Matthew 25: Let us See Christ as we feed the hungry
Today we come to the end of
part one of our series Big Questions, Honest Conversations
before we take a
break to celebrate Advent beginning next Sunday. Today is
known to many as
Christ the King Sunday – the final Sunday in the church year
which begins anew
7 days from now.
For us as Christians, Christ
is central to our faith; Christ that one whom we follow and
proclaim every day. We
believe that God love the world so much
that God sent Jesus into the world to fully experience
humanity. We believe that
Jesus Christ taught us who God is, and shows us how to have a
relationship with
God. We believe that Jesus Christ angered those in power when
he preached love
and acceptance of all, and because of this he was killed upon
a Cross. We also
believe that God raised Jesus Christ
3 days later, to continue to show us the way as Christ’s
church.
To use the words of the
United Church statement of Faith:
“we
celebrate [Christ] as
the
Word made flesh,
the
one in whom God and humanity are perfectly joined,
the
transformation of our lives,
the Christ.”
In
Christ, God and humanity are
perfectly joined. Both God and humanity have Christ within us.
It is Christ who
connects us to God; it is through Christ that we are connected
to all of God’s children.
The scripture reading I have
chosen for our sermon on Christ is a parable from Jesus that
he tells his
disciples toward the end of Matthew. Immediately after Jesus
tells this parable
of the goats and the sheep, the plot to have Jesus killed
begins. This parable
is one of the last things Jesus teaches his disciples – he is
heading toward
the cross and is trying to impress his lessons upon them
before he is gone. This
parable is a reminder that we are called to do the work of God
to bring about God’s
kingdom for all. This
parable is a
reminder that we are to do the work of Christ for all.
This is a piece of scripture
that I have read many times, but it always excites me when I
hear an old story a
new way. This week
theologian David Lose
pointed out that both the goats and the sheep, both the
righteous and the accursed
had no idea who Christ was referring to: “Lord, when was it
that we saw you
hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to
drink?” the
sheep ask. And the
goats: “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?”
Neither the goats nor the
sheep gave a second thought to “the least of these” because
for them, they did
not matter. Neither the accursed nor the righteous considered
it possible that
God was within those in need; it didn’t occur to them that
Christ was within
each person in need. For
the sheep, they
did the work of the righteous, but they never saw the
possibility of Christ
within those they were helping.
We too have been called to
do the work of God’s kingdom, to feed the hungry, to cloth the
naked, to
comfort the sick, but we are also called to see the Christ
within each person
we feed, clothe and comfort.
When it comes to the doing,
we do great work – we give our items to Operation Sharing, we
serve at the
Angel breakfast, we give winter wear for Coats for Kids – but
are we as good at
seeing Christ within those we serve?
When someone we know is sick or grieving the loss of a
dear loved one,
we may be ready and willing to send flowers or drop off a
meal, but are we as
willing and able to take the time to see the person inside? Grief and sickness make
many of us
uncomfortable and so it can be easy to send something to help
but stopping to
see the person inside the sickness or grief is much harder. The meal we drop off, or
the flower we send
are tangible ways to care for God’s children, but quite often
we do these
things rather than stop to spend real time with the person who
is sick or
grieving because we are uncomfortable. It
is much harder to do the work while also connecting with the
person; we help by
giving items, but do we also connect with Christ within the
person suffering?
We do the work to comfort the
sick and bereaved and we also work to feed the hungry and
cloth the naked when we
support those living on the street. We feed the hungry, but do
we connect with the
hungry, do we see Christ within those in need?
Here in Embro we do not have
a homeless population, but we are not far from people living
on the streets.
These people are all around us and while we work in the church
to give money,
coats, and shampoo, do we actually see the people who need
these items; do we
see Christ within every person we encounter?
Here is a video that was created
by the New York Rescue Mission's Make Them Visible project
that challenges how we
see the homeless.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bel3vITdnGE
People Walk Past
Loved Ones Disguised As Homeless On The Street Social
Experiment
For the people who
participated in this experiment, this was a wake-up call. It
was a reminder to
actually see those in need, to see the homeless living on the
street rather
than allow them to blend into the background of the city. This experiment was a
wake-up call to see the
Christ within everyone we meet.
Those of us who live in
small towns do not encounter visible homelessness very often. When we visit places with
people living on the
streets like in Toronto, the truth of homelessness is easy to
see, but it’s
incredible how quickly we stop seeing the woman living on the
grate by the
subway stop, or the man sitting quietly by the storefront with
his hat open for
money. These people quickly blend into the background of the
city for us as well.
When we’re not careful, it is
easy to become desensitized to the humanity inside people; to
not see Christ
inside those who make you feel uncomfortable. When we cannot
see the Christ
within those around us, we dehumanize them.
This week I read researcher
Dr. Brené Brown’s newest book called “Braving the Wilderness:
the quest for
true belonging and the courage to stand alone” and she spends
a great deal of
time on what it means to dehumanize people.
She writes: “Dehumanizing
always starts with language, often followed by images. We see
this throughout
history. During the Holocaust, Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen – subhuman. They called Jews rats
and depicted them
as disease carrying rodents in everything from military
pamphlets to children’s
books. Hutus involved in the Rwanda genocide called Tutsis
cockroaches.
Indigenous people are often referred to as savages. Serbs
called Bosnians
aliens. Slave owners throughout history considered slaves
subhuman animals.” (Braving
the Wilderness ch 4)
“Today we are edging closer
and closer to a world where political and ideological
discourse has become an
exercise in dehumanization. And social media are the primary
platforms for our
dehumanizing behaviour. On Twitter and Facebook we can rapidly
push the people
with whom we disagree into the dangerous territory of moral
exclusion, with
little to no accountability, and often in complete anonymity.”
(Braving the Wilderness
ch 4)
The example Brené Brown gives
to show how we have become a culture relying more on
dehumanizing tactics is through
the way republicans and democrats in the USA talked about the
Presidential candidates
Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump during the election in 2016. As she says, “If you felt
belittled when
Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters ‘a basket of
deplorables’ then you
should have felt equally concerned when Eric Trump said,
‘Democrats aren’t even
human.’” (Braving the
Wilderness ch 4)
It doesn’t matter which side
of the argument you are on, when we lose the humanity of any
human being, we
are all lesser for it. When
we stop
seeing Christ within every person we meet, God’s kingdom is
further away and the
whole world is weaker. As much as we may disagree with the
politics of one
person, they are still a person. While we may find it hard to
love that person,
God loves that person, Christ is within them, and the more we
say things that
dehumanize them, the less we are able to see Christ within
that person.
On this Christ the King
Sunday we are called not only to feed the hungry, offer drink
to the thirsty,
welcome the stranger, cloth the naked, care for the sick, and
visit the
prisoner, but we are also called to truly see those in need
all around us, to
see them as valued and beloved human beings, to see Christ
alive in each and
every person.
So let us continue the
ministry of Jesus Christ as we bring shampoo, conditioner, and
deodorant for
Operation Sharing, give money to the Foodgrain Bank Sow and
Row, sign post cards
asking the government to acknowledge our Indigenous siblings
with Bill C 262,
serve at the Angel breakfast, give winter wear to Coats for
Kids, but as we do
all these life giving tasks for Jesus Christ, let us also work
to connect with each
person, let us resist the impulse to dehumanize others, let us
acknowledge and
treat all people with dignity and humanity, let us truly see
Christ in every
person we serve.
May God grant us the
strength to continue to work of Jesus Christ and help us to
connect with Christ
in everyone one we meet.
Thanks be to God
Amen.
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