be gathered there, all the peoples from the ends
of the earth, and he will rule over them all from his throne of glory.
But our image of the future comes
crashing back down to the present reality, or at least to the reality at the
time Jesus spoke . . . in the last lines of his speech, as the disciples wonder
at the sheep and goats, and the Shepard-King who separates them, in the last
line of his speech Jesus brings them right back down to earth – “after two days
the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be
crucified.” The Son of Man! The king and judge and jury, all rolled into one –
handed over like a slave to a horrible death.
And our tale of sheep and goats and
clothing and feeding is embraced within diametrically opposed images of the Son
of Man – sovereign Lord, Son of God, sitting on the judgment-throne versus humiliated slave, spiked to a
tree, gasping out his last breaths in the gloom . . . and the identity of
Christ spans these two extremes, because as Christians we confess that he has
been crucified, dead and buried and yet will return in glory, thus, as we say,
“to judge the quick and the dead.”
But in the meantime . . . haven’t we
been assured that Jesus is here?
Doesn’t he say, in the last line of Matthew’s Gospel “Lo, I am with you, even
to the end of the age”? How can he be with us, and yet return to us? Most often we say – he’s with us in spirit now, but will return in flesh at the second coming, and
although it’s a workable
answer, it’s not very satisfying, because it doesn’t really say anything . . . it sounds like
what we say at funerals – “Uncle Bob will always be with us in our hearts . .
.” but you’d hope it’d mean a little more than that.
Our passage gives us a clue . . .
sandwiched in between contrasting images of the Son of Man is the story of the
separation of the flock. He sits on his throne and separates the sheep from the
goats, and tells the sheep: “Come . . .
inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” But he tells the goats: “depart from me
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels!” These goats, he
says, “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into
eternal life.”
Eternal punishment. Consuming fire.
Pretty serious stuff . . . but the kicker, the really surprising thing is the reasoning: the righteous and accursed
aren’t separated according to those who have faith, and those who don’t; or who
is chosen by God and who isn’t. There’s not a lot of grace here, that I can see
– those who inherit the kingdom are those that give food to the hungry, drink
to the thirsty, who welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick
and visit the prisoners. Those that are consigned to the fires with the devil
and his minions are those that don’t do those things. It’s as simple as that.
Now this may be surprising to those of
us brought up on God’s grace, and it surprises the sheep, too, so they ask him
about it, they ask when they did this stuff for him, when did they feed him,
and clothe him and comfort him and visit him in jail? And his answer is simple
“when you did it to the least of these.” But the goats are just as shocked: “when
was it we did not take care of you?”
Jesus answers them the same way: “When you did not do it to the least of these,
you did not do it to me.”
So here’s one way Jesus is “with us
always” he’s with the hungry, he’s with
the naked, the stranger and the prisoner . . . but it’s more than just being
with them, it’s a stunning, intimate closeness . . . in some sense he is
them, because whatever we do – or don’t
do – to the naked and the stranger, the hungry and the sick, we do – or don’t do – to Jesus. It’s more than
just he is with them, it’s an identification
with them, they represent Christ to us on this earth, in this age, until the
fulfillment of the kingdom, until he comes again.
So here we have a triple-lensed image of
Christ, a three-fold rendering of the Lord’s presence. First, he is Son of Man
who comes in glory, trailing angels like stars, sitting in judgment on a
brilliant throne. Second, he is the despised and rejected of the world, the
hungry and the naked, the sick and the stranger. Finally, he is the Son of God,
who suffers and is handed over to be crucified, to be hung up on a cross. The
three views are inextricable one from another, you can’t untangle them, or talk
about one apart from the others. He is the judge who will come like the
morning, to separate the sheep from the goats, but who is himself judged, who dies to “save his people from their sins.” A
different kind of judge, to say the least, and a different kind of
judgment. He is the king of the universe,
ruler of the cosmos, ensconced on a throne of glory, who is at the same time
suffering and hungry and naked, at one with the sick and the outcast and the
marginal. A different kind of king, to say the least, and a different kind of
kingdom.
In Jesus Christ, these three roles,
these three images are held in tension, they are compatible only in
him . . . he is at their center, and if we reject any one of them, we reject him . . . if we reject the Shepherd
king, we reject the outcasts. And if we reject the outcasts, the hungry and the
unclothed, we reject the savior of us all.
And that was the lesson for Jesus’ disciples, and it’s the same for
us today . . . caring for the outcasts, the naked and the stranger, the poor
and the prisoner is the same as caring for Jesus; accepting them is accepting
Jesus. If feeding the hungry is feeding Jesus,
if giving caring for the sick is
caring for Jesus, the
relationship between them is far more than casual . . . it is one of
equivalence, of intimacy . . . Jesus’
identity is somehow bound up in
the weakest, most despised members of society. But the taking care of the outcast –
which is taking care of Jesus – places us in a similar, vulnerable
position. It’s not just
carrying a turkey down to the shelter on Thanksgiving, or working the food bank
on Christmas eve, although these things are surely important. Caring as Jesus
did means intimate involvement, it means identifying
with those we care for, just as he did. When we clothe the naked, we are with them in their shame, in their
unclean-ness, we guide them to the healing love of Jesus Christ. When we feed
the hungry, we do it no matter how
they got that way, like we would a sister, or a brother, or our savior . . . do
we judge them? Do we means-test them?
And when we welcome the stranger, we welcome the one who’s strange, who’s different, whose thoughts
are different, whose desires
are different. We welcome her into our family, into our lives, we make room for her at the table.
These are dangerous acts, sometimes for dangerous
people . . . if we associate
with them, if we welcome them into our fellowship and into our hearts, like
Jesus we become identified with
them, suddenly we become like
them, and that can be risky in polite society. Instead of people like everybody
else, who just happen to spend Sunday mornings in church, we become suspect to
the rest of society. Neighborhood coalitions start to form, people write
editorials maligning our credentials, and the Pharisees – I mean the police – start to make routine
visits, ask probing questions. And the next thing you know, we’re run out of
town, or brought before the regional governor on trumped up charges, or maybe
sentenced to rot in a Roman prison . . .
Identifying with the weakest, most
despised members of society is hazardous – just look what happened to Jesus. But it’s the essence of
Christian discipleship, I think. After all, Jesus is there, in solidarity with
the outcasts of the world, with the dregs of society . . . and isn’t that where we’re called to be as well? Aren’t we called to be Christ-like,
to follow his example in this age as well as the next? Because after all, the
conditions of this world are not ultimate, the misery and suffering and
despising and casting-out are only pen-ultimate, only temporary and
provisional. For Jesus is present to us as more than just the weak, more than just the despised, he’s
present as the crucified savior who dies for our sake, so that at the end of the age, when the last trumpet
sounds and the lion lies down with the lamb, when the Son of Man comes in
majesty and sits on his throne of glory, he will say to us: “Welcome, blessed of God: come into the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the universe.”
Amen.
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