Sermon for Aug. 22, 2021, Pentecost 12B
Podcast audio is here.
Video is here at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR (after the Sunday service)
Matthew 25:31-40
“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.’
It would be fair if everyone who wanted to have their dirt road paved in Alabama knew what the process was, where they were in line, and therefore, how long they needed to wait.
But there was nothing fair about the road-paving policies there. When a faith-based community organization did an extensive set of interviews, asking people to identify what problems the community had, they quickly learned that the consensus was that roads were not being paved fairly. New developments got paved roads, while school busses kept raising dust storms or sliding in the mud, depending on the weather, in old, established, especially minority communities.
So after learning what the problem was, their next step was to research it. Who made the decisions? What body controlled it? Cities? Counties? The State? They learned that it was in the hands of the county commission. So they needed to go to the commission and advocate for a fair policy.
But here is the problem. Many people were tired of the unfair situation and were willing to come to an open meeting and complain about it, but when they learned that the solution lay in the county commission, many got cold feet.
Why? They did not want to become “political.” To make a long story short, that faith-based community organization did press the county commission for a fair road paving policy and got it. The problem of fairness was an issue that had to have a political solution, because that was where the problem was coming from.
But some people believe that religion should have nothing to do with politics. Is that idea biblical?
Mistaken Readings of the Bible
It is easy to make mistakes when reading the Bible. People do it all the time. Probably the most difficult but at the same time most important task any Bible reader has is to prevent modern understandings, modern conceptions, and modern categories from distorting our understanding of the ancient world.
It is extremely difficult because we think with minds formed by the Western, 21st-century world, without even realizing it. But we do not think of the world the way they did. Let me give you a couple of examples before we come to the main point today.
First, the ancients believed they were living in a three-story universe. People lived here on earth. God (or the gods) lived up in the heavens, and below the earth was the world of the dead (Sheol, hades, the grave, etc.). We have completely abandoned that mythological three-story view of the world.
A second example. It is common for people to make a distinction between three kinds of laws in the Hebrew Bible: civil, ceremonial, and religious.
But the ancient Israelites made no such distinctions. The Law was the Law, whether it was forbidding you from picking up sticks on the Sabbath, telling you how to pay your temple tithes, or what the penalty was when your ox got loose and gored someone. There were no distinctions in their minds. To read such distinctions back onto the text is simply mistaken.
Social, Religious and Political Life
A third example brings us to our topic today. The ancient Israelites made no distinctions between the social, the religious and the political realms. It was all one. For them, God was involved in every part of life.
God held people accountable for their relations with their families and neighbors, for their observance of religious responsibilities, and for their political systems.
The prophets of Israel condemned religious idolatry in one sentence, adultery with the next, and trampling the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth with the next. Social life, religious life and political life were all of one piece, and every area of life was subject to God’s authority.
So, when Jesus offered to forgive people, like the crippled man they lowered through the roof, he was doing something religious — forgiving sins — but also something political.
How so? The chief priests at the temple, who lived from the income the temple generated, were part of the aristocratic establishment that supported king Herod’s regime. To forgive sins without the need of a temple sacrifice was to threaten their income and their control.
That Jesus never went, as an adult, to the temple, except at the end of his life, when he symbolically shut it down, shows how the religious and the political combine. That action was so upsetting to the established political order that they conspired with their Roman masters to have the threat eliminated.
Remember, the sign that Pilate had put on Jesus’ cross, “King of the Jews,” was a slap against a perceived political threat.
There is nothing new here. Most of the prophets of Israel confronted the politics of their days, and many of them paid dearly for it: Elijah confronted King Ahab, who tried to kill him for it.
Jeremiah condemned the injustice of king Zedekiah and was arrested and thrown into a pit to die.
Isaiah spoke truth to king Hezekiah, as Amos did against king Uzziah.
Daniel famously defied king Nebuchadnezzar. John the Baptist continued the tradition of political critique against Herod the Great’s son, Herod Antipas, and paid for it with his life.
Love as Political Motivation
The whole reason that prophets of God got involved in politics is simple: Love. They believed that the Creator of all human beings loves all human beings and seeks their welfare, their “shalom.”
But the politics of the day was working against their well-being. For example, Jeremiah said to the king:
“Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages”.
Jer. 22:13
Withholding wages is unjust, even if the king is doing it. God takes sides. God is on the side of the poor who are being oppressed.
The God who heard the cries of the Hebrew people enslaved under Pharaoh in Egypt is the same God who inspired Jesus to take the sides of the poor peasants of Galilee who were being oppressed by the political powers in control.
Jesus on Poverty
Jesus had a lot to say about poverty. He told parables about rich men who built bigger and bigger barns but never lived to enjoy their wealth.
He told a parable about a rich man who stepped over the poor man at his gate, ignoring his suffering, only to wind up regretting his misspent life.
Jesus called the poor “blessed” — not because they were poor, but because having no wealth, they had no barriers to prevent them from seeking God’s kingdom.
And Jesus famously accused the temple administrators of creating a “den of thieves” out of it.
The last set of teachings Jesus gave to his disciples, before the events that led up to his arrest and crucifixion, according to Matthew’s gospel, had a lot to say about poverty. Jesus gave another parable, this time about the separation of good guys and bad guys; sheep and goats.
The idea was to indicate who was doing what God wanted, and who was not. Whenever you treat a person who is hungry, or thirsty, or an immigrant (stranger), or too poor to afford decent clothing, as if they were a child of God, deserving compassion and mercy in a practical way, you are doing service to him. Ministry to the poor is something God takes personally.
Continuing the Tradition
The early Church got that message. According to the book of Acts, one of the first things they did was organize a feeding ministry.
Two thousand years later we are still continuing that tradition. We cook suppers for the Salvation Army, we contribute homemade muffins for the Sack Lunch Program, at which a number of us volunteer. We collect food for the River Valley Regional Food Bank every Sunday.
Now, we have a new opportunity to help the poor. The Outreach Committee has recommended and Session as approved taking over the Frozen Meat ministry that St. Lukes has offed to us.
We will be able to help 35 to 40 families every month with frozen meat which we will get at an extremely low cost from the Food Bank to help supplement their grocery budgets. We hope many of us will get involved in this ministry. I’m not sure frozen meat was on Jesus’ mind when he said,
“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,”
but I am sure it fits the meaning.
Why Poverty?
But we will go beyond simply feeding the poor. We will also ask, “Why are they still poor?” There may be many reasons, from personal decisions to discrimination.
Some of the reasons may go back to decisions that can only be made at a political level. As followers of Jesus, we are not afraid to be advocates and allies in that case.
It is political decisions like the creation of Social Security that have so radically reduced elder poverty in America.
Political decisions about housing programs, health care, and SNAP benefits affect the lives of millions of poor people in this country. God loves every one of them, and so do we.
The second line on our new banner calling us to “Be the Church” says “Care for the Poor.” The Matthew 25 Initiative, adopted by our General Assembly and by the Presbytery of Arkansas calls us to “eradicate systemic poverty.” The Presbyterian Church recognizes that poverty still exists for systemic reasons, from mass incarceration to discrimination.
And so we are not afraid to call our political leaders to account, as well as feeding the poor. Brazilian Catholic Archbishop Dom Helder Camara said,
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
Well, name-calling is not an argument. In any case, we are not afraid of name-calling. We are people who have heard another call; the call to care for the poor, in the name of Jesus, out of love for our Creator, and all the people made in God’s image.
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