Lord, When Did I See You? 11-26-23
Lord, When Did We See You?
Ezek 34:11-16; Mt 25:31-46
Ezek 34:11-16
For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
Mt 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?’ 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.”
Prayer –
Since the start of the holiday season is just around the corner, it is likely that at least a few of us will soon watch some or all of the classic holiday movie It’s A Wonderful Life. As we all know a man named George Bailey despairs that his life is so worthless that it would have been better had he never been born at all. In order to prove him wrong, Clarence the guardian angel lets George experience what the world would have been like had George Bailey never existed. As we know, George discovers that his humdrum life affected far more people than he could have guessed. Both little and big things that George had done over the course of his lifetime combined to make Bedford Falls a better place. George never noticed all the good that he had done, and all the bad he had prevented, simply by being alive and being himself.
A similar point is made in Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town. The play’s central character, Emily, is given a chance, following her death, to view a scene from her past. She is told she that it can’t be some obviously important day but should be a fairly normal time from her bygone life – indeed, she is told that re-visiting even the least important day of her life would suffice to teach Emily something very important.
Emily chooses to re-visit her 12th birthday, only to discover a vast array of things about that day she had completely forgotten. More than that, however, she is stunned to see how fast life moves and how little she or anyone for that matter, pays attention to what is happening when it was happening. In the end, Emily can’t bear to watch – “I can’t. I can’t go on,” she cries. “We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed . . . Do any human beings ever realize while they live it – every, every minute?” she asks. The answer is no. Instead, Emily is told, for the vast majority of people, what it means to be alive is ‘to move about in a cloud of ignorance.’
Emily didn’t realize. George Bailey didn’t realize. They simply were not aware of the larger meaning around them every day, in fact, every minute of every day. Sometimes the most important things we do in life are things that, at the time, we see no real significance in at all. Our metaphorical story in Mt this morning where Jesus sorts the sheep from the goats may, or may not, describe the end of history. And while these two groups may be metaphorical, they did share at least one thing in common – both had lived their lives without realizing something – neither knew when they had seen Jesus.
Strikingly, before Jesus separates the sheep and goats, both groups ask the exact same question – ‘when did all this stuff happen?’ Jesus tells the righteous folks that he was grateful for all the ways they had nourished, welcomed, clothed, tended to and visited him. But the righteous for the life of them can’t recall doing any of that for Jesus and so they ask, ‘When did we see you, Lord?’ The unseeing can’t for the life of them recall seeing Jesus anywhere, much less in need of anything, and so they ask, ‘Well, what day was it that we missed seeing you, Jesus?’ One group saw unknowingly and helped, while the other group unknowingly saw and didn’t do a thing.
All of this begs the question – why don’t we pay attention to life as we live it? Why do we miss so much? In our gospel passage for this morning, both groups, sheep and goats alike, say they didn’t realize that the poor of the world represented Jesus in some way, shape or form. Both missed the connection. Ever noticed that before? The righteous are not commended for spying Jesus in the poor, hungry, the prisoners. They didn’t. They just treated all such folks with love. Lord, when did we see you?
The reason is because Jesus identifies himself so snugly with the hurting of this world that whatever we do, or fail to do, in relation to those hurting people directly affects Jesus. But we forget – we don’t realize life while we live it. But shouldn’t we at least try. That’s what Mt is trying to say to us today. We, as beloved children of God, should be more aware of what is going on around us, where Jesus is to be found, and how we are to treat him. Or is reading this and listening to our gospel passage this morning a little like seeing a performance of Our Town? How many of us have watched the play or, understood its most basic lesson about life but then left the theater with no deeper awareness or transformation? Even if after watching and being affected by the play and left thinking to ourselves – ‘I really want to start living my life more deliberately every, every minute,’ how may of them really followed through, really were able to penetrate that ‘cloud of ignorance’ in which we all tend to live?
I would guess there are not many of us who found the wherewithal to make such big changes. But Our Town, is just theater, a play while Mt 25 is different, or should be. This is the gospel. This is the Word of God. And it tells us that when our lives include service and ministry and outreach to the downtrodden of life, then whether we know it or not, we are serving Jesus himself. But if our lives are all about meeting out own needs, looking out for #1 only, and in so doing little more than thoughts and prayers for the poor, the sick, the impoverished, the imprisoned, then we are insulting Jesus just as surely as if we willingly spit in the Savior’s eye.
In our lives, do we see the marginalized of the world? And when we see them, are we moved to help them, however we can, even if it is through relatively modest ways of serving? Because notice these words of Jesus in these verses don’t point to some heroic way of life of magnificent or miraculous deeds. The kinds of servant opportunities that Jesus highlights are what we would call ordinary. He doesn’t say you have to heal the sick, merely notice them and care for them. He doesn’t say that those in prison must be liberated by us but it would help if we could visit them in whatever situation imprisons them. The other terms are similar matters of common sense and decency; when someone is hungry, do what you can to ensure they eat – it’s basic. A thirsty person needs water. Someone shivering in the chill of Montana winter could use a coat. Those who have no place to sleep or rest or call home could use a shelter from the elements – it’s basic – it’s logical.
Just here is perhaps as much our challenge as anyone else’s in the world. Can we see the true humanity, the image of God, in the needy people of the world? Do we take care to remind ourselves of that fundamental, basic identity of the poor and marginalized? It seems that too often we are content to talk in generalities – in broad strokes that conveniently lets human specificity fall away. We have a human tendency to lump problems and people together – the homeless, those on welfare, third world, mentally ill, unemployed - THEM. There is scarcely a human face to be seen in any of these broad categories. Or worse, there is at best the caricature of a face to stand in for the whole group. It’s like punching up the ‘poor’ on Google Images – you’ll see lots of typical pictures of the category but no one whose name you’ll ever know, whose story you will ever hear. Or, are we content with acknowledging no more than this or that problem area of life exists? And if so, might it be the case for me and for many of us that we sooner or later start to forget that the people who are on the edges of normalcy are beloved children of God, made in God’s very image as well.
Someone once suggested that it would be a good spiritual discipline for all of us to go to your average Walmart, sit down somewhere, and just watch people go by. You maybe know up front what you’ll see – the harried mom with three little kids under the age of 6. Two of the kids are hollering or begging for this or that toy, the mom is snapping in anger and wondering why she ever birthed any of these kids. You pause to notice the rather obese person who lumbers along short of breath as he or she piles the cart high with Twinkies, Cheetos and cheap beer. You notice the occasional well-to-do person waiting in the checkout line behind the young couple in tattered blue jeans who are furtively paying their bill with food stamps. You’ll see a little bit of everything eventually, if, if you are looking. And then remember that each one of them are beloved and too made in the image of God.
Jesus lived and loved and forgives that skinny one, that chunky one; that stressed out mom and that tattooed and pierced teenager because each one of them, somewhere under all of that exterior stuff, is made in the likeness of God. We dare not reduce them to categories, or statistics, or even generalities alone.
We Christians can do better than that – Jesus is not suggesting that we innovate excessively creative programs to care for those on the edges or that we perform miracles. He simply is reminding us this morning, days after Thanksgiving, that we see God, and by extension Jesus, in the people around us. So perhaps, it would be a useful exercise for us to try, as often as we can, to say or put an actual name on a person who may exist on the edges of our everyday lives.
But suppose you can’t do that; you can’t repeat the name of a hungry child because you’ve never met one. You can’t see in your mind’s eye the face of a homeless mother or father because you’ve never spoken with one. That alone may indicate the first thing we need to do, to see Jesus in those we happen to notice. WE all have work to do, it seems, really to know and then care for the other in our midst – who is also Christ in our midst.
If we are going to take our gospel passage from this morning seriously, or even at face-value, then we cannot help but be reminded of the famous words from St Francis of Assisi – “Preach the gospel, use words if necessary.” We all are saved by grace and not by what we see and do, or even fail to see and do. Jesus knows that the faith and salvation that comes from divine grace can create new perspectives. Grace opens our eyes to see things that we would otherwise miss. Grace begins, already now, to give us a preview of the end of all things. Grace lets us know that if one day we ask the question, Lord, when did we see you? Jesus’ answer will quite probably by, ‘when did you not see me?’ Thanks be to God – amen.