the holy gospel according to matthew (25:31-46)
[Jesus said,]
31“When
the Son of Man comes in his glory,
and
all the angels with him,
then
he will sit on the throne of his glory.
32All
the nations will be gathered before him,
and
he will separate people one from another
as
a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,
33and
he will put the sheep at his right hand
and
the goats at the left.
34Then
the king will say to those at his right hand,
‘Come,
you that are blessed by my Father,
inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;
35for
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,
36I
was naked and you gave me clothing,
I
was sick and you took care of me,
I
was in prison and you visited me.’
37Then
the righteous will answer him,
‘Lord,
when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food,
or
thirsty and gave you something to drink?
38And
when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you,
or
naked and gave you clothing?
39And
when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
40And
the king will answer them,
‘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.’
41Then
he will say to those at his left hand,
‘You
that are accursed,
depart
from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;
42for
I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I
was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
43I
was a stranger and you did not welcome me,
naked
and you did not give me clothing,
sick
and in prison and you did not visit me.’
44Then
they also will answer,
‘Lord,
when was it that we saw you
hungry
or
thirsty
or
a stranger
or
naked
or
sick
or
in prison,
and
did not take care of you?’
45Then
he will answer them,
‘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.’
46And
these will go away into eternal punishment,
but
the righteous into eternal life.”
the gospel of the lord.
throughout this month, we have been talking about and
sharing where we’ve found jesus and i hope you’ve gotten the chance to check
out jesus on the back wall. if
not, take a look today after worship or during communion, because it’s pretty
powerful. you all have found jesus
in a lot of different places. and,
today, we’ve heard again who jesus is; where to find him: the hungry, the stranger,
the naked, the outcast. today’s
gospel raises the question: how do we recognize jesus,
and other people?
when i began seminary, i had a professor, dr. ralph klein,
who was the perfect combination of dumbledore and moses. he was wise and funny and many of us
were convinced that he could read genesis in the original hebrew because he was
the one who wrote it.
the first day of class, dr. klein took a picture of us all
so that he could study our faces, matched with names, and start to recognize us
between classes. well, after a
week, when we came back to class, there was one person that dr. klein couldn’t
recognize.
the first week of classes, when he took the picture, my hair
was long and i had worn it down and curly, like a lion’s mane as my mom used to
call it. the next week (and much
of the semester to follow), it was pulled quickly back into a ponytail. dr. klein had studied our stand-out,
most obvious characteristics in that first week, but hadn’t looked deeper. he hadn’t gotten past my hair to see
even my glasses, let alone who i really was. since those first weeks, dr. klein has come to know me, and
my hair, more fully in all of its diverse lengths and in all of my questions,
comments, and experiences.
but, to this day new people in my life still don’t recognize
me if i wear my hair differently the second time they see me…and, they tend to
grow quite attached to my hair. i
don’t have that same problem, mainly because i am not very attached to my hair
and enjoy changing its length frequently, making people recognize me by more
than just my hair.
and while dr. klein couldn’t recognize me those first weeks,
he was the one to introduce me to a god i
knew and yet hadn’t recognized.
dr. klein taught us hebrew bible, or old testament, and that man could
find grace anywhere. as i
explained to the confirmands this week, dr. klein was the one to point out:
the grace in the 10 commandments, where the first commandment, according to
jewish numbering, is “i am the lord your god, who brought you out of the land
of egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
not a commandment at all, but a proclamation of god’s love active in our
lives.
dr. klein was also the first person to refer to god with
diverse pronouns. we know from
study and from faith that we are made in the image of god—all of us,
together—so it would make sense that god would not just be male—in fact, the holy
spirit is feminine in hebrew and gender neutral in greek. dr. klein recognized the fullness of
god’s diversity and was the first person i heard refer to god as she as well as
he.
these days we spend a lot
of time being concerned with gender—usually that of someone else. we can spend so much time worrying
about and policing other people’s gender that we lose sight of the jesus in
them. this past thursday was the annual
transgender day of remembrance where we gathered for a vigil and read the names
of those beloved children of god who others chose to harm and kill because
their gender didn’t fit in the box that person had for them.
i went to the vigil, as i have the past few years, for
several reasons. i went to bear
witness that violence is wrong. i went
to bear witness that god’s love is for everybody. and i went because sometimes people get confused by the way i dress, when i wear a tie, or by how i cut my hair.
in today’s gospel the son of man is talking to the gentiles,
people who don’t know or follow the way of jesus. people who really don’t have a context in which to recognize
jesus. it’s not just that the
“goats” don’t recognize jesus, nobody does!
there are so many ways that each of us can get caught up in
our expectations and assumptions that we
fail to recognize each other and, more importantly, we fail to recognize jesus
in
the
other. sometimes it’s because
we are more concerned with figuring out their gender than recognizing that god
is a god of all genders. sometimes
we are too concerned with what papers they have, forgetting that we are a
country of strangers and immigrants and that god comes to us as a stranger in
our midst.
other times we can see too much of ourselves—specifically
those characteristics in ourselves that we don’t like to acknowledge. we see too much of us in them to remember
that god created us all—them and us—as beloved children, just as we
are.
at this end of the church year, we celebrate christ the
king, our namesake. we celebrate
the One whose power and love is made known in the “least of these.” christ’s presence in the hungry, the
stranger, the naked, the outcast, is the way we know: god’s love is for
everybody. we know god’s diversity
as we are all made, in our diversity, in god’s image. we know god’s love as we are all called beloved children.
so whether our hair changes length or style, whether we have
the right papers, whether we lose our jobs, or are diagnosed with a grave
illness, we never lose the ability
to recognize jesus in those we encounter.
more importantly,
though, god will never lose the
ability
not
only to recognize each of us as beloved children,
but
also to be present in us,
to
know us more deeply than how we wear or don’t wear our hair,
to
know us more deeply than our gender,
our
immigration status, our job, or our health.
god knows us deeply enough to call us beloved, and god knows
each person we encounter deeply enough to call them beloved as well.
thanks be to god.
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