Text: Matthew
25:31-46
Doing What You Can
One of my favorite possessions is the
necklace I have worn since receiving it as a graduation from high school gift
30 years ago. I treasure it partly
because of the one who gave it to me – my youth minister at church – but also
because of the biblical story it represents – Moses at the burning bush. So what is it about that story that is worth
dangling around my neck, lo these many years?
It is, I think, the reminder of God’s way of being. What Moses hears emanating from that flaming
shrub is the assurance that God is neither aloof nor indifferent, but present and active.
‘I have observed the
misery of my people; I have heard their cry…I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them…and to
bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with
milk and honey…’
I like the sound of that God – one who sees, hears, feels and
cares, and in some way appropriate, responds.
Indeed, it is the only kind of God that seems worthy of the name. Moreover, a God uninvolved in the affairs of
creation provides little in the way of modeling for the way that creation ought
to behave with each other. George
Bernard Shaw was onto something when he cautioned, “Beware of the man whose God
is in Heaven.”
It’s
true: the people of an absent God are
capable of perpetrating any manor of mischief on each other without fear of
accountability, or comprehension of a preferable way. The God we have come to know in scripture –
from burning bushes and parting waters, crumbling walls and fallen Goliaths,
oddly filled mangers and surprisingly empty tombs – is one who is paying
attention; who is caring, acting, shaping and coaching; one who searches for
every little lost like a woman who tears apart her house to find a single lost
coin. That’s the kind of God we know and
worship – the kind who won’t stay in heaven; the kind who, like Jesus even in
the midst of a pressing crowd, is sensitive enough to discern the hopeful touch
of a solitary woman fingering the hem of his garment; who gathers children in
his lap, strikes up conversations with social undesirables and who interrupts
his plans to care for a sick stranger.
Little wonder,
then, that if that’s the kind of God we worship, such is the kind of God we
follow with our own similar behavior.
Noticing, paying attention, reaching out in the simplest, more ordinary
ways.
She is being helped toward the open door
That leads to the examining rooms
By two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
And steps with the straight, tough bearing
Of courage. At
what must seem to be
A great distance, a nurse holds the door,
Smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
Of her clothes.
The sick woman
Peers from under her funny knit cap
To watch each foot swing scuffing forward
And take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
Or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
Fills the clean mold of this moment
And all the shuffling magazines grow still.
(Delights and Shadows, (Port Townsend,
Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2004),
p. 7)
Simple grace in the patient waiting of a nurse, in the slow
and careful movement of a patient, in the gentle assistance of sisters, in the
respectful enchantment of strangers waiting and watching. Simple, holy grace.
It
has always been a parlor game of sorts – wondering who among us is likely to
get into heaven. Some are easy. Mother Teresa is obvious. Billy Graham ought to be a shoe-in. If partisanship didn’t get in the way I would
think Jimmy Carter would get a unanimous vote.
Even non-Catholics would probably give the Pope a free pass without even
a background check. Those kind of people
always seemed obvious – easy guesses.
But we all
know easier ones still. It isn’t so much
that they turn heads; it is rather that they turn their own, so to speak. They notice, and they take note. When something happens in your life – a proud
or even simple achievement; a disappointment or a sad and lingering grief – it
seems scarcely to have happened before you open your mailbox and find from them
a card. Or receive from them a
call. Or a hug. Or simply a warming smile from across the
room. They have taken note, and let you
know it.
And I am
humbled by them. I usually “notice” when
something happens in a person’s life, and am usually touched by it or moved by
it and overjoyed. But I usually fail to
acknowledge that happening. That
“action” does not often generate a compassionate “reaction” to let that other
person know that the fluttering of his or her butterfly wing has, indeed,
stirred my air.
When it
finally comes to understanding what is important to Jesus, I can’t help but
read passages like this one by the light of an earlier one, when Jesus was
asked to rank order the commandments.
“The greatest commandment,” Jesus responded, “is to love the Lord your
God with all your heart and soul and mind.”
But Jesus refused to stop there.
“The second is like it: you shall
love your neighbor as yourself.” As if
the second was, in a way, an extension of, or commentary on the first. One loves God, at least in part, by loving
one’s neighbor and one’s self.
I’m convinced that was the point that
James was making in his letter near the end of the New Testament: that authentic faith inevitably expresses
itself in visible ways. Works without
faith is humanitarianism; but faith without works is an oxymoron. Like a coin with two inseparable sides, the
heads and tails of discipleship are faith and work. Dag Hammarskjold, the reflective Secretary
General of the United Nations in the 1960’s, summed it up this way: “In our
era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action. (Markings,
p. 122)
According to the story, the most
important marker when the Son of Man comes will be the everyday, immediately
accessible opportunities for embodying the gospel – incarnating in our own
flesh as Jesus did in his the very grace and presence of God. It isn’t finding a cure for cancer or
designing an early Tsunami warning system – as nice as those contributions
would be. It is the practice of doing
what you can with the very molecules of daily life – with the basics of human
survival, like food and water, shelter not simply from the elements but also from
the suffocating fear of abandonment or irrelevance. Far worse, I think, than starvation or
exposure is the sense of being excluded, forgotten or irrelevant. Grace – enfleshing the love of God – is
paying attention; taking note; lifting a hand.
In the
Christian calendar – that methodical organization of time in a way that retells
the story of salvation beginning with Advent’s longing anticipation, through
Christmas’ incarnation and Easter’s resurrection, through Pentecost’s
empowerment of the spirit, all the way through Ordinary Time’s practice of
being the Body of Christ – today is the final Sunday of the year. Variously called “Christ the King” or the
“Reign of Christ” Sunday, it looks forward to the culmination of all that God
intends, when all is ended and the loose ends are finally tied. It is a Sunday of grand confidence,
anticipating Christ’s ultimate victory over all that twists and distorts God’s
deepest desire, and it is a day of flavoring our present discipleship with the
purest extract of that desire.
When all is
finished, unambiguously full, what will finally matter? In Matthew’s gospel – indeed, in this very
chapter – Jesus has given several different answers; this isn’t the only
one. But we could do worse than ending
our year on this awesome and enlivening note.
In contrast to
those who busy themselves with religious attention-getting and miracle working
and prophesying to great crowds; quite apart from those who broadcast to
millions glitzy television shows or legislate the morality of a few in order
criminalize or marginalize the many, Jesus notes that nothing is more religious
than paying attention to those who need care, and doing what you can.
Some kingdom, isn’t it? Some kingdom, indeed! And somehow, deep down, we seem to know
it. Every year, as we sharpen our knife
and spoon our stuffing; as we set the table for many or few, whatever else we
think of to give thanks for this week, our thoughts, as if by gravity, are
drawn to matters as these – the blessings of food and shelter and family and
friend; of community and compassion and the extent to which such graces are
absent or in hand. And in the holding or
the longing, in the memory of such gifts received but also given, we somehow
experience life, or perhaps death.
Whatever the menu or the number of
plates arranged, I pray that your table is filled, this week, with the
knowledge of life in its fullness – with the blessing of love both given and
received in the ordinariness of our days; in the everyday ways that we simply
do what we can.