Finding GOD in the places we fear to go

That is our certainty. It is found being where GOD is. Where GOD says GOD will be. It isn’t found in our stated beliefs or creeds or political affiliation or what our Sunday School teachers taught us about GOD: it is about how we treat the powerless and the defenseless.

Proper 29 A  |  Text: Matthew  25:31-46

Are we on Team Sheep?

Jesus begins with the sheep and the goats. The Son of Man will divide them, he says. How will they be differentiated: how will we know which one we are?

Are we sheep?

Or are we goats?

we ask ourselves, one another, our spiritual advisors. We want to know which we are because we want to know where we’ll be in the end. It isn’t just “am I a sheep” but “am I with the sheep?” We want to know, because we aren’t always so sure.

The pious young man comes to mind: what must I do to inherit eternal life? he asks Jesus. In this morning’s context, we might ask What do I have to do to be one of the sheep? How do I do it and how do I know if I’ve done it?

Jesus tells that young man to sell his stuff, give the money to the poor, and follow him. The young man doesn’t like that answer. Most of the time, neither do we. We have a lot of stuff, too.

In that story, Jesus speaks to a young man who has everything and has done everything he has been told to do, but what he is lacking is certainty and he wants Jesus to give him certainty. Instead, Jesus offers the young man community. He offers him a place at this table with friends. He offers him relationship and opportunity and instruction. He offers him the chance to come in from the cold of solitude and join in a mission that demands a whole community.

The young man doesn’t want that. He wants what he wants, not what Jesus offers him. Even if it is more valuable than certainty.

This time, Jesus is telling his disciples not what they must do, but what people they must be. Not in solitude or independence, but together. Who will you be?

Pursuing Certainty

We want that kind of certainty. That’s why we regularly argue about what Jesus would or wouldn’t do, who he would or wouldn’t condemn, and where we may or may not be going in the relatively near future.

Jesus doesn’t offer certainty. He offers opportunity.

We talked last week about endurance. Jesus set up this talk with the disciples by describing what they will live through and endure when the Son of Man comes. He elaborates this in a couple of parables about bridesmaids who are expected to wait for the groom and slaves who are given talents by a wicked master.

These ideas: waiting, expecting, enduring: are such human problems. Because so much of our life and our faith is full of uncertainty, we require it of our tradition and one another. And most of all, we require it of our devoted one: our creator, savior, redeemer.

We confuse the very name of GOD, revealed to Moses in the burning bush: EHYEH ASHER EHYEH. We say I AM WHO I AM. We say that GOD is the great I AM: permanent and unchanging. But the Scripture reveals a different GOD than the one we so often proclaim! A GOD who is willing to change the plans because Lot asks for it. A GOD who is moved by the people. A GOD who is revealed in those words, not as permanence, but as something that will be.

Everett Fox translates EHYEH ASHER EHYEH as “I-will-be-there-howsoever-I-will-be-there”. I will be in the way that I will be. I will be up this mountain when you come back from visiting Pharaoh and I will be at the parting of the sea and I will be in your midst in a cloud. And we know that GOD would later be with the prophets and the judges, with David and the rulers, with the leaders in Exile and with the people back home, with the people when they were conquered and with the people who were liberated. And we sure as everything know that GOD would come to be in the form of a human being that would walk the earth and become known to us as Jesus. That GOD would be in the form of tongues of fire and in a mighty wind and in all of these ways that have directed us in Scripture.

This is the coming of the Son of Man.

The certainty is found in GOD’s coming to us: in GOD’s presence with us. Not in the form. Not in the power. Not in the tradition. Not in any of the ways we demand GOD come to us. GOD will be here howsoever GOD will be here.

Becoming Sheep

Jesus tells us so powerfully that if GOD is this king, then the way GOD will be known is through ministering to “the least of these who are members of my family”: the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned. Not that GOD is a certain group of people, but that GOD is found in serving.

Stanley Hauerwas writes:

It is significant that the righteous have not known that when they ministered, provided hospitality, and visited that they did all of this to Jesus. They have done what God would have us to do and so doing have ministered to Christ himself. All people, whether they are Christians or not, know all they need to know to care for “the least of these.” The difference between followers of Jesus and those who do not know Jesus is that those who have seen Jesus no longer have any excuse to avoid “the least of these.”

When we ask about being the sheep or the goats, or more precisely, we argue over who counts as a sheep and who counts as a goat in our society and in our churches, we are asking the wrong question. It is not about knowing, it is about what we do when we aren’t paying any attention to who we are supposed to be. It is not about the rules when we know people are watching: it is about who we are when we aren’t sure of the rules. And Hauerwas rightly points out that the stakes are even higher for us when we do know the rules!

Where GOD Will Be

This gospel, this work that we are to do isn’t about certainty about GOD or certainty about how good we are with GOD. It is certainty that GOD will be with us. Because GOD will be with us when we are hungry and thirsty and naked and strangers and sick and imprisoned. GOD will be with us when we ignore those around us who are suffering and need our help. AND GOD will be with them, too! This is where GOD hangs out and where GOD promises to be found and we are called to go there and find GOD there.

The Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, addressed a United Nations conference on nutrition this week and demanded that we not only acknowledge suffering, but that we do something about it. He said:

It is also painful to see that the struggle against hunger and malnutrition is hindered by ‘market priorities,’ the ‘primacy of profit,’ which have reduced foodstuffs to a commodity like any other, subject to speculation, also of a financial nature.

Francis reminds us the way Jesus reminds his disciples: that the real question, not the question you want to ask, or think you are supposed to ask, but the question GOD is hoping you’ll ask is this one: how can I best love GOD? That’s the question Jesus answers. And his answer isn’t comfort the comfortable. It is comfort the afflicted! Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked. The “least of these” in our midst are the powerless. Jesus’s concern here isn’t with how we treat people generically, but how we treat the powerless specifically.

That is our certainty. It is found being where GOD is. Where GOD says GOD will be. It isn’t found in our stated beliefs or creeds or political affiliation or what our Sunday School teachers taught us about GOD: it is about how we treat the powerless and the defenseless.

GOD doesn’t expect us to be perfect. We don’t get one shot at righteousness. We get a chance every day. A chance to be thankful. A chance to be thoughtful. A chance to show how much we really love GOD by loving this wonderful creation and all in GOD’s family. Even the black sheep…and the goats.