Matthew 25:31-46
November 20, 2005
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco
There was a woman who was a famous radio personality. Before giving her speech to an audience, she met a stranger who said to her, “You don’t look at all like what I thought you would. You sound taller on the air.” The radio personality said before she gave her speech to the audience, “What you see is in fact my actual height. If you would like me to be taller, you may close your eyes.”
One time I had a similar experience in my previous ministry. When I arrived at this Midwest church in the middle of dairy farms that I was going to speak at, my host pastor said, “You are shorter than you sounded on the phone.” My response was, “We Chinese-Americans grew up not drinking as much milk.”
We have all had similar experiences like this; getting to know someone as a voice on the radio or phone, imagining them to appear a certain way, and then later meeting them and being totally surprised at their appearance. They don’t look at all like what you thought!
In the parable in Matthew 25, we can see our human weakness in knowing Christ in the people we encounter everyday in our lives. We think that we are only interacting with ordinary people but we realize afterward that we were actually coming face to face with Christ Jesus himself. Although Jesus Christ, the Son of Man comes in his glory and sits on the throne as King, the Christ, he is also the “least of these.”
We find it difficult to know who Christ is. We know he is King but is he also those who are suffering and poor? Both the compassionate and the neglectful; both the sheep and the goats ask the same question,
“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?”
Like the stranger seeing the radio personality for the first time, each group clearly had some other image of Christ in their minds. Christ does not look like what we expected.
I told you last Sunday that I went trick or treating with our grand-daughter a few weeks ago. She was Belle in Beauty and the Beast. Halloween has become a very popular holiday apart from the economic boom of sales of costumes and candies. The fascination over Halloween is to be incognito. We dress up, cover our faces with make-up or an old paper sack and go to our neighbors’ houses to say, “trick or treat?” The neighbor then plays along with the holiday fun by saying, “And who are you tonight?” Now and then, we all like to be incognito—to hide our true identity and become someone else even for a few hours.
Might it be that Christ hides his true self from us now and then? Is he putting on the masks and costumes of the poor, the homeless, the sick, the prisoner?
The Nature of God
One lesson that grows out of this parable is the awareness that God, the true God, the one God, who created the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead—is a hidden God. God goes incognito like he’s wearing a Halloween mask.
Our God hides most completely in the faces and places of suffering—the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner—all the least of them. In other religions of the world, they talk about gods in the beauty of the sunset or the birth of babies or in the bounty of nature. But our God is the only God in the whole wide world who hides himself under the faces and places of suffering.
But the real point of this Scripture is not that our God is primarily a hidden God. The real lesson of this parable is an invitation for you and me to seek God—to seek God where God is found. Not in the beauty of the sunsets or the birth of babies or the bounty of nature. Not to find God in the obvious places such as the dramatic stone face of Half Dome in Yosemite. The real lesson of this parable is to seek God where God is found, and God is found hiding behind the faces and places of suffering people.
Just when you thought you can imagine what God might look like—perhaps like Jesus Christ, his Son, we are told that you can recognize Christ when you care and love for those who are the least of these.
Sheep and the Goats
In Matthew 25, all the peoples of the world are gathered at this judgment, not just God’s chosen people, Israel. Here is how all the peoples of the world will be judged. There, a separation is made between sheep and goats. The Son of Man who is the shepherd Lord passes down judgments based on rather mundane acts of kindness to the less fortunate. They are not spectacular acts of charity, rather minimal deeds of loving kindness that are found in the rabbinic teachings.
Both those who perform the acts of mercy and those who don’t are ignorant of what they have done. They were both surprised that by doing these acts of kindness would make a difference on their final fate. The king must tell them everything. The sheep group who performed these unspectacular acts of love is welcomed into the kingdom never really imagining that what they did was that significant at all. In fact, they discovered that when they cared and loved the suffering people, they were actually caring and loving Christ himself. All along, Christ was hidden from their obvious sight but was found in the least of these.
Jesus said, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.” The king will say, “Come, you are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
If We Only Knew
We are thinking that if the goats group knew that God was hidden in the faces and places of the suffering that they would have done better. Most of us want a laundry list or a shopping list or a checklist to dutifully fill in or check off doing the minimal expectations of us. This is not an exhaustive list but rather a suggestive list of how we can show God’s love, to provide healing, caring, restoration, empathy, understanding, and grace in situations of particular need.
Some of us here today may be feeling despair because you think that Christ is expecting you to love the whole world. You may want to just throw up your hands and give up or feel paralyzed by guilt. The message here is not to cause us to be frustrated but to leave worship grateful for God’s awesomeness and God’s gifts, and ready to find opportunities to serve in some way.
We have restarted the Social Concerns Committee with a new group of faithful servants. We are calling this group the “Social Action Network” to emphasize the importance of putting our faith into action and to value the partnership that we have with others in the community. If this group goes around wondering if we should become involved in meeting the needs of others as long as it is effective, we would not get anywhere.
One of the greatest impediments that stop us from doing good in the world is our question, “Yes, that’s all well and good, but is it really effective?” In the last judgment, Jesus did not say a word about effectiveness. His only question: “Did you feed those who were hungry? Did you visit those in jail?”
If we go and visit a homeless shelter or if you wander into a life that is grip with addiction, or if you are trying to reach out for a long-term solution to poverty and ask, “Now is this going to be effective?” my experience is that you won’t be there too long. We will become discouraged and we’ll move on to another need to give us better effective results.
We are not judged on whether or not we were able to effect justice or change the world. The bottom line is not whether it’s effective or not. The bottom line is whether we gave a refreshing cup of cool water or spent an hour visiting one afternoon or wrote a sympathy note to someone who is in grief.
Ultimately it is God’s job to worry about issues of effectiveness, long-term worth, and global value. It is our job to be faithful, to be, in our lives and deeds, an outpost of the kingdom. We are to be a credit to the king.
Unconscious Acts
The people in the sheep group who were welcomed into the kingdom of heaven performed their acts of kindness unconsciously. They were not even aware that anyone was noticing them let alone God. They were astonished to find out that their unspectacular acts of kindness turn out to be caring for Christ himself who was hidden from their obvious sight.
How can we become people who act that way? It means to have the love of Christ inside you. You cannot be this kind of loving person unless the love of Christ is living in you. It is not you. It is not me. It is the love of God living inside you that enables you to see and touch the faces of the suffering. You can’t embrace hurting people unless the love of God lives in you.
We can see unconscious acts of love, generosity and kindness in our families. There’s a story about two parents down in the hospital for weeks, taking care of their sick child, as were many other parents caring for their child in similar circumstances. You say to these parents, “You love your son in a special way.” They reply, “What is wrong with you? We are doing what any loving parent would do.” The same is true as someone cares for her mother at the nursing home or the husband who takes care of his wife for decades as she is home as an invalid. He just lovingly does it. These persons don’t have to go overseas to find a ministry; they go no further than their own homes. If you suggest to them that they are good and loving persons, they would laugh and then cry.
What I am suggesting is that when we have God’s love inside of us, we provide these acts of love unconsciously. They are part of our ordinary acts of life when God’s love is living in us. I know that Anna Wong has been in Georgia for some time now caring for her family—she’s doing this because it’s what she and we would do to provide care and love to loved ones. We may be disappointed that we can’t have breakfast at church for the past couple of months, but Joe Chan is caring for Emily because it’s the loving thing to do.
When Jesus addressed the sheep group about going to heaven, they didn’t even realize that they had been generous. They were not aware. That is the way it is with love, the true love of God. You forget about yourself when you are loving and caring for another.
Turtle on a Stump
American Baptist preacher, Samuel D. Proctor once said, “If you ever see a turtle on a tree stump, you know it didn’t get there by itself!” Too many of us have forgotten how we got here. We are here to care for the faces and places of suffering.
Too many Christians think that religion only prepares them for death and heaven and have forgotten that any concern for the hungry, the hurt, the dispossessed, the alienated is not central to the faith and reason for eternal life.
In this parable of the final judgment, we are reminded that the sign of belonging to Christ is not to have a perfect theology, or a big pledge, or singing in the choir, or serving on the Deacons, though any of those things might be good. But if they are not accompanied by genuine love motivated by the desire to serve Christ in love, they count for nothing.
The entry to the realm of God is not dependent on having right beliefs stated in some precise wording. But when we have the love of God living inside us, such caring is the natural result of loving Christ.
This doesn’t mean that we do what we do in order to not be punished by the king. It means rather that we do the good that we do because we know the nature of the kingdom, a kingdom that takes form through an infinite number of unconscious acts of love that we do in the world that God intends.
Like the Quakers put it, “A great amount of light is produced by a thousand small candles.” You and I can recognize Christ. When we go out from this place and give food to the hungry, a cool drink to the thirsty, an invitation to the stranger, warm clothing to the naked, visits to the sick and the imprisoned, we would in fact know that we have been doing this for Christ Jesus himself.
Let us pray.
Gracious and forgiving God, come into our lives as persons who are in need of ministry and service. Teach us to be caring and loving of all your creation through Jesus Christ, our Savior, who has taught us so. May we become equipped and empowered to leave worship today with a commitment of compassion and concern for our hurting and suffering world. Inasmuch as we have received so much, lead us to give much to you. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen.