Sermon: “Lord, When Was It?”

Text: Matthew 25:31-46

Christ the King (A)

November 23, 2008

Scripture introduction.  In our second reading this morning, from the 25^th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus speaks to his disciples about the final judgment of all the nations of the world and about what will be important to the judge, whom Jesus calls the “Son of Man” and the “king.”  In Matthew this lesson becomes the capstone of all Jesus’ teachings because, as Matthew tells the story, it is Jesus’ last instruction of his disciples before the week of his betrayal and crucifixion.

For those of us who are inheritors of the traditions of the Protestant Reformation, it may strike us as peculiar that, while Jesus spoke of “faith” and “believing” in other parts of Matthew,[1] in this discussion of the final judgment these two words that are so important to our theology never appear.  In this passage, at least, what turns out to be the basis for deciding who inherits the kingdom of eternal life and who suffers eternal punishment is whether in this life they tended to the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoners.  Jesus deliberately emphasizes this list by having the characters in his story repeat the list four times.  What’s more—Jesus, who it turns out is the Son of Man and the king and the judge in the story, identifies himself with these suffering persons.

Let’s listen to the story ourselves and see what we make of it.  I’ll begin reading at verse 31 and will continue to the end of chapter 25.

Sermon.  Despite its pricklier aspects, this passage, found only in Matthew, has always been one of my favorites.  It is so easy to get all caught up in theological issues as we read the Bible and think about the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  What exactly does it mean to have faith?  How much belief is enough?  What will happen to the Jews?  What will happen to all the other religions of the world?  What was the fate of persons who lived and died before the coming of Christ—or of modern persons who may never have heard of Jesus?  How is it, exactly, that God was present in Jesus when he was physically present on earth?  The questions can go on and on.  But here in a relatively short passage, just as Jesus was himself about to enter the crucible of Holy Week—when he would be betrayed, crucified, and resurrected—Jesus teaches what will be important to him when he returns as the judge of the entire world.  Will it be whether we can explain the mysteries of the Trinity or the Incarnation?  No, thankfully it won’t.  Will it be whether we have faith even the size of a mustard seed, that is, enough faith to move mountains?  Jesus doesn’t mention that here.  No, according to Jesus, the one criterion for how we will be judged is whether we cared for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the strangers, the sick, and those in prison. 

I really don’t know why this should be particularly attractive to me.  After all, I enjoy theological discussions and speculations.  And by the same token, I am not especially good at caring for the marginalized.  In fact I don’t have any excuse not to care for others because that is my job, my calling.  You support me so that I can do it.  So, if anything, this text probably convicts me.  But I like it anyway.  I suppose what attracts me to this text is its simplicity.  We don’t have to scratch our heads and wonder what conduct Jesus asks of us.  We all know there are persons in Terre Haute who are hungry.  We all know sick people.  And one of the largest industries in this part of Indiana—second only, perhaps, to higher education—is prisons.  We have lots of opportunities for visits.

It’s a simple message, but it’s not simplistic.  If we were to follow Jesus’ advice about caring for those in need, I’m willing to bet that a lot of the other things we think of as Christian virtues would begin to happen automatically.  Think of evangelism, for instance.  How many times have we heard it said that we preach a sermon every day by the way we live our lives?  If we made the gospel “good news” that people could touch and feel, something that would go into their stomachs or onto their backs, we could preach no better evangelistic sermon.  Jesus also taught us to love one another, to be humble, and not to care overly much about worldly goods.  If every day we ministered to the needs of someone, giving not only our resources but also our time and attention to the point that the needy person became to us not just a bundle of need, but a real human person like us, wouldn’t we be humbled, wouldn’t we be doing a loving act, wouldn’t we be releasing our grasp on the things of this world?  Pretty soon, as we began to understand the realities in which needy persons live, our efforts on their behalf would go way beyond handouts and Band-Aid measures; we would begin to repair the systems that produce hunger, thirst, nakedness, alienation, sickness, and prisoners.  As I think of other Christian virtues—truthfulness, reverence, justice, even care for the earth—all would be accomplished as we thoughtfully cared for those in need.  In short, if caring for others became our very way of life, this would form our characters.  Just as a traveling rose follows the trellis, we would follow the form of godly living and gradually would become more like Christ himself.

Well, then, where does faith and belief come into the picture?  Was Jesus telling us that salvation, after all, depends only on how well we behave, on how many good works we perform?  Did Paul the Apostle, Martin Luther, and John Calvin get it all wrong when they taught that salvation comes solely by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ?  How do we reconcile this most basic belief of Christianity—one that Protestants and Catholics both affirm—with the actual words of Jesus?  I don’t think it’s an easy question, and I urge you to struggle with it yourselves.  At the end of the day, wherever you come down, you will probably begin placing more emphasis on the importance of good works. 

For what it’s worth, however, here’s how I try to relate the faith about which Paul wrote and the works that Jesus taught.  For me, it’s faith that helps us do the good works.  According to Paul and to Calvin, when we come to Jesus in faith—when we place our whole confidence and trust in God and rely totally on the goodness that we experience in Christ—we are given a holy imagination.  Calvin might say that we are spiritually “regenerated” or “reborn.”  Before we knew about Jesus and about God’s basic love for us in Christ—a love that goes on loving no matter how we behave, no matter how we may have messed up—we had a low opinion of ourselves and of what we could accomplish for good in the world.  The main task was simply to do our best to care for ourselves.  If we were concerned with moral issues at all, we probably were satisfied if what we did resulted in no direct harm to others.  But when we see the example of Christ, of God the King who has chosen to be one of us and to suffer what we suffer—when we realize the high hopes and good intentions that God has for us, when we accept, if you will, the faith that God has in us, then we see that our lives have a greater purpose than simply preserving our own existence.  We see ourselves as a part of God’s plan for the world and our purpose, like God’s, as giving of ourselves for the good of others.  When this seed of faith is planted in our lives, it begins to grow.  This is the process that Paul and Calvin would have called “sanctification,” in basic English, “getting holier.”  We don’t go immediately from being a sinner to being a saint.  Indeed, we continue to mess up even after we recognize the faith that is in us.  But we are on a path that leads to holiness.  We will know that we are on that path when we realize that our concern for others is growing.  Gradually, it begins to matter to us that there are hungry people in the world.  Instead of assuming that “this is simply the way the world is,” if we have faith we will begin to understand that we have some responsibility to work for the solution of the problem.  And faith will give us the inner resources not to give up in the face of what seem like very long odds.  Thus, faith is what gives us the will and the power to do good works.  So when it comes time to be judged, how we have done—as Christians—will relate to how big our hearts have grown, to how far we have grown along the trellis of faith.

You may remind me that many persons who claim no Christian faith have been very active in doing good works.  And you would be right.  Indeed, some of them put us to shame.  What is it that gives them the hope and the conviction to do what they have done?  I don’t know.  Could it be that Christ is active in their lives, and they don’t even know it?  The theologian Paul Tillich suggested that there are persons who are “latent Christians”—whatever that means.  What I do know is that we will be energized for loving others to the extent we recognize ourselves as persons loved by God and saved by God in Christ.

Our passage for this morning is the third of a series in which Jesus places critical importance on how we love others.  The first is the passage about the bridesmaids that was our text several weeks ago.  Some bridesmaids were prepared with the oil of good works, and they were welcomed into the banquet.  Those without oil were left outside.  The second story is the one about the three stewards who each received a sum of money from their master.  Those who invested what they received, and produced more, were praised.  The one who did nothing with what he received was condemned.  And today we have the third passage, Jesus speaking explicitly about the necessity of making sacrifices for the benefit of others, just before he himself made the ultimate sacrifice for us all.  Apparently, our behavior is important to Jesus.

Final question: is this “good news” or just a new code of living for persons who call themselves Christians?  I take it as good news because in this passage Jesus reminds us that he is not gone, but remains with us.  And where will we find him?  In the very persons who need us most, the persons he calls us to help.  When we have felt his love, when we have had burdens lifted from our backs, when we have been blessed with the things that we need, the good news is that there is a way for us to show our thanks.  Every time we bear the burdens of others, Jesus is the one who receives our help.  And when we reach the final judgment, our judge, the king, will be the very one who loves us, who willingly died for us, and who has been leading us to greater holiness throughout all our lives.  May we reach that day with a lifetime of good works, so that when we ask, “Lord, when was it,” Jesus will proudly list the ways he has felt our love.  “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world!”