Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
This text
frightens me.
‘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, I was naked and you gave me
clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited
me.’
‘Truly
I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of
my family, you did it to me.’
‘Truly
I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not
do it to me.’
‘And
these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal
life.’
Accountability.
What we do
matters.
A day of
judgement.
A time of reckoning.
Perhaps the final
judgment might be summed up with this, that we will stand before our Lord, and
look into his eyes, and in the eyes of Jesus we will see ‘the least of these’,
and then we will hear Jesus say simply: “Well?”
But for all that,
this is not what frightens me the most about this text.
You see, to a certain
extent this lays out everything in a most manageable way. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
- · Feed the hungry. Check
- · Give a drink to the thirsty. Check.
- · Welcome the stranger. Check.
- · Clothe the naked. Check.
- · Take care of the sick. Check.
- · Visit the imprisoned. Check.
For those of us
who like to make lists, and check things off, one by one, this is pretty
manageable. Six items. Six check marks. All in a day’s work.
Just do it.
I have nothing to
worry about.
- · I have fed the hungry.
- · I’ve given a drink to the thirsty.
- · I’ve welcomed the stranger.
- · Clothed the naked.
- · Cared for the sick.
- · And even visited the imprisoned.
Check, check,
check, check, check and check.
Got it covered.
What’s frightening
about that?
The most
frightening thing about Jesus’ words here, for me, can be summed up in three
words:
The “nations”, “people”,
and “we”.
You see when
Jesus describes this day of judgment, we do not come before the throne of
judgment one by one, each being judged according to our own individual lives.
It’s the nations
that will be gathered before him.
He will separate
the ‘people’, not persons, one from another.
And the question
asked will be “‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you
food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you
a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?”
It’s unnerving
enough to think of being judged for my own sins, but here Jesus indicates that
the judgment will be rendered on the nations.
Think about
that. It’s not just about what we do
individually. It’s about being
accountable for our nation’s actions, or lack thereof.
We’re all in this
together.
We stand or fall,
together.
That’s quite
different from the way we tend to think.
Especially during
these highly polarizing times.
When the
Democrats are in power, Republicans have tried to wash their hands of
responsibility.
And likewise,
with Republicans now in power, Democrats are quick to distance themselves from
what is happening.
“One nation,
under God?”
Well not so
much. Actually, we are more prone today
to look at each other from across the political divide and see each other as
the sheep and the goats. The righteous
and unrighteous.
But what Jesus
says is that we will stand or fall as a nation, based on how we responded to
the “least of these”.
That should give
us pause to think.
I think I’ve
shared with you before about a conversation that I had in Russia with the
members of St. Nikolai’s Lutheran Church that we were visiting. We were asking questions about each other,
and our nations, in an attempt to better understand each other.
I will never
forget the question they asked us:
“Is it true that
there are poor people in America?”
When we replied
that yes, there were poor people in America they came back with another
question:
“How can it be,
that in a country as rich as yours, you still have poor people?” “We’re poor,” they said, “but we’re all poor.” “We don’t understand how you can be so rich
and let others in your country be poor.”
That question will
stay with me for a long time.
And I find myself
wondering if Jesus will ask the same question of us. “How can that be?”
Of course,
similar questions could be asked of them.
How can it be
that Russia spends so much on the military when so many throughout their nation
have nothing?
I mean, Russia is
and probably always will be a land of great contrasts. Most of the people live in what we would call
‘slums’, and yet you can walk into the Hermitage and see Rembrandts just
hanging on the walls, room after room of Picassos, and every other artist
imaginable.
How can that be?
When the “nations”
of the world are judged by how they treated the “least of these”, will any be
left standing?
I hope not.
I hope not.
That, I believe,
is the Good News associated with this text.
Against the
backdrop of the history of the world and all the warring madness of the
nations, with the rich and powerful always overlooking the least of these,
there will be a judgment of all the nations.
And when God is
done judging the nations of the world there will be nothing left but the
smoldering ashes of empire after empire, that failed to be righteous in his
eyes.
And in the end—there
will be only one enthroned in Glory.
“Come,
you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world.”
There is the
promise.
There will be
only one Kingdom left standing when the judgment is done.
No borders.
No divide between
the peoples.
There will not be
‘the greatest of these’ or ‘the least of these’.
There will not be
rich and poor.
Imprisoned and
free.
There will not be
black or white.
They will not
hurt or destroy.
The kingdoms of
this world will have had their day.
And none of them
will be found to have been righteous.
All of them,
including our own, are destined to the dung heap of history.
1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first
earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the
new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned
for her husband.
3 And
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
"See,
the home of God is among mortals.
He
will dwell with them;
they
will be his peoples,
and
God himself will be with them;
4 he
will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death
will be no more;
mourning
and crying and pain will be no more,
for
the first things have passed away."
This is Christ
the King Sunday. It points us forward
toward the end of all time, and the beginning of eternity.
It points us
forward to the day when God alone will reign.
We have that promise,
and it is our hope.
For now, though,
we live in ‘in-between times’.
We have our feet
in both Kingdoms at once. We are at one
and the same time American citizens, and citizens of the Kingdom of God. It’s like those who are born with dual
citizenship.
But know this,
that one day, one of those Kingdoms will come to an end.
And the other
will not.
And then Jesus
will say:
“Come,
you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world.”
Amen.
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