A Disturbing Word

July 19, 1987

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Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46

Do you know what I think is the most disturbing word in the New Testament? It may be another for you, but for me it’s that word right there in our text...the very first word of the sentence---INASMUCH.

That’s got to be the most unsettling word in the Bible. It’s like a sandspur that gets inside your britches, blike a splash of cold water in your face. It’s like a rankling; disturbing dream that keeps coming back and won’t go away.

I heard a missionary say once that he did actually dream about that word. For him it was a recurring experience. He was serving in a land where there was desperate human need... poverty, hunger, disease, an absolute minimum of medical attention.... He kept seeing the faces of people, people who were trying to live without the amenities of life we take for granted. The needs just overwhelmed him, and he tried to take refuge in justification, and excuses, and perfectly plausible reasons why he could do more. “Lord, what do you expect me to do?” He would almost convince himself, he said, that there was a limit beyond which he couldn’t reasonably be expected to sacrifice.

But then in his dream, he kept hearing that word... inasmuch... “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

I tell you, if you don’t want to be “discombobulated”.... (Is that a word?), if you don’t want to be shaken out of a sense of complacency, if serenity takes a high priority in your scale of values, THEN MY ADVICE WOULD BE TO KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF THE 25TH CHAPTER OF THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW! Avoid it like the plague... Let that thing get inside of you, and it’ll turn you every way there is, except loose.

There are 3 stories, actually, in that chapter--- One is the parable we call the Parable of the Foolish Virgins. It has to do with readiness, with making provision, with being prepared. That’s frightening enough right there.

THEN there’s the one we talked about last week...the Parable of the Talents. “For unto every one that hath shall be given,” said the Master at the end when it was all over, “but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.” USE IT OR LOSE IT. That’s pretty unnerving, too.

But this one’s even worse, this 3rd parable. It’s actually more than a simple parable. A true parable, you remember, is a story that has one and only one major point to make. It doesn’t tell a lot of things, it tells one thing. It has a single thrust, one overriding emphasis, and you have to see it from the right perspective to get the point.

It’s like a good joke in that respect. Did you hear this one? Somebody told me recently: Roses are red, violets are blue. I’m schizophrenic, and so am I. Well, it’s either funny, or it’s not. A parable is like that. WHAM!

But this story is more than simple parable. It’s parable, allegory, apocalyptic warning, and sizzling sermon all wrapped up in one brilliant narrative. What shakes you is not its complexity, but its devastating simplicity. There’s so little possibility of misunderstanding. It’s not a summary of the whole Gospel.... I sure hope it’s not. It doesn’t embrace the totality of Christian truth.... But until you’ve been backed up against the wall of the reality delineated in this story---the demand for human concern--- then I propose you’re not ready to hear the liberating miracle of the Christian Gospel of GRACE.

Let me just lay it out as I think Jesus is expressing it. This is an inside parable. He’s talking, I believe, to disciples, to the Church, to those within the family, as it were, and He’s saying, LOOK FOLKS, THE WAY YOU REALLY FEEL ABOUT GOD IS REVEALED BY THE WAY YOU TREAT OTHER PEOPLE. That’s the test, the only test. That’s the proof of the pudding.

I see many of you making great professions of religious loyalty. I see you espousing loudly your love, and your ardor, and your devotion. I see you bedecked in all the accoutrements of orthodoxy... You wear the right clothes, you sing the right tunes, you say the right words... BUT I DON’T SEE MANY OF YOU GETTING DIRTY FOR THE SAKE OF THE GOSPEL.

If you love Me, feed my sheep. If you love Me, support the Christian Service Center. If you love Me, help make sandwiches on the 1st Thursday of the month for the Homeless Ministry downtown.

Here’s where it pinches. The basis for Jesus’ judgment in the story, and I’m preaching to myself now... if the shoe fits, you know where to put it....the basis of Jesus’ judgment in the story, which is part of the Gospel record, is HOW PERSONS RESPOND TO THOSE LESS FORTUNATE... terrifyingly simply.

I was in prison and ye visited Me----No question asked about innocence or guilt. I was hungry and ye fed Me, naked and ye clothed Me, sick and ye came to Me.... Inasmuch.

There’s nothing at all there about doctrinal purity. Doctrinal purity is important to me...maybe too important. It isn’t even dragged in along the periphery. There’s nothing there about moral standards.... That’s surprising. There’s nothing there about membership affiliations, or attendance at the meetings, or worship procedures... all those things we spend a lot of time on... AND ARE IMPORTANT.

No, this is radical, this muddies the water, this shakes me up.... SHEEP ARE SIMPLY THOSE WHO CARE. And GOATS ARE THOSE WHO DON’T.

Liberal, conservative, Methodist, Baptist, Roman Catholic, agnostic, white man, yellow man, brown woman, Anglo-Saxon clergyman.... ANY OF THESE COULD BE EITHER, for what’s important is not externally discernible.

That’s the message of the parable. The way you treat other people, what you do about those less fortunate than you... WHETHER THEY DESERVE IT OR NOT, whether they merit it or not, is the sole criterion for the bestowal of the approbation or the displeasure of the Son of Man.... “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least  of these...”

Now I emphasize, even at the risk of repetition that the parable is not meant to be a full and complete summary of the Christian Faith. That’s clear enough, I think. Certain great fundamental themes of Jesus’ ministry are not dealt with here at all---Grace, mercy, forgiveness, rest...the whole “come unto me” portion of the Gospel is not a part of this particular passage....

JUST BY ITSELF, just alone, just in isolation, this story of the sheep and goats wouldn’t be “good” news at all. It would be very BAD news, for who would possibly live up completely to this level of moral and social expectation?

But, you see, it’s THERE, and we can’t avoid it. This precedes the other side of the picture---It HAS to, or there would BE no other side of the picture. Grace never replaces Judgment in Biblical bookkeeping—it comes at the end of it. Forgiveness is never a substitute for responsibility—it’s heaped on as an addition to it.

You never have the good news, you’re in no position to hear the good news, until first you’ve wrestled, sweated, agonized over the BAD news, seen starkly what God expects and how far short of it you’ve managed to achieve.

I’m inclined to think---and I say this carefully...I say it with genuine love...I’m inclined to think that a good many Christians today are Promised Land people who have never really traveled through the Wilderness.... Easter people who have never really been to Calvary.

It’s so easy and so dangerous for our religion to become a device through which we escape life---a lovely, beautiful experience, which we cultivate, glory in, enjoy, but which we allow to encapsulate us, and effectively remove us from the stench, and dirt, and hurt of the world outside our doors. WE CAN BE WONDERUFLLY SPIRITUAL AND “FEEL GOOD” WHILE THE WORLD AROUND US GOES TO HELL.

I am told that in 1917 in Russia, while the Bolshevik Revolution was raging outside in all its fury...indeed at the very time that cataclysmic event in the world history was throbbing around them and soldiers were racing through the streets, the Russian Orthodox Church in solemn conclave was debating the proper color waist bands its priests should wear during communion.

Here’s the power of a parable like this. It calls us back to the starting line. It calls us back to basic priorities. It says to the Church as those intrepid, steely-eyed Old Testament prophets said to the community of ancient Israel--- God isn’t concerned about your religious rites. He doesn’t really care about your ceremonies and your sacred shenanigans. He really doesn’t even care that much about your religious experience... if it doesn’t lead to something compassionately useful.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TO PEOPLE? That’s the point. What’s happening to people? Do you care?

That widow, that orphan, that stranger, that newcomer in the community, that bleeding man, or woman, or child, that individual, whom I love as much as I love you, and whom, if you love me, you, too, will love.

The Church errs, of course, at a great many points. We all know that. It makes mistakes, commits errors of judgment and does all sorts of things wrong. BUT IT NEVER ERRS MORE GRIEVOUSLY OR HURTS ITSELF AND ITS MISSION MORE THAN WHEN IT FAILS TO SHOW SIMPLE COMPASSION. HERE really is not much excuse for it to happen. That, more than anything, invites the cynicism of the world.

Ahead of orthodoxy, ahead of organizational efficiency, ahead even of financial soundness, must come the priority of caring. It’s more than an option, it’s an imperative, because it’s God’s priority. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye had done it unto Me.”

Now I’m not finished with this parable. How could you ever finish with it? But I am about to run out of time. I used to wonder how I’d ever find enough material to preach Sunday after Sunday. Now I wonder how I can ever decide what, without too much damage, can be left out.

Allow me to add by way of hurried exposition 4 quick comments. They’ll all have to be

undeveloped, but there are some depths here, some implications that remain unplumbed.

COMMENT NUMBER ONE—Surely this parable reflects very vividly the close connection, the intimacy between what we call the spiritual and the physical side of life.

Don’t let people divide them for you artificially. Jesus never did. To be spiritual in the Biblical sense is never to disparage the physical, nor is it to escape from the physical.... It’s to be involved in the physical, USING IT AS SACRAMENTAL EXPRESSION.TO BE SPIRITUAL in the Biblical sense means you have to be materialistic. Christianity, in fact, alone of all the major religions of the world, is an unabashedly materialistic religion. That’s exactly the point of the Incarnation. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

God revealed Himself here, in the world of material things, and separation from that time on has been unthinkable. In the world, in the flesh, in the concrete, if you will, is where you have to express your spirituality if you’re ever to express it at all.

The truly spiritual person, this parable tells us, is not the person who goes off, in isolation, to say his prayers, to have his devotion, to meditate on the cultivation of his piety.... NOT if these are engaged in as ends of themselves.

The truly spiritual person is the one who shoulders voluntarily the hurt and pain and bewilderment of those around him, and lets the grace of the spirit world shine through those specific deeds. It’s the giving of a cup of cold water, something as simple as that, that constitutes the truly spiritual act.

COMMENT NUMBER TWO—Again this parable reminds us so forcibly that the most serious indictments Jesus ever made were not of explicitly sinful acts, but rather of the failure to do anything.

It’s astounding in the Gospel accounts, almost shocking, how high on the scale of approval the morally degenerate appear. Jesus is remarkably gentle in His treatment of tax collectors, and prostitutes, and other forms of the reprobate life of His society.

But, oh, how He laid it on the smug, complacent, “good” people, who cloaked themselves

in the raiment of piety but never lifted a finger to help somebody in need.

You want to know what made Jesus mad? It’s right there in the Book. You can look it up. Sort of surprising. What made Jesus boil was not misconduct. It was APATHY.

The Bible leader at Annual Conference told about 2 church members who were discussing their church. One said, “What’s wrong with the people in this church, anyway. Is it ignorance or is it apathy?” The other said, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Well, what made Jesus mad was passing by on the other side, while a neighbor lay helpless in a ditch. He told a story about that one time.

It was NOT using the gifts God had entrusted to your care. He told a story about that, too. It was NOT visiting, not feeding, not clothing, not caring....when the opportunity to do so was there.

Do you realize? The ‘goats’ had done nothing wrong. They may, indeed, have been better people than their counterparts on the right. It wasn’t what they did it was what they didn’t do that got them into trouble. “Inasmuch as ye have done it NOT....ye have not done it unto me.”

It may just be that for many of us judgment on the basis of OMISSION will be the hardest part of the Final.

COMMENT NUMBER THREE---The surprise element. How intriguing that in this story both the sheep and the goats were surprised by the verdict. “Lord, when....?” We don’t remember. They were both surprised, both those who did and those who didn’t. Neither group realized that what they were doing, or not doing, was directly related to serving God. They were not conscious that they were performing specifically religious acts.

I take it as a warning not to be too quick in judging the acceptability of those who don’t fit our particular mold. It troubles me sometimes, but I know there are those outside the Church who often minister more truly and more effectively than I. Even as I know that very often I am anxious to propagate the form and image of ministry without letting it penetrate to the substance.

A.J. Cronin’s novel “The Keys of the Kingdom” has as one of its heroes as unbelieving

doctor, who, despite this theological obstinacy, nonetheless works and ministers in pre-war China, giving genuine help and healing to the poor of his area. When the plague comes and everybody else flees, he stays, in the finest tradition of the medical profession. Comments Cronin: “Not all atheists are godless men”, which may be the other side  of Jesus’ wry observation, “Not every one that saith unto me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven.”

Don’t judge too quickly. Don’t write off with a facile certainty those who don’t fit a particular mold.... There may be more than you know. We may all- be surprised when the test results are in.

Now COMMENT NUMBER FOUR---A more positive one. Call this, I suppose, the BONUS element.

It’s the insight that at the end of losing yourself in the need that is at your door, whatever it is, there comes out of that the gift that God Himself is there with you.

You don’t find God by looking for Him. You don’t storm heaven and demand to get in. You don’t conjure up His presence like Aladdin calling the genie out of a bottle.

But when you forget what’s in it for you. When you let the hurt of another hurt you. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable by putting your life on the line.... GOD COMES.

In that visitation, that medicine delivered to a sick neighbor, that deed of love and justice performed for an underdog, you discover, as a  by-product, that God is there, too, and that in serving that person, you have served HIM.

Remember Leo Tolstoy’s old short story about Avdeyevitch, the poor Russian shoemaker, who dreamed one night that he would receive a visit the next day from Batushka, the Messiah? He got up early the next morning, He cleaned, prepared, made tea....and waited.

Out on the street he saw only old Stepanovich, the worn-out, retired ex-soldier, who

was trying to eke out an existence shoveling snow. He invited him in to warm himself and served him some tea.

Later he saw the old widow from down the street with her sick grandchild. He invited them in and gave them a bowl of cabbage soup, the best he had.

Later still, there was the apple woman from whom he bought an apple, and to whom he listened while she unburdened the load from her heart. BUT WHERE WAS BATUSHKA? Late that evening in his tiny apartment/shop combination still waiting for the Batushka, Avdeyevitch sees shadows moving in the corner....and voices calling to him by name....

“It is I”, says the voice of Stepanovich.... And we are here”, calls out the old widow and grandchild. “And I am here, too,” says the apple woman. And then another voice, a new voice, soft, yet somehow strong and compelling... “Avdeyevitch... It is I. I have been here all day.”

Tolstoy calls his story, “Where love is, there also is God.”

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto Me. “When we respond to human need, when we care, He is with us. Maybe just by itself, it’s all we really need.