We Are the Least of These
November 20, 2011
Matthew 25: 31-46
A decade ago I was asked in a job interview what passages of scripture I would choose to preach on if I set aside the lectionary and simply chose my favorite preaching texts. I named four: Micah 6:8 “what does the Lord require of you, but that you do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God;” Amos 5:24 “let justice roll down like a mighty water and righteousness like an everflowing stream;” Isaiah 6:8 “here I am, Lord, send me;” and this closing “kingdom parable” at the end of Matthew 25. “What we do to the least of these” … one of my favorite pieces of scripture. In fact, it’s one of my favorite pieces of writing – period.
You will have noticed a common theme running through these texts that focus on answering God’s call to the ministry of social justice. So, throw me in the briar patch and make me preach on a passage that lends itself so easily to my favorite theme, and what, frankly, I take to be the central purpose of Christian faith: doing justice.
Except, this time around. It’s not that I don’t want to preach on Matthew. I still love it, and I reach for it often. It’s just that this time around I heard it differently.
More than one colleague has observed that I can roll out of bed in the morning and preach a social justice sermon. But when I rolled out of bed earlier this month to work on this passage, it didn’t strike the kind of chord that I expected. So this morning, I’m not going to tell you that we ought to be doing more to tend to the homeless poor; you already know that anyway. In fact, at session later today we’re going to be talking about a new Arlington initiative to do just that. I’m also not going to tell you that we need to work harder to give voice to the voiceless; you already know that, too. And I’m not going to tell you that we ought to be doing more to feed our neighbors in need – even though we heard a great moment for mission from the kids concerning just that a few minutes ago.
No. This morning I want to say simply that, sometimes, we are the least of these. Sometimes, the least of these is sitting next to you in the pew, disguised as a comfortably middle-class, gainfully employed, healthy, well-fed resident of Northern Virginia.
Sometimes, the one sitting next to you in the pews is struggling mightily. Sometimes, for that person, just getting out of bed is an act of defiance. The one sitting next to you may be struggling economically.
The one sitting next to you may be grieving a deep loss, may be brokenhearted by a ruptured relationship, may be angry and aggrieved by work, may feel overwhelmed by school, may be experiencing a spiritual hunger with sighs too deep for fathoming.
Sometimes, the one facing all or any of that may be the one facing you in the mirror. Sometimes, we are the least of these.
While surely that is fairly obvious on the face of it, sometimes taking a closer look at the obvious can illuminate the stuff that is a bit more hidden.
For example, and this is another observation of the obvious, a lot of folks who stand outside the church as critics reject the church because, they say, faith is just a crutch.
To that accusation William Sloan Coffin famously responded, “of course faith is a crutch; what makes you think you don’t walk with a limp?”
Others charge that church-goers are hypocrites. That line of criticism gets amplified with every church scandal, and it grows steadily louder when the church’s internal dialogue sounds no different in tone than the worst of political debate or culture war.
But underneath those criticisms rests a deeper truth – indeed, a deep invitation: it’s OK here to be who you are, to limp on in and bring to this place your burdens and your brokenness, because there’s nothing hypocritical about being human. It’s only hypocritical when we claim to be something else.
That’s why this Sunday called “Christ the King” is important. It’s an urgent reminder that we are not the center; Christ is the center. We are not here to be the center; we are here to be drawn closer to the center because that is where the healing of our broken selves begins.
Of what, then, is Christ the center?
A few weeks back at Unchurch we talked about what church is. I did a “word cloud” based on responses to that question. You’ve all seen word clouds: they capture visually what words or phrases get most often used in a discussion. In response to the question, “what is church?” the biggest word in our cloud was, “community.”
When we’re being faithful, when we’re at our best, that’s what Christ is the center of for us: the center of our community.
In terms of our text this morning, we best approach the center of our community when we care for its most broken members. If Christ is the center, we get closest to him when we care for the least of these, our sisters and brothers. That is to say, each other, when we are the least.
In addition to the obvious ethical injunction to care for the homeless poor, to feed the hungry, to do justice in the wider world, this morning I’m suggesting that Matthew 25 carries also the ethical injunction to care for each other. Moreover, this ethical injunction to care for each other is directly related to how well we are able to respond to the ethical injunction to care for the homeless poor, to feed the hungry, and to do justice in the wider world.
We are only ever any good at that when we are a community that owns its own brokenness and embraces its own when we are broken.
This is not a question of program or priority. In other words, I’m not saying, “we can’t feed them till we feed ourselves because we’re no good to anyone if we’re starved.” That may or may not be the case. As I said, it’s not a question of program or priority, it’s simply a principle that we reflect in our liturgy: we begin worship acknowledging our own brokenness and, therefore, our need to be made whole by the grace of God that we experience as we draw near to the center that is the way of Jesus.
Drawing closer to the center, we are drawn closer to one another, and we have the opportunity, the great gift, that is each other with whom to experience healing.
Out of these deeper truths flow a couple of principles for our life together. As we end one liturgical year and prepare to begin a new one next week with the first Sunday of Advent, this is an auspicious time for naming some key principles, and it’s all the more so given that the next year is going to be filled with the challenges that come with significant change.
So, remembering that sometimes we are the least of these in and through whom we minister to Christ, here are a couple of principles for life together:
First, bring your worst! Huh? No, seriously, bring your brokenness and own it. But don’t remain stuck in it. We begin our worship with confession, but we don’t stay there. We don’t wallow in it, we confess it trusting that there is in our relationship with God an abundance of healing grace.
Which brings us to the second principle:
Bring your best self, too. Bring the gifts you have been given. It’s been a truism in every congregation I’ve known that we often tend to leave our best behind when we come to church because we don’t church to feel like work. For years I was reluctant to bring my print design skills to church work because it’s what I did for a living outside of church. I know that some of you have similar stories.
But if what we want at church is community – and that is the most common response people give when asked what they’re looking for – we must face up to the fact that community is not an off-the-shelf, fully formed commodity. Community is what we make of it. Community is what we build.
We will, inevitably, bring our worst to the community – and we should. But, if that is all we bring to it, well, then, at the very least our expectations should be tempered!
On the other hand, and this is where Matthew 25 spoke powerfully to me this week, if we acknowledge that sometimes we are the least of these, and if we remember always that the way we respond to and relate with the least of these is the way we respond to and relate with the Christ at the center of our common life, then out of the least that we are and the least that we bring something profound and powerful will be born.
That’s how resurrection works. But it only works in community if we are willing to run the real risk of building authentic relationships with one another, if we are willing to acknowledge our brokenness, to share our deepest longings with each other. For the one bright truth that shines through Jesus’ kingdom parable in Matthew 25 is this: only by way of the least of these do we find ourselves living the way of the greatest of these – the way of Christ the center.
We’re going to move now into a time of prayer, but we’re going to do that a bit differently this morning as, together, we do the work of the people. I invite you to enter a brief time of silence and think about the place of joy and of sorrow in your own life right now. Think about something for which you give thanks today, and also about something that feels out of joint in your life. Then in a moment I’ll invite you to turn to the person closest to you in the pews – and you can sort out just how to do that – and share with one another one thing that you are thankful for this morning, and one thing that you long for, one broken place that needs healing.
Then we’ll gather that up in a closing prayer of the people.
I invite you now to stand up and spread ourselves around in a circle. We’ll join hands and share our prayers of the people, and then we’ll close in song – so take your bulletins with you because the words to the closing hymn are printed on the back.
Let us pray.
Matthew 25: 31-46
A decade ago I was asked in a job interview what passages of scripture I would choose to preach on if I set aside the lectionary and simply chose my favorite preaching texts. I named four: Micah 6:8 “what does the Lord require of you, but that you do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God;” Amos 5:24 “let justice roll down like a mighty water and righteousness like an everflowing stream;” Isaiah 6:8 “here I am, Lord, send me;” and this closing “kingdom parable” at the end of Matthew 25. “What we do to the least of these” … one of my favorite pieces of scripture. In fact, it’s one of my favorite pieces of writing – period.
You will have noticed a common theme running through these texts that focus on answering God’s call to the ministry of social justice. So, throw me in the briar patch and make me preach on a passage that lends itself so easily to my favorite theme, and what, frankly, I take to be the central purpose of Christian faith: doing justice.
Except, this time around. It’s not that I don’t want to preach on Matthew. I still love it, and I reach for it often. It’s just that this time around I heard it differently.
More than one colleague has observed that I can roll out of bed in the morning and preach a social justice sermon. But when I rolled out of bed earlier this month to work on this passage, it didn’t strike the kind of chord that I expected. So this morning, I’m not going to tell you that we ought to be doing more to tend to the homeless poor; you already know that anyway. In fact, at session later today we’re going to be talking about a new Arlington initiative to do just that. I’m also not going to tell you that we need to work harder to give voice to the voiceless; you already know that, too. And I’m not going to tell you that we ought to be doing more to feed our neighbors in need – even though we heard a great moment for mission from the kids concerning just that a few minutes ago.
No. This morning I want to say simply that, sometimes, we are the least of these. Sometimes, the least of these is sitting next to you in the pew, disguised as a comfortably middle-class, gainfully employed, healthy, well-fed resident of Northern Virginia.
Sometimes, the one sitting next to you in the pews is struggling mightily. Sometimes, for that person, just getting out of bed is an act of defiance. The one sitting next to you may be struggling economically.
The one sitting next to you may be grieving a deep loss, may be brokenhearted by a ruptured relationship, may be angry and aggrieved by work, may feel overwhelmed by school, may be experiencing a spiritual hunger with sighs too deep for fathoming.
Sometimes, the one facing all or any of that may be the one facing you in the mirror. Sometimes, we are the least of these.
While surely that is fairly obvious on the face of it, sometimes taking a closer look at the obvious can illuminate the stuff that is a bit more hidden.
For example, and this is another observation of the obvious, a lot of folks who stand outside the church as critics reject the church because, they say, faith is just a crutch.
To that accusation William Sloan Coffin famously responded, “of course faith is a crutch; what makes you think you don’t walk with a limp?”
Others charge that church-goers are hypocrites. That line of criticism gets amplified with every church scandal, and it grows steadily louder when the church’s internal dialogue sounds no different in tone than the worst of political debate or culture war.
But underneath those criticisms rests a deeper truth – indeed, a deep invitation: it’s OK here to be who you are, to limp on in and bring to this place your burdens and your brokenness, because there’s nothing hypocritical about being human. It’s only hypocritical when we claim to be something else.
That’s why this Sunday called “Christ the King” is important. It’s an urgent reminder that we are not the center; Christ is the center. We are not here to be the center; we are here to be drawn closer to the center because that is where the healing of our broken selves begins.
Of what, then, is Christ the center?
A few weeks back at Unchurch we talked about what church is. I did a “word cloud” based on responses to that question. You’ve all seen word clouds: they capture visually what words or phrases get most often used in a discussion. In response to the question, “what is church?” the biggest word in our cloud was, “community.”
When we’re being faithful, when we’re at our best, that’s what Christ is the center of for us: the center of our community.
In terms of our text this morning, we best approach the center of our community when we care for its most broken members. If Christ is the center, we get closest to him when we care for the least of these, our sisters and brothers. That is to say, each other, when we are the least.
In addition to the obvious ethical injunction to care for the homeless poor, to feed the hungry, to do justice in the wider world, this morning I’m suggesting that Matthew 25 carries also the ethical injunction to care for each other. Moreover, this ethical injunction to care for each other is directly related to how well we are able to respond to the ethical injunction to care for the homeless poor, to feed the hungry, and to do justice in the wider world.
We are only ever any good at that when we are a community that owns its own brokenness and embraces its own when we are broken.
This is not a question of program or priority. In other words, I’m not saying, “we can’t feed them till we feed ourselves because we’re no good to anyone if we’re starved.” That may or may not be the case. As I said, it’s not a question of program or priority, it’s simply a principle that we reflect in our liturgy: we begin worship acknowledging our own brokenness and, therefore, our need to be made whole by the grace of God that we experience as we draw near to the center that is the way of Jesus.
Drawing closer to the center, we are drawn closer to one another, and we have the opportunity, the great gift, that is each other with whom to experience healing.
Out of these deeper truths flow a couple of principles for our life together. As we end one liturgical year and prepare to begin a new one next week with the first Sunday of Advent, this is an auspicious time for naming some key principles, and it’s all the more so given that the next year is going to be filled with the challenges that come with significant change.
So, remembering that sometimes we are the least of these in and through whom we minister to Christ, here are a couple of principles for life together:
First, bring your worst! Huh? No, seriously, bring your brokenness and own it. But don’t remain stuck in it. We begin our worship with confession, but we don’t stay there. We don’t wallow in it, we confess it trusting that there is in our relationship with God an abundance of healing grace.
Which brings us to the second principle:
Bring your best self, too. Bring the gifts you have been given. It’s been a truism in every congregation I’ve known that we often tend to leave our best behind when we come to church because we don’t church to feel like work. For years I was reluctant to bring my print design skills to church work because it’s what I did for a living outside of church. I know that some of you have similar stories.
But if what we want at church is community – and that is the most common response people give when asked what they’re looking for – we must face up to the fact that community is not an off-the-shelf, fully formed commodity. Community is what we make of it. Community is what we build.
We will, inevitably, bring our worst to the community – and we should. But, if that is all we bring to it, well, then, at the very least our expectations should be tempered!
On the other hand, and this is where Matthew 25 spoke powerfully to me this week, if we acknowledge that sometimes we are the least of these, and if we remember always that the way we respond to and relate with the least of these is the way we respond to and relate with the Christ at the center of our common life, then out of the least that we are and the least that we bring something profound and powerful will be born.
That’s how resurrection works. But it only works in community if we are willing to run the real risk of building authentic relationships with one another, if we are willing to acknowledge our brokenness, to share our deepest longings with each other. For the one bright truth that shines through Jesus’ kingdom parable in Matthew 25 is this: only by way of the least of these do we find ourselves living the way of the greatest of these – the way of Christ the center.
We’re going to move now into a time of prayer, but we’re going to do that a bit differently this morning as, together, we do the work of the people. I invite you to enter a brief time of silence and think about the place of joy and of sorrow in your own life right now. Think about something for which you give thanks today, and also about something that feels out of joint in your life. Then in a moment I’ll invite you to turn to the person closest to you in the pews – and you can sort out just how to do that – and share with one another one thing that you are thankful for this morning, and one thing that you long for, one broken place that needs healing.
Then we’ll gather that up in a closing prayer of the people.
I invite you now to stand up and spread ourselves around in a circle. We’ll join hands and share our prayers of the people, and then we’ll close in song – so take your bulletins with you because the words to the closing hymn are printed on the back.
Let us pray.
posted by David Ensign at
2:32 PM
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