Matthew 25: feeding the people

Exodus 16:4-31

Matthew 4:1-11

Matthew 25:31-46

            This lent we will be doing a series during worship focused on Matthew 25, along with related passages.  I want to begin this series by providing an overview, but also by looking at the first of Jesus’ instructions in the passage – that of feeding the hungry.  The bottom line of Matthew 25 is, very simply, "When you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me".  Whatever it is – when you do it to the least of God’s children, of God’s people, you do it to Jesus himself. 

John Buchanan said it this way, “Jesus said it: profound, radical words. Every day I walk by half a dozen people, poor people, asking for money. Recently it was a family—a mother and three children. Another man said, "I just had surgery and I'm hungry," as he lifted his T-shirt to reveal an ugly surgical scar. "Come in," I said, "our social service center will help you." He swore. "I don't need their help; I need money." Matthew 25 makes me very uncomfortable when I think about it much. I cannot help everyone. I do not have either the money or the time. Besides, who can tell who is really needy and who simply wants a bottle of cheap wine? What can I do?”

            I think it is helpful to put this in the context of the other two scriptures that were read for today.  In the first story, from Exodus, we are shown a God who gives all that we need in each moment.  God gave enough manna for the Israelites to eat in each day.  No more, no less, except on the 6^th day when they were then allowed to collect more so that the Sabbath day would be a day of genuine rest, another gift of abundance from God.  In the midst of the desert, in the midst of the hardship, there would not only be enough to eat, but there would also be rest, each week, from the struggles, from the hardship.  We are offered the same promises.  This is a story about who God is and how God is and God offers to us the same.  Enough.  We have enough.  And in the midst of the hardship we are also given rest from the labors of the calls God asks us to do.  This is hard to trust.  It is hard to believe that if we start doing God’s work, we will find rest.  And it is hard for us to trust that we will have enough.  But we are called to have faith that when we respond to God’s call, in this case, to God’s call to give to the hungry, to see the “least of these”, to treat each person with respect and dignity, that there will be enough for us, too.  For myself, I find this to be amazingly true. When I am generous, especially with the church and with the poor, I find I have enough.  It is the years when I am less generous that I also find myself struggling to make end’s meet.  And while this is not a stewardship sermon, I find this consistently to be true.  When I was only making $400 a month in college, but giving half of it to the poor, I lived comfortably on that $200 a month.  When I fail to tithe, I struggle to pay the bills.  God only knows why this happens but it does. 

I’ve told this story before but it is worth repeating.  Dorothy Day, founder and organizer of the Catholic worker shared similar stories of times when their house community, a community built for the purpose of and dedicated to serving the poor and destitute in and around them, would be on its last penny.  Time and again they would spend that last penny on whoever came to them for help because Dorothy and the workers had faith that the needed money would always come.  And come it did.  On one such occasion the electric bill had to be paid and there was no

money at all in the house.  The bill was for $9.57, not much now, but a lot at the time.  The power company said that the electricity would be turned off if the bill was not paid by the end of the day.  So everyone in the house began to pray. At 4:30 that afternoon, the mail arrived and within it was a check – for $9.57, enclosed with a note apologizing for the odd amount and stating that the donor had found that much on the sidewalk and had felt called to send it to the Catholic Worker community.  God provides enough, when we are faithful and giving, God provides enough.

            But while we give generously through organizations such as Monument Crisis Center, community meals, heifer project, etc., I think we are also afraid to help, especially those on the street or those we encounter in unfamiliar or uncomfortable situations – those who wander in off the street into our places of work or who approach us while we may feel “trapped” pumping gas or waiting for the bus.  We are afraid that if we give to those who ask, that they will just come back and ask for more.  We are afraid that we won’t have enough.  We are afraid that our resources will be tapped out.  We are afraid of how they will use “our” money.  We are afraid they don’t deserve our help and that we are being used and conned and that we will only make things worse by allowing them to become more dependent on us. I, at times, have felt afraid that if I take the time to talk to someone on the street or even someone who comes to the church asking for help that I will be trapped into listening to an elaborate but untrue story.  We are afraid, and for good reasons. 

But here’s the thing: Jesus did not say, “When you did it to the least of these WHO are deserving, you did it to me” or “when you did it to the least of these WHO are being honest with you about what is going on with them that you did it for me”. He didn’t say, “Do it for the least of these WHO have been checked out by the larger community and are found to be genuinely in need.” Or “when you did it for the least of these who will not spend it on alcohol or drugs.”  There were no qualifications on any of this. None. The only criteria here was “when you do it the least of these” – when you are giving, when you are generous, when you are loving, when you take time to listen and hear and care for those who ask for help: for the downtrodden, those who are poor, those who are weak, those who are dependent, those who are needy, those who must resort to begging… and especially children, then you are doing it for Christ.  We are called to look, to see, to not ignore – to look into the human faces of all of these people, no matter who they are or how they spend their money or time, what stories they weave or how they go about asking for help, to look at them, and to see there in those faces we fear and distrust the most, the face of Jesus, the face of the Christ, because he has told us that this is where we will find him, again and again, in these people, in the “least” of these people. 

And then we are given the story of the manna, the promise that what we need for today, especially when we are listening and obeying God, will be enough.  We will find enough if we choose to give, as God asks us to give, to the “least of these.”  That is a promise we can count on.  It is when we hoard and try to store up for ourselves, like the Israelites tried to store the manna, that we find ourselves struggling and in danger of falling.  When we are generous, when we are trusting, when we are obeying and following God, we will find there is more than enough.  MORE than enough.

            In the temptation of Christ passage that was read for today, we are told that humans do not live by bread alone.  Normally we focus on how this means that we cannot just search for material gain and neglect the spiritual. But today, I challenge all of us to think about this as encouraging us again to be generous. We must live by God’s love and God’s law. God’s love tells us that we will have enough.  And God’s law tells us we are called, therefore, from that place of love and abundance, to share it. Living by our own need to hold on to our “stuff” will not lead us into life!  It just won’t.  We cannot live by bread alone.  And if we try, we will find that we aren’t really living. 

            So where is the Good News in this?  The Good News is that this passage from Matthew is more than just a call to us to “be good” and “do right” and care for God’s people.  It is all of that.  But it is also, first and foremost actually, a statement about who God is. And who is God?  Not a remote supreme being on a throne up there above the clouds or out there somewhere in the mysterious reaches of the universe. Jesus tells us, God is here, in the least expected places of human life. God is here, in your neighbor, in the stranger, in the one who needs you, in “the least of these” – the least person you can imagine, the least deserving person you can imagine, the least capable and least prominent and least interesting.  You want to see the face of God? Look into the face of one of the least of these, the vulnerable, the weak, the children.  That is where God is. 

            During lent we walk towards the cross.  And we are called to prepare for that by repenting, by facing our fears, by confronting that within ourselves that does not want to live generously and lovingly. God’s will is clear – seek God.  Seek relationship with God, with Christ. Find God in the “least of these” and you will see God, touch God, know God.  Feed God in these least of these, and you will find yourselves fed in return, fed to fullness and beyond.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Yesterday's Sermon - Welcoming the Stranger

Genesis 12:1-6
Leviticus 19:33-34
Deuteronomy 10:18-19
Matthew 25:31-46

Today we continue our study of Matthew 25 by looking at the third of Jesus’ injunctions.  The first is to feed the hungry, the second (which we skipped because of time constraints) is to give drink to the thirsty, and today we are called to welcome the stranger.  I included other scriptures in today’s study which also focus on welcoming the stranger.  The bottom line in all of these is that we are called to remember that all of us have been strangers at one point.  Whether we are talking at a personal level or a political level, all of us here have ancestors that were not from the United States, all of us have travelled, all of us have met people we didn’t know before.  As part of that all of us probably have times in our personal lives or family histories in which we were not welcomed because we were strangers.  And all of us have failed to welcome the stranger among us, in one way or another.  We are all suspicious of people we don’t know and don’t understand.  We make global statements about who strangers are and what they are like.  We fear they are trying to take something from us – our place, our jobs, our space, our friends, our…   and we forget that none of that belongs to us.  All of it belongs to God and God alone, and as God states so very clearly in these passages – God loves the stranger, welcomes her or him always and calls us to do the same.
Mitch Albom, in his book “the Five People you Meet in Heaven” tells the story of a man named Eddie who learned that he had been saved from death at one point by a man whom he called “the blue man”.  Eddie had been a kid when this happened, but the blue man who saved him died while saving Eddie.  Eddie meets him in heaven, and after seeing what the man did for him he says, “I still don’t understand”, Eddie whispered.  “What good came from your death?”
“You lived,” the Blue Man answered.
“But we barely knew each other.  I might as well have been a stranger.”
The Blue Man put his arms on Eddie’s shoulders.  Eddie felt that warm, melting sensation.  “Strangers,” the Blue Man said, “are just family you have yet to come to know.”
As people of faith, we are especially called to see this.  We are all God’s children, ALL God’s children.  Therefore every stranger is, in the truest sense of the word, simply family we have yet to come to know.
Pastor Jeremiah Steepek transformed himself into a homeless person and went to the 10,000 member church that he was to be introduced as the head pastor at that morning. He walked around his soon to be church for 30 minutes while it was filling with people for service, only 3 people out of the 10,000 people said hello to him. He asked people for change to buy food - NO ONE in the church gave him change. He went into the sanctuary to sit down in the front of the church and was asked by the ushers if he would please sit in the back. He greeted people to be greeted back with stares and dirty looks, with people looking down on him and judging him.
  As he sat in the back of the church, he listened to the church announcements and such. When all that was done, the elders went up and were excited to introduce the new pastor of the church to the congregation. "We would like to introduce to you Pastor Jeremiah Steepek." The congregation looked around clapping with joy and anticipation. The homeless man sitting in the back stood up and started walking down the aisle. The clapping stopped with ALL eyes on him. He walked up to the altar and took the microphone from the elders (who were in on this) and paused for a moment.  Then he recited,
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
'The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
After he recited this, he looked towards the congregation and told them all that he had experienced that morning. Many began to cry and many heads were bowed in shame. He then said, "Today I see a gathering of people, not a church of Jesus Christ. The world has enough people, but not enough disciples. Will YOU decide to become disciples?"

A church community in New York decided to take on the task of experiencing what it was to be with the “least” of these by spending a night on the street with several of their local neighborhood homeless folk.  While they were out, creating fellowship and engaging in conversation, it began to rain and to rain quite hard.  They chose to seek shelter in a nearby church which had a Saturday evening
service that was about to begin.  As they attempted to enter the church, a security guard met them at the door and kindly but firmly told them they would have to leave.  The pastor of the local church who was leading this experience was among those asked to leave.  She asked why, and the guard said he knew it was raining but that he had been hired expressly for the purpose of keeping out the homeless people who would come into the church simply for shelter and not to hear God’s Word.  The pastor kindly but gently suggested that perhaps strangers would be more open to hearing God’s Word if they were treated as the Bible said they must be by these “people of God.”

When Youngest, who turns 9 today, was 3 years old I used to take her for "get used to water" swim lessons.  As usual on this one day I sat near the pool with a woman I’d been coming to get to know whose twin boys were also in Youngest's class.  Unusual to this lesson, there were also two other women sitting in front of us in the "observation" benches: they had brochures in their hands about the classes being offered and seemed to be checking out the adult water aerobics class to see if they wanted to sign up. Half way into the lesson one of the two women in front of me excused herself and left. My new friend also had to leave at that point because her twins needed a trip to the bathroom. As soon as both the other women left, the woman sitting in front of me suddenly burst into tears. She turned towards me and said, "the woman I was sitting with has just made me very sad." I was surprised, at many levels, but mostly that this stranger had trusted me with her feelings, but I also immediately jumped into "pastoral counselor" mode and put my hand on her back and asked what had happened. She sort of melted into my touch and sobbed out that she had just gotten out of the hospital where she'd had two blood transfusions. These transfusions had saved her life and she was doing really well now, though in need of some light exercise. Apparently, though, the women she'd been sitting with had just told her that getting blood transfusions was a really bad thing and that she would probably die from the diseases carried in the new blood. Amazing!
     I told her that there used to be problems, occasionally, with people passing on diseases in this way, but that because of those problems the blood that now gets passed on in transfusions is really very thoroughly tested. Obviously she needed the transfusions and the very fact that she was doing better should show her that the new blood had not made her ill at all! I said that I believed the other woman to be greatly misinformed and apparently not very helpful either. I then just listened as she poured out more information about her life - the joys and struggles, but at the end she said she was feeling much better. As soon as she seemed done and had stopped crying, my friend with her twins returned.
As the lesson ended and we all made our way out of the swim area, the distressed woman came up and said she really felt I had been a God-send that day - that she usually doesn't dump on total strangers and she just thanked God I had been there when I was.  I think about that story – the opportunities we have to interact with strangers, and the possibilities in those moments of bringing comfort, of offering compassion, of bringing care.  God gives us these opportunities to welcome the stranger daily.

One of the ways that St. Andrew’s welcomes the stranger is by inviting, housing and welcoming all the groups and classes that we house here such as the AA groups and recovery groups, as well as through opportunities such as Family Promise and the ILR classes.   We give these strangers a place to be.  We give them a sense of “home”.  I have talked with several of the AA folk who come here for their meetings and they tell me they see this building as their church.
But when pushed a little…”The building?”  I have asked, “you see the building as your church?”
“Well, yes,” one of these men admitted uncomfortably.  “We are welcomed into this space, we are never treated unkindly, but we always remain strangers, never really known, never really talked to, never really invited into relationship.   So while my AA group is ‘church’, and the building is my church, the congregation?….Well, not so much.”   I understand this.  We want to preserve their anonymity and we may think the best way to do that is to avoid engaging them in anything meaningful.  But they are people.  They are the strangers among us whom we are called to treat as our own “citizens”.  They are God’s children and we are missing an opportunity to be Christ to them when we do not look them in the eye, ask how they are, and welcome them not only into our space, but into our hearts as well.

We need to remember, every time we walk into a new space, we are neither the first person into that new space nor the last.  We will always be a stranger to some and others will always be a stranger to us.

 Welcoming the Stranger may even be harder for us than feeding the hungry because it involves not just opening your hand, your wallet, your food pantry, it involves opening your hearts.  It involves opening your hearts to people you don’t know, to people you don’t understand, to people you may not want anywhere near you at any time.  Welcoming the stranger is a hard call because it involves looking at each person not by their status, rank, ethnicity, background or country of origin but looking at them with eyes that look to see God’s face in the other.  Remember, when you do it for the “least” of these – those people who are hardest to see, hardest to love, and easiest to fear – that is when you do it to Jesus.  Amen.