Matthew 25:31-46
"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. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then 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; for 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, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then 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? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' 40 And 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.' Then 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; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I 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.' Then 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?' Then 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.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
So what’s going to happen to you when the great division comes? What’s going to happen when Jesus separates us from one another, putting some on the right and some on the left? Which side will you be placed on? Will you be with the sheep or the goats?
The truth is that I’d be hard-pressed to find many Christians who would say, “Me? I’ll be among the goats.” Most of us believe we’ll be running with the sheep, but is that true? Looking at Jesus’ criterion for grazing with the sheep, how do you match up?
Now, I need to tell you that I’m not much of a “rapture” guy. What I mean is that I’m not a big believer in the theology of the rapture. You know the belief. It’s an idea based on one small passage of scripture, Matthew 24, in which Jesus says to be watchful for the coming of Christ because “two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.” It’s a confusing passage because it’s hard to tell if he is using poetic language typical of the Middle East, or predicting something. Still, for the first 1800 years of Christianity, no one thought that this passage was literal. It was understood to be figurative, telling people to always be aware that Christ can return at any moment. It wasn’t until an Irish evangelical preacher, John Nelson Darby, preached about it in the mid-1800s that anyone believed in the rapture. At any rate, I’m not a big believer in the rapture because I believe it’s a theology that’s built on speculation.
Still, I often wonder what people who believe in the rapture, who read books like the Left Behind series, think of this passage. I wonder because most of them seem to believe that getting to heaven has to do with having the right beliefs. They believe that if we proclaim Christ as Lord and believe in Jesus’ saving power, then they will be taken up in the rapture. But what do they make of this passage, which says that judgment doesn’t have to do with having the right belief? This passage seems to say that it’s not so much a matter of what we believe as it is of how we love. Reading our passage for this morning, what seems to determine our entry into the kingdom of heaven is how we treat the people who struggle in life. What matters seems to be how we treat the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the imprisoned.
With this in mind, my question for you is simple: to what extent do you care about people who are poor, hungry, lack proper clothing, or are in prison? Do you think about them at all? A little? A lot?
I find that in our culture there are many people who have a very damaging, un-Christian attitude toward the poor and the imprisoned. They tend to split them into two categories: the deserving and undeserving. For instance, there are those who believe that most poor people are poor because they haven’t worked hard enough to overcome their poverty. These are the folks whom I’ve heard at cocktail parties and elsewhere say things like, “I’ve worked for everything I have. Those people are lazy. They do nothing, but they still get a handout. If it were up to me, they’d all be forced to do roadwork or something like that. I shouldn’t have to support their laziness. Don’t get me wrong. There are some people who are poor because they have a mental problem, but most of them are just lazy.” These folks believe in helping only those who deserve to be poor, whatever that means. The problem is that Jesus doesn’t distinguish the deserving and undeserving poor. He just tells us to care about the poor.
People also similarly talk about those in prison in the same way. They say things like, “Those people did something wrong. They should be punished. We shouldn’t be having country clubs for prisoners. Prisons should be harsh places that cause people pain for all the pain they’ve caused.” Again, the problem is that Jesus calls us to care for prisoners, to love them, not abuse them. What do we do with teachings like that?
No matter what causes people to be poor, hungry, homeless, sick, thirsty, imprisoned, or strange, Jesus calls us to care for them. This whole passage gets so much to the heart of Christian faith and what we do with it. There are a lot of Christians who are good at playing the role of Christian—at proclaiming themselves good, seeming sinless, proclaiming others as sinful, knowing the Bible, and things like that. But that doesn’t make them truly Christian in the sense of our passage.
Let me give you an example. Several years ago a woman was referred to me because she had some questions about faith. She was disturbed by an experience she had had, and wanted to talk about it with a pastor who wasn’t part of her church. What disturbed her was her experience on a mission trip to Thailand to help victims of the 2004 tsunami.
When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia in 2004, her heart went out to all the people who had lost their homes and were now struggling just to find food, water, and shelter. Her church set up this mission trip to go to Thailand to help the victims. It was her impression that the mission trip would be to help them rebuild, to bring food and supplies, and otherwise help them recover. When she got there, she was a bit dumbfounded to discover that the mission was to stand in front of a large Buddhist temple and hand out Christian tracts (tracts written in English) to the people living there (most of whom could not speak or read English). The tracts essentially said that Jesus was the only way to salvation, and that they had to give up their faith and become Christian if they were to be saved.
She was shocked at this because she saw that what these people needed was food, clothing, housing, medicine, and so much more. Her church’s mission was ignoring those needs in order to talk about salvation in a language the people didn’t understand. She spoke with the leaders of the mission, and she was told that if these people turned their lives over the Christ, they would be helped, and so what they were doing was to help them find help.
Another interesting thing happened. The members of the mission trip were warned to stay out of the Buddhist temple because the devil was there. She was warned that the devil might hurt their faith if they went inside. This piqued her curiosity. She wanted to go inside and see what a Buddhist temple looked like, especially since the people were so devoted to it.
Struggling with what to do, she finally decided that it was just too compelling. She had to see what was inside this temple. And so she walked up the steps. Walking in, she was overcome with the beauty inside. It was transcendent. It was inspiring. And she had a deep spiritual experience. It wasn’t an experience that led her to become Buddhist. It was an experience that actually deepened her Christian faith. She had an overwhelming sense of Christ’s presence in that place. Unfortunately, she was left with a problem: “How do I tell others about this? They’ll brand me as a heretic, even though I’ve had an experience of Christ.” And that’s what they did when she told a few of them.
Here’s the real crux of the situation, though. These folks had a chance to be sheep and help the poor, but instead they handed out tracts. They were more concerned about whether the poor believed the right things than they were that the poor had adequate food and shelter. They were Christian, but they didn’t follow Christ’s message of our passage for today.
What do you do to help the poor everyday? Do you think about this? There’s no judgment from me if you don’t, but we are called to help the poor. That’s one of the reasons we constantly try to offer opportunities here in the church. For instance, we periodically do meals for the Ladle and Hearth ministry in Ambridge. We encourage you to contribute to the local food bank. We are presently doing a coat and sweater drive. We have a special mission fund as part of our church to financially help people in trouble. It’s why we do a backpack drive and other activities for the Pittsburgh Project. There’s a lot we do in the church, which is great. And we hope to do more. Still, do you look for other opportunities on your own? How do you help the poor?
How you vote makes a difference. To me this is a huge aspect of helping the poor, and I’m glad that I now get to talk about it after the election so that it doesn’t sound like I’m endorsing one party or another. Simply put, to be Christian means to vote for people who care about the poor. There are a lot of theories about how to do this. There’s the trickle down theory, which says that we should invest in the investors, and that they will create new wealth and jobs. There’s the bubble up theory, which is that we invest in the poor, giving them more buying power, and thus helping the economy from the ground up. Why is it that we have to have one or the other? Why can’t we have both, which makes more ecological sense? If you understand weather patterns, water both trickles down and evaporates back up. Why is it that we have to vote for the poor against the economy, or for the wealthy against the poor? Either way, whatever economic theory we have, we should be putting the welfare of the poor at the center of our vote because that’s a reflection of what scripture says. Why not vote for politicians and policies who want to bring better housing, food, quality of life, education and opportunity to the poor?
The question is also central to our giving habits. Do we give to charities that help the poor beyond the church? One of the people I really admire in this way is former Steelers player, and present radio analyst, Tunch Ilkin. Ilkin was an all-pro offensive lineman. He now analyzes games, and I love to watch him on Mondays on Savran on Sports, as he uses a telestrater to break down games. He doesn’t just say things like, “The coaches stink,” like most of us do. Instead, he shows in slow motion why critical plays either worked or didn’t, how someone did or didn’t execute well, and how someone either made or missed an assignment. But the thing that I really admire about him is not his football knowledge. I like it, but I don’t admire it. What I admire is his work over the past twenty years for the Light of Life Ministry on the northside of Pittsburgh. This is a ministry that cares for the hungry and the homeless. He isn’t just a football guy. He’s a Matthew 25 guy, and that’s what is really defining about his life.
Getting back to our scripture, the passage is basically asking a simple question: how much do we care about those whom few care about? How we answer is what defines us as Christians
Amen.
So what’s going to happen to you when the great division comes? What’s going to happen when Jesus separates us from one another, putting some on the right and some on the left? Which side will you be placed on? Will you be with the sheep or the goats?
The truth is that I’d be hard-pressed to find many Christians who would say, “Me? I’ll be among the goats.” Most of us believe we’ll be running with the sheep, but is that true? Looking at Jesus’ criterion for grazing with the sheep, how do you match up?
Now, I need to tell you that I’m not much of a “rapture” guy. What I mean is that I’m not a big believer in the theology of the rapture. You know the belief. It’s an idea based on one small passage of scripture, Matthew 24, in which Jesus says to be watchful for the coming of Christ because “two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.” It’s a confusing passage because it’s hard to tell if he is using poetic language typical of the Middle East, or predicting something. Still, for the first 1800 years of Christianity, no one thought that this passage was literal. It was understood to be figurative, telling people to always be aware that Christ can return at any moment. It wasn’t until an Irish evangelical preacher, John Nelson Darby, preached about it in the mid-1800s that anyone believed in the rapture. At any rate, I’m not a big believer in the rapture because I believe it’s a theology that’s built on speculation.
Still, I often wonder what people who believe in the rapture, who read books like the Left Behind series, think of this passage. I wonder because most of them seem to believe that getting to heaven has to do with having the right beliefs. They believe that if we proclaim Christ as Lord and believe in Jesus’ saving power, then they will be taken up in the rapture. But what do they make of this passage, which says that judgment doesn’t have to do with having the right belief? This passage seems to say that it’s not so much a matter of what we believe as it is of how we love. Reading our passage for this morning, what seems to determine our entry into the kingdom of heaven is how we treat the people who struggle in life. What matters seems to be how we treat the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the imprisoned.
With this in mind, my question for you is simple: to what extent do you care about people who are poor, hungry, lack proper clothing, or are in prison? Do you think about them at all? A little? A lot?
I find that in our culture there are many people who have a very damaging, un-Christian attitude toward the poor and the imprisoned. They tend to split them into two categories: the deserving and undeserving. For instance, there are those who believe that most poor people are poor because they haven’t worked hard enough to overcome their poverty. These are the folks whom I’ve heard at cocktail parties and elsewhere say things like, “I’ve worked for everything I have. Those people are lazy. They do nothing, but they still get a handout. If it were up to me, they’d all be forced to do roadwork or something like that. I shouldn’t have to support their laziness. Don’t get me wrong. There are some people who are poor because they have a mental problem, but most of them are just lazy.” These folks believe in helping only those who deserve to be poor, whatever that means. The problem is that Jesus doesn’t distinguish the deserving and undeserving poor. He just tells us to care about the poor.
People also similarly talk about those in prison in the same way. They say things like, “Those people did something wrong. They should be punished. We shouldn’t be having country clubs for prisoners. Prisons should be harsh places that cause people pain for all the pain they’ve caused.” Again, the problem is that Jesus calls us to care for prisoners, to love them, not abuse them. What do we do with teachings like that?
No matter what causes people to be poor, hungry, homeless, sick, thirsty, imprisoned, or strange, Jesus calls us to care for them. This whole passage gets so much to the heart of Christian faith and what we do with it. There are a lot of Christians who are good at playing the role of Christian—at proclaiming themselves good, seeming sinless, proclaiming others as sinful, knowing the Bible, and things like that. But that doesn’t make them truly Christian in the sense of our passage.
Let me give you an example. Several years ago a woman was referred to me because she had some questions about faith. She was disturbed by an experience she had had, and wanted to talk about it with a pastor who wasn’t part of her church. What disturbed her was her experience on a mission trip to Thailand to help victims of the 2004 tsunami.
When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia in 2004, her heart went out to all the people who had lost their homes and were now struggling just to find food, water, and shelter. Her church set up this mission trip to go to Thailand to help the victims. It was her impression that the mission trip would be to help them rebuild, to bring food and supplies, and otherwise help them recover. When she got there, she was a bit dumbfounded to discover that the mission was to stand in front of a large Buddhist temple and hand out Christian tracts (tracts written in English) to the people living there (most of whom could not speak or read English). The tracts essentially said that Jesus was the only way to salvation, and that they had to give up their faith and become Christian if they were to be saved.
She was shocked at this because she saw that what these people needed was food, clothing, housing, medicine, and so much more. Her church’s mission was ignoring those needs in order to talk about salvation in a language the people didn’t understand. She spoke with the leaders of the mission, and she was told that if these people turned their lives over the Christ, they would be helped, and so what they were doing was to help them find help.
Another interesting thing happened. The members of the mission trip were warned to stay out of the Buddhist temple because the devil was there. She was warned that the devil might hurt their faith if they went inside. This piqued her curiosity. She wanted to go inside and see what a Buddhist temple looked like, especially since the people were so devoted to it.
Struggling with what to do, she finally decided that it was just too compelling. She had to see what was inside this temple. And so she walked up the steps. Walking in, she was overcome with the beauty inside. It was transcendent. It was inspiring. And she had a deep spiritual experience. It wasn’t an experience that led her to become Buddhist. It was an experience that actually deepened her Christian faith. She had an overwhelming sense of Christ’s presence in that place. Unfortunately, she was left with a problem: “How do I tell others about this? They’ll brand me as a heretic, even though I’ve had an experience of Christ.” And that’s what they did when she told a few of them.
Here’s the real crux of the situation, though. These folks had a chance to be sheep and help the poor, but instead they handed out tracts. They were more concerned about whether the poor believed the right things than they were that the poor had adequate food and shelter. They were Christian, but they didn’t follow Christ’s message of our passage for today.
What do you do to help the poor everyday? Do you think about this? There’s no judgment from me if you don’t, but we are called to help the poor. That’s one of the reasons we constantly try to offer opportunities here in the church. For instance, we periodically do meals for the Ladle and Hearth ministry in Ambridge. We encourage you to contribute to the local food bank. We are presently doing a coat and sweater drive. We have a special mission fund as part of our church to financially help people in trouble. It’s why we do a backpack drive and other activities for the Pittsburgh Project. There’s a lot we do in the church, which is great. And we hope to do more. Still, do you look for other opportunities on your own? How do you help the poor?
How you vote makes a difference. To me this is a huge aspect of helping the poor, and I’m glad that I now get to talk about it after the election so that it doesn’t sound like I’m endorsing one party or another. Simply put, to be Christian means to vote for people who care about the poor. There are a lot of theories about how to do this. There’s the trickle down theory, which says that we should invest in the investors, and that they will create new wealth and jobs. There’s the bubble up theory, which is that we invest in the poor, giving them more buying power, and thus helping the economy from the ground up. Why is it that we have to have one or the other? Why can’t we have both, which makes more ecological sense? If you understand weather patterns, water both trickles down and evaporates back up. Why is it that we have to vote for the poor against the economy, or for the wealthy against the poor? Either way, whatever economic theory we have, we should be putting the welfare of the poor at the center of our vote because that’s a reflection of what scripture says. Why not vote for politicians and policies who want to bring better housing, food, quality of life, education and opportunity to the poor?
The question is also central to our giving habits. Do we give to charities that help the poor beyond the church? One of the people I really admire in this way is former Steelers player, and present radio analyst, Tunch Ilkin. Ilkin was an all-pro offensive lineman. He now analyzes games, and I love to watch him on Mondays on Savran on Sports, as he uses a telestrater to break down games. He doesn’t just say things like, “The coaches stink,” like most of us do. Instead, he shows in slow motion why critical plays either worked or didn’t, how someone did or didn’t execute well, and how someone either made or missed an assignment. But the thing that I really admire about him is not his football knowledge. I like it, but I don’t admire it. What I admire is his work over the past twenty years for the Light of Life Ministry on the northside of Pittsburgh. This is a ministry that cares for the hungry and the homeless. He isn’t just a football guy. He’s a Matthew 25 guy, and that’s what is really defining about his life.
Getting back to our scripture, the passage is basically asking a simple question: how much do we care about those whom few care about? How we answer is what defines us as Christians
Amen.
