The
Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews
November
26, 2017
Last
Pentecost, A, Proper 29
St.
Joseph-St. John, Lakewood
Matthew
25.31-46
We’ve
reached the end of Matthew 25,
the end of Jesus preparing those
hearing him
for the end of the world
when God
judges all things and all people.
After
these verses,
the plot to kill Jesus gets underway
and we heard that during
Lent and Holy Week.
After
this Sunday,
we won’t gather again on a Sunday in
this liturgical year.
We
start a new year and new book
next Sunday when we start Advent.
The
last two weeks we were warned:
Keep your lamps trimmed and burning
for you don’t know when Jesus will return;
Be good stewards of what you have
because God owns it all
and expects a good return.
Today
Jesus tells us in far more words:
Love all you encounter,
for in encountering
them,
you encounter me.
The
image of God separating the sheep and the goats
is
on that is popular and persistent.
It’s
easy to imagine and grasp:
sheep go to the right and to heaven,
goats go to the left and
to hell.
Angry
Matthew is back at it
with lakes of fire and eternal
darkness
as Jesus condemns those
who fail to love their neighbor.
Because
this image
of sheep and goats is co clear, so visceral,
we
may miss the roles we play in this story.
We
may want to interpose ourselves
into the role of shepherd
rather than that of
sheep
or if we’re
not careful, goat.
When
I first dove into Jesus’ talking about
the Son of Man coming in his glory
sorting the sheep who
fed him without knowing it
from the
goats who sent him away in the same ignorance
I
wanted to use it as a litmus test.
I
was rejecting aspects of my upbringing,
aspects that led one of Billy
Graham’s grandsons to say in 2008,
“We’re not supposed to
be building houses or having food drives.
We’re supposed to be
saving souls.”
My
sponsoring priest flatly said,
“That is Gnosticism, and it is
heresy.”
That
idea of what Christianity means
rejects in full Jesus’ directions in
today’s Gospel passage.
Even
as I was rejecting that notion of Christianity,
I was all the while making myself
the judge,
making myself the
shepherd.
Jesus
doesn’t say,
“When the Son of Man comes in his
glory,
those who think of
themselves as sheep will sit on the throne.”
Jesus
says,
“When the Son of Man comes in his
glory,
he will sit on the
throne of his glory.”
Jesus’
charge isn’t to decide who is being cast into outer darkness
but to pay attention to what he
teaches
and then follow it, to
do it.
Following
Jesus isn’t for the weak or for the lazy.
Following
Jesus is exhausting y’all.
I’m
learning that here as your vicar
because our community’s habits are
so built
around seeing Jesus in
everyone around.
If
we asked, “Jesus,
when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you
food?”
He’d
say,
“Every Wednesday at 6.
The Second and Fourth Wednesdays.
Whenever you give someone in need a bag of dried
food.”
If
we asked, “Jesus,
when was it that we saw you thirsty
and gave you something to drink?”
He’d
say,
“Most mornings at 9 a.m. and
sometimes 1 p.m.
when those blessed
wanderers of Lakewood
ask for a bottle of water.”
If
we asked, “Jesus,
when was it that we saw you a
stranger and welcomed you?”
He’d
say,
“On Sundays when visitors come.
When you open the doors of the
church to Family Housing Network.”
To
be so small,
we do so much!
It’s
exhausting, too,
especially when there’s a skeleton
crew
making up so much of the
work.
But
we do it,
and we don’t do it alone,
because we can’t do it
alone.
Today’s
collect says,
“Almighty and everlasting God,
whose will it is to restore all things in your
well-beloved Son,
the King of kings and Lord of lords:
Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth,
divided and enslaved by sin,
may be freed and brought together under his most
gracious rule.”
Throughout
the Gospels,
Jesus says, “The Reign of God is at
hand!”
Because
God’s Reign is here, now,
God is working through us as Christ’s body
to
restore all things.
Community
dinners,
Family Housing Network,
bottles of water,
these are
all part of that restoration.
All
that work of restoration is tiring,
and we can’t and don’t do it alone.
The
Reign of Christ
is here, is now,
is already-not yet.
We
get a glimpse of it
when we show up here
regardless of how we feel
when
we break bread
and
remember Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension.
The
Son of Man will come in his glory
and look for how we have treated
the least of those among us.
Jesus
will come in his glory,
but his reign is already among us.
Before
the glory,
we're not the shepherd.
We’re
the workers who’re given
tasks of love that are
physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychically
taxing.
We
glimpse Jesus’ glory
at this altar
as we hold Jesus,
who comes in
both humility and glory as Bread
who
feeds us to keep our strength up.
When
we leave this place,
they'll know we’re Christians by our
love
as we trust and hope
we’ll hear,
“Come, you
that are blessed by my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world.”
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