Chris Taylor’s Sermon –11/23/08
The Least of These . . .
Psalm 100
Matthew 25:31-46
There are certain teachings in our Christian life that require us to hold two seemingly mutually exclusive truths side by side, at the same time. The two natures of Jesus is one example. We affirm that Jesus if both fully human and fully divine. But how is that possible? To be fully human is to necessarily be limited in power and understanding. To be fully divine is to be without such limits. How could those two natures possibly coexist at the same time and in the same person? The very idea defies all logic!
The same is true of our doctrine of the Trinity. God is three, and God is one. Try to make sense of that! Or our understanding of death and rebirth. On the one hand, Scripture teaches that the transition is seamless and immediate, “Today you will be with me in paradise” Jesus tells the criminal. And yet, on the other hand, Scripture speaks repeatedly of the resurrection as coming at the very end of time.
To be a Christian is to be asked, at times, to hold onto truths that seem to defy or contradict each other, and our text this morning offers a case in point. Here is a text that seems to challenge our understanding of salvation, and our understanding of God’s own nature.
Jesus begins talking about the last days back in the first verse of the previous chapter. There he tells us that several things are going to happen. He speaks of the destruction of the Temple (an event that did, indeed, occur within the lifetime of some of his listeners, in 70 CE); of his followers being hated and tortured and put to death, and of false prophets rising up and claiming to be the Messiah. “But about that day and hour,” he added (24:36), “no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
Jesus’ message in all of this is clear. He sums it up in the 42nd verse, “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” In other words, it is going to happen and we need to be prepared.”
Now, in chapter 25, Jesus offers a couple of parables that underline that message. The first is the parable of the ten bridesmaids. Five of them aren’t prepared and so miss the bridegroom when he comes. Five have taken pains to be ready, and so are there to greet him and be received by him when he shows up.
The next parable is the parable of the talents. A master summons is preparing to leave the country and summons three slaves. He entrusts each with a different sum of talents (or money). The first two faithfully invest their talents and are duly rewarded when the master returns, “enter into the joy of your master,” he says. The last is totally unprepared. He has simply hidden his talent away, and when the master shows up he is furious. This last servant is thrown into the outer darkness “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Five bridesmaids who aren’t prepared and who have the door to the banquet literally shut in their face. A frightened servant who is thrown into the darkness because he failed to use the gifts the master had given him. The message here is pretty harsh; even terrifying if we begin to think about it. And Jesus does nothing to dilute it, or make it more palatable to us. Indeed, here in our text the message becomes even more explicit.
This is Jesus’ final public teaching. You might think that he would want to end on a positive or upbeat note. Quite the opposite. His last word comes to us as both warning and challenge.
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory,” Jesus says, “and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.” Jesus doesn’t say “if” here, he says “when.” It may come tomorrow, or it may come a thousand years from now, but this day is going to happen. The presence of the angels and the mention of both his glory and his throne point to that divine nature he shares with the Father and with the Spirit.
“All the nations,” Jesus says, “will be gathered before him.” This is important. It isn’t just the Christians who will stand before him, it is everyone – “all the nations.” One day we are all going to stand in Jesus’ presence, and all of us are going to be judged. We are going to be separated, he says, in the same way that a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
And the basis of that judgment? This is the point of the text. It isn’t those who know him or professed him versus those who don’t. It is not the murderers and adulterers and cheaters on the one side, versus the relatively good on the other. The basis, Jesus, tells us, is the compassion we show (or don’t show) in responding to the least of these.
“Come, you that are blessed by my Father,” the Son days, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for [which is causal here, it means because] 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…” A few verses later he sums it up, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”
Now it is tempting here to think that this reference to “members of my family” means that Jesus is talking about the way we treat other Christians. In some ways that would make this text a lot easier. But he isn’t talking about the community of faith. He is talking about everyone; about all humanity.
Several elements support that conclusion. First, as we have already noted, it is everyone who is standing before him – not just Christians. To hold everyone accountable for the way they treated Christians wouldn’t make any sense. They wouldn’t necessarily know who the Christians are, or be in the kind of relationship with Christians where they could know the need and be able to respond.
Second, if Jesus was talking specifically about Christians here, we would expect him to speak of their in his name, or for his sake. There is no such reference. Finally, those who do minister to “the least of these” have no idea that they were ministering to Jesus himself. Surely that is something that would have occurred to them had they been reaching out to those who bore Jesus’ name.
“Members of my family,” then, refers to everyone. Every person is, in some sense, a child of God and so dear to Jesus’ heart.
But if we are saved here, if we are granted access to the Kingdom of God, on the basis of what we’ve done, doesn’t that contradict one of the basic tenets of the reformed faith – salvation by faith alone? That’s part of what makes this text so difficult. We believe, and Scripture affirms, that we are justified by faith alone. Yet here is Jesus himself telling us that we are going to be judged on the basis of our works – on the kind of love and compassion that we’ve shown.
Even more disturbing for some of us is that it is both Christians and non-Christians who are going to be judged on this basis. Jesus is saying that both Christians and non-Christians are going to be either invited into the Kingdom or condemned to eternal punishment based on how much love we’ve shown. What he seems to be saying is that even non-Christians meet him and embrace him (albeit unknowingly) as they reach out to those who are most in need.
If ever there was a text designed to shake us in our complacency, this is it. We assume that knowing Jesus takes care of everything. Jesus is saying it doesn’t. He is telling us that our work matter; a conclusion that echoes what he says towards the end of his Sermon on the Mount: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven” (Mt. 7:21).
What we do and the choices we make in this life have eternal consequences. Jesus couldn’t be clearer about just how urgent our choices truly are. Sitting in the presence of this teaching, then, we may well find ourselves sharing the same strange mix of emotions that one scholar described:
With the many texts that deal with judgment according to works [in Matthew], I waver back and forth between [on the one hand] a feeling of horror and a deep resistance to bringing together a howling and gnashing of teeth with the God in whom I believe, and [on the other hand] a suspicion that this painful and frightening idea of judgment might be necessary in order for us human beings to learn that we are not the lords of the world.
But we neglect the truth of this passage if we don’t mention something more. Who was it that got it right as they stood in Jesus’ presence? I love this: there is no mention of their being rich or poor, of being educated or uneducated, of race or age, of physical or intellectual prowess, or of anything to do with any of that great myriad of distinctions that we tend to make in this life. They all disappear.
Yes, Jesus is talking about the great divorce here; the one great distinction that will impact our eternal destinies. But the standard he uses is open to virtually everyone. It is a standard that quite literally is universally accessible. It isn’t about mighty miracles or great acts of power. No, the standard here is the little things – the small acts of grace and love that any one of us can offer.
It is God’s heart for those in need that is revealed in this teaching. It is the depths of God’s own love. And it behooves us to remember that the same one who one day will stand in judgment, is the same way who offered his life – who endured the agonies of the cross – for each and every one of us.
So what is the message for us, this morning? The Second Vatican Council pushes us in the right direction:
Wherever there are people in need of food and drink, clothing, housing, medicine, employment, education; wherever [people] lack the facilities necessary for living a truly human life or are tormented by hardships or poor health, or suffer exile or imprisonment, there Christian charity should seek them out and find them, console them with eager care and relieve them with the gift of help.
Christ is King, not us. It is Jesus who gets to set the standard by which we will be judged, and the standard is very clear. If there is only one thing we remember from this morning, remember this: God cares about how we treat “the least of these.”
“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them” (Rev. 14:13).
I am indebted here, as I am for much of my understanding of this text, to Frederick Dale Bruner and his two volume commentary on Matthew (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1990), pp. 574-575
U. Luz, as quoted by Bruner, Ibid., p. 580
The Second Vatican Council, Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, as quoted by Bruner, Ibid., p. 571