SunNov202011
Scripture: MATTHEW 25:31-46
So this is the comic someone sends me this past Friday. Steve Jobs has died and has arrived at the gate of heaven. Just as he arrives, Moses walks up carrying the Ten Commandments on two big stones under his arms. And God introduces the two of them: “Moses,” says God, “meet Steve. He’s gonna upgrade your tablets.”
Jokes about entry into heaven abound. And they nearly always turn on the question of the worthiness of a person to be admitted into the company of the righteous. There’s usually a question about whether the person in question has earned a spot at God’s table. Some are pretty funny; some not so much!
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus finishes his ministry with this vivid and stinging picture of what we call the “Last Judgment.” Sheep and goats are divided. The good ones separated from the bad. The saved from the damned. It’s all so neat and tidy. And to be honest, a story like this sometimes has the unfortunate effect of diverting us from the real issues. The whole thing reads enough like a kindergarten parable that, on some level, we may have a hard time taking it seriously.
So let’s try to dispense with some of our preconceptions. In the first place, let’s not take this literally, as though there is some judge sitting at the pearly gates handing out verdicts on whether we belong—“You’re in, you’re out.” In matters of faith, literalism is almost invariably the assassin of truth. Out with literalism, in with imagination. This story is not about whether we’ve passed the test and earned the grade. It’s about the urgent need to live with the habits and attitudes of God.
Second, this isn’t a story that tells us what to do. Nowhere does Jesus insist that what we do from now on will determine our standing with God: “do this or else.” This is a story, not about the future, but about the past. “Seeing as you’ve already done these things,” Jesus seems to say, “some of you are part of God’s ways, some of you aren’t.” This is a reflection on what has already been, not a threat for what we have yet to do.
Third, everyone in the story is surprised by their fate. The ones who have served others are shocked to hear Jesus’ verdict on their ways. And so are the ones who didn’t serve others. Nobody sees it coming. It’s as if to say, “If you’re trying too hard to impress Jesus, you’re going to be off the mark. If you’re doing good things just to get God’s approval, you’ve missed the boat. It’s not about making the right impression on God, as if doing so will get us some sort of special standing. It’s about doing the right thing just because it is the right thing.”
But the story is about even more than that. Most of us, if someone asked us after a casual reading to summarize what we had heard, would probably say something like, “Well, if you care for people who are down and out, you’re being like Christ. Christ cares for people who are hungry and thirsty and sick and in prison. That’s what happens in the story of the sheep and the goats.” My guess is that’s the way the average person on the street would sum up this story: Christ is nice, so we should be nice, too.
What’s so easy to forget is that Christ isn’t the one “being nice” in this story. Christ isn’t the one who does the giving. Christ is the one who does the receiving. What we remember from our childhoods, and what we teach our children, is that “Jesus is kind to people and cares for them when they’re hurting.” All of which is certainly true. But it’s not the whole story. And it’s most certainly not the story we just heard today.
In the story we just heard, Jesus is not the donor, but rather the recipient. Not the magnanimous dispenser of gifts, but the needy beneficiary. It kind of wrenches us away from the popularly accepted sense of where Jesus is in any scene of generosity.
Imagine any number of tableaux. A generous suburbanite sends $1000 to the Cleveland Food Bank. A good thing to do. But the Christ figure isn’t the suburbanite. It’s the out-of-work, desperate woman who takes home a crucial bag of groceries.
A nurse cares for a dying patient, rubs his back, feeds him ice chips, whispers sweet reassurances. A wonderful thing to do. But the Christ figure isn’t the nurse. It’s the dying man.
A church member hears that a neighbor is going through a divorce, and goes for a long visit, listening as the neighbor sobs and processes and rages and grieves. A tremendous thing to do. But the Christ figure isn’t the church member. It’s the frantic neighbor whose life has just been shattered.
This story from Matthew jerks us into another way of looking at the world, and at our neighbors near and far. One of the things most of us don’t do very well is acknowledge the holiness of the ones we’re involved with, especially if they frustrate us or strike us as odd, or if we think they’re letting us or someone else down. You know the ones I’m talking about. In so many settings, we miss who these difficult ones really are. The loud and boorish drunk who ruins neighborhood parties? Christ. The cousin, many of whose medical problems stem, we think, from bad choices about food and exercise? Christ. The co-worker who seems always to be trying to do the least amount possible? Christ. The colleague whose rigid and unbending ideas about the firm seem incredibly misguided? Christ.
We all have our own cast of characters who provoke us and send us off the deep end. And what Matthew is telling us, in a dramatic, discomfiting way, is that it’s in them that Christ resides. This is not to say that it’s easy to love people who drive us nuts. And it’s not to say that some of these others aren’t doing things that are inappropriate or morally questionable. There are lots of people it’s hard to love. And there are certainly a number of them who, if we love them, it will appear that we condone what they’re doing.
What this climactic story of Jesus’ ministry points us to is that we’re beckoned to work at that loving even when it’s really difficult. And we’re to do so even when the other person has done something of which we don’t approve. The core of this parable is that support and care for those we disapprove of those who live on society’s margins and those in need is the heart of the good news of God.
As members and friends of a church whose purpose is, in part, to “welcome all people,” our very soul hinges on our willingness to be with the suffering Christ manifest all around us. And so we seek to attune ourselves to the places where the Christ is being crucified daily.
You may not know—as I did not know—that today, November 20, is Transgender Day of Remembrance. Ruth Garwood, our Alive360 coordinator, took some time this week at our staff meeting to educate the church staff about that day. It will probably not surprise you to learn that transgendered people—which is kind of an umbrella term including people who are transsexuals, cross-dressers, intersex, androgynous, gender-benders, and gender-blenders—are victims of an excessive amount of violence. Suicide rates are high. Isolation is common. So this day commemorates Rita Hester, whose murder in San Francisco in 1998 has yet to be solved.
Now what may be helpful to you in this is that I almost said, in that last sentence, “A woman named Rita Hester.” And what I realized as I thought about that this week, is that I don’t really know whether Rita was a woman. I know that Rita had what is traditionally a woman’s name, and that she identified as a woman. But as Ruth Garwood pointed out to us this week in our staff meeting, some of us are born with one biological gender and experience themselves as the other gender. Some are born one way and elect to change to the other. As many as 1 in 2000 people may be born with ambiguous genitalia. Some of those people are directed toward one gender, which they may experience as the wrong gender. And some may live as a blend.
For many of us this may seem like a fringe issue, and it may make us uncomfortable. The point is only that for some distinct percentage of people, these issues are real and painful. And as an Open and Affirming church, one that explicitly values the inclusion of all people in the love of God and the life of the church, it may be helpful to realize that more often than we know, we are encountering people for whom gender is a thorny, and perhaps deeply painful, issue. And when we are aware that gender is an issue for someone, especially if it understandably confuses us or even repulses us, then today’s scriptural reminder may be a timely one: in that one in whom gender is either intentionally or accidentally not clear resides the Christ. And our presence with, our ministering with, that person may be a much-needed gift—to us, as well as to that person.
New members join us today, and it’s always important to remind ourselves, on such an occasion, who we are. We are the church in which all are welcome. We are the church in which boundaries between who’s in and who’s out are intentionally erased. We are the church in which we together grow out of old and engrained prejudices and into new and freeing attitudes. We are the church in which, everywhere we look, we see the living Christ.
So as we receive new members today, and as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving (sometimes with family and friends who try us mightily), and as we offer our gifts of food to people in various degrees of need, may we remember that in our welcome and in our giving we are declaring where we see that Christ: in you, in me, in people the world over, in all of us. May it always be so.