2023-11-27
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
November 26, 2023 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
Matthew 25:31-46 The Federated Church, UCC
Today, as we wrap up this church year and prepare for another one set to begin next week with the first Sunday of Advent, we come again to this vivid story that concludes Jesus’ public ministry and leads him into the story of his trial, crucifixion, and death. These are the last words we hear before the story we know as the passion of Christ. And because Matthew places this story here, we know it’s something to which we’re to pay attention. These aren’t just incidental words of Jesus. They matter immensely, partly because of how bracing they are, and partly because of where they’re placed in the story.
The question, really, is: what do they mean? What is it Jesus is really trying to tell us? While these words may be new to some of you, to those of us who have spent much of our lives in churches, they seem oh-so-familiar. And we’re pretty sure we know what they mean. Many of us could recite Jesus’ lesson here word for word. Whenever we have fed those who are hungry, given a drink to those who are thirsty, welcomed a stranger, provided clothing to someone who was without, taken care of someone who was sick, visited someone who was in prison—“just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family,” says Jesus, “you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
And what we hear in these words is a moral lesson directed at us: go feed, give drink, welcome, clothe, care, visit. That, we think, is our marching orders from the Human One, the exalted Messiah. And, as we often say, if we do these things, we’ve been Christ’s hands and feet in the world, we’ve been vicars of Christ. This is what we generally think the story is about—what we’re supposed to do to be like Christ.
As we’ve sought to do this fall, though, we’re going to spend a little time with the story and perhaps see some dimensions of it that may have eluded us. The first thing to note—and we’ve said it before, but it always bears repeating—is who the Christ figure is in this story. Our first impression when we hear the story is that caring for others makes us little Christs, those who are doing Christ’s work in Christ’s stead. And indeed, it’s crucial for us to affirm this ministry of feeding, giving drink, welcoming, clothing, caring, and visiting. Such work is indeed holy work. It’s part of the generosity that we hold to be such a central facet of Christian life.
What we dare never forget, though, is that the Christ figure in this tableau is not the one who is doing the caring. The Christ figure in the story is the one who is receiving the care. Remember again Jesus’ words: “just as you did it to . . . the least of these . . ., you did it to me.” The correlation in the story is between “the least of these” and Jesus—not between me the giver and Jesus. When I give food to someone who is hungry, it’s not I who’s being Christ in the story. The one who takes on the Christ role is the one who receives the food or drink or care.
We tend so often to live with this kind of savior complex, as though if we just do enough good things, we’ll be like Christ. And what we need to say here is: that’s not what this story is about. Here, Christ resides in the person who’s hungry, thirsty, a stranger, living in ragged clothes, sick, imprisoned. It’s not that we are Christ to them. It’s that they are Christ to us. Remember: there’s nothing we need to earn, nothing we need to do to become like Christ. We have already been assured of unbridled acceptance. The only task that faces us is to see the face of Christ in everyone else, and especially in those who suffer and have a need. That’s it. The beggar on the street corner? That’s Christ. The visitor to the food bank? That’s Christ. The recipient of the coat we donated earlier this month? That’s Christ.
The other dimension of this story that is often almost completely overlooked by contemporary readers is that, as many biblical scholars note, the phrase “the least of these” may well refer not to those “over there” to whom we’re ministering. No, in fact, “the least of these,” in the time of Matthew’s writing, may well refer to Matthew’s own church. In Matthew’s world, followers of Jesus were so often persecuted. Unlike in today’s world, these disciples of Jesus were the ones put upon. They were the ones who were suffering. They were the ones who were being squashed.
Remember how the story begins. “All the nations will be gathered before the Human One,” says the story. All these other nations, in other words, are being told by Jesus that they need to stop persecuting what we now call Christians, and pay attention to them and care for them in their need. Jesus is essentially telling the peoples of the world that they need to minister to those who find their life and meaning in Christ.
So, far from this being a story about what we’re to do to be in God’s good graces, it may well be that, in Jesus’ time, this is instead a story about how crucial it is for the world to honor the followers of Jesus.
Now so far this is all pretty heady, right. It’s all abstract. The heart of the matter, though, is that the spirit of God is lived out when people who feel alien to each other, who may live in wildly different spheres, who may in fact sometimes hurt each other and do each other damage—the Spirit of God is lived out when people display a kind of devotion to each other and give each other their attention. To be a follower of Jesus isn’t just to do good deeds for each other. That would be a pretty transactional, impersonal kind of faith, as though doing a few charitable acts is all that’s asked of us. No, to be a follower of Jesus invites a far deeper sort of investment from us. It invites us to be in community with each other. It invites us to enhance the bonds that are too often frayed and broken. The heart of our work is to see Christ in each other—in every other person—and to connect with each other. Not deeds for, but reverence towards.
The New York Times columnist David Brooks has recently written a book called How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. A church member sent me a link to a recent speech Brooks made in which he expands on some of the themes of the book. Because I think Brooks unfolds these themes with particular care and sensitivity, I want to share some of what Brooks writes this morning as a way of unpacking the deep sense of Jesus’ story of the sheep and the goats.
Because we live in a world and a culture that is so deeply divided and in which there is so much vitriol, the question really is how we’re to break down barriers and approach each other in humane and life-giving ways. Brooks says we need to learn to be good listeners, to show vulnerability in appropriate ways, to offer criticism in a caring manner, and to be able to sit with someone who’s suffering. What’s most crucial, he says, is that we seek to let people feel seen, known, and heard.
Brooks says that in any group, there are diminishers and there are illuminators. Diminishers, he says, are not curious about other people, they stereotype, they ignore people, they don’t ask questions of others. Illuminators, on the other hand, “are people who are curious about you and make you feel special and lit up.”
Brooks tells the story of Jenny Jerome, whose son was Winston Churchill. Jerome was seated one evening at a dinner party with the Prime Minister of England, William Gladstone, and when she left the party, she thought he was the cleverest person in England. A few weeks later, she had dinner with Gladstone’s chief political rival, Benjamin Disraeli, and she left that dinner thinking she was the cleverest person in England. And as David Brooks says, it’s good to be Gladstone, it’s better to be Disraeli—to let others see how special they are.
Some of you may remember that, at one time, Bell Labs was one of the preeminent labs in the world. Leaders at the lab had noticed that some of the scientists doing work there were more creative and innovative than others, and they tried to figure out why. They wondered whether it was factors such as educational background or IQ. What they found was that the most creative researchers at Bell Labs regularly had breakfast or lunch with a guy named Harry Nyquist, who was an electrical engineer. Nyquist, it turns out, got inside their problems, he got inside their heads, he asked them good questions, and he walked with them as they solved their problems. So, as Brooks says, Harry Nyquist was an illuminator.
To really be an illuminator, says Brooks, means focusing on others to such an extent that they feel known, heard, and appreciated. And Brooks says there are three things we can do to show our attention to people. It begins with the way we look at them. When we meet someone, says Brooks, there’s a series of unconscious questions going through our minds: am I a priority to you; am I a person to you; will you respect me? And the answers to these questions are communicated in the eyes before any words come out of your mouth. So in order to really encounter someone—and this is where Brooks’ words meet the story Jesus tells—we’re to look at them as though they’re made in the image of God. We’re to look at every person we meet as somebody with a soul of infinite value and dignity. We’re to offer them that level of reverence and respect. This is the pre-condition for seeing people well, to know that each person we meet is not a problem to be solved. They are, instead, a mystery that we’re never going to get to the bottom of. Which means that attention to others is a moral act.
So first we’re to gaze with reverence at each person. Next, says Brooks, we’re to seek to accompany each other on our various journeys. Just as a pianist is there to let a singer shine, so we’re to accompany each other in such a way that we illuminate the lives of each other.
Brooks once had a student named Jillian Sawyer, whose father died of pancreatic cancer while she was in college. Before he died, father and daughter talked about the things he would miss in her life, including being there for her wedding. Sometime after she graduated, she was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. At the reception, the father of the bride gave a beautiful toast to his daughter. And a few moments later, they were to have their father-daughter dance. Knowing how hard this would be for her to watch, Jillian decided to go for a walk. So she got up from the table and went to the restroom, where she had a good cry. When she came out of the restroom, all the people at her table and the adjacent table had gotten up and were just standing by the door of the restroom. And she said, “What I will remember forever is that no one said a word. Each person, including newer [friends] whom I knew less well, gave me a reaffirming hug and headed back to their table. No one lingered or tried to awkwardly validate my grief. They were there for me, just for a moment, and it was exactly what I needed.” That, says Brooks, is an exquisite example of the art of presence, of showing up for somebody, of accompanying them.
So a reverent gazing at each other and an accompanying of each other are crucial to really seeing and knowing a person. The third way of knowing each other is by asking the right kinds of questions of each other, questions that gently and sensitively invite people to unfold some of their depths. Brooks says he knows of a teacher who told her grade school students one day that they could ask any question they wanted about her and she would answer it truthfully. So one student asked, “Are you married?” She said, “No.” A second student asked, “Are you divorced?” And she said, “Yes.” Then a third student asked, “Do you still love him?” And she said, “Yes,” and she started to cry. Ask open-ended, story-telling kinds of questions, says Brooks. This is how we get to know people beneath the surface. This is how we see the Christ in them.
Brooks talks about a focus group moderator who was researching why people go grocery shopping late at night. So rather than just ask people why they shop late at night, the researcher would say, “Tell me about the last time you went grocery shopping after 11:00 p.m.” And a woman said, “I had just smoked a joint, and I wanted a menage a trois with me, Ben, and Jerry.” And Brooks says: now you know something about her life. And he says we all can ask open-ended questions that get at something beneath the surface: what crossroads are you at; if this five years of your life is a chapter, what’s the chapter about; what would you do if you weren’t afraid; how does your heritage affect your life?
Our job, says Brooks, isn’t to judge people. It’s to stand in the other person’s standpoint—to get ourselves out of the way and, as the writer Iris Murdoch says, “cast a just and loving attention on the people around us.” Brooks retells a story he heard a woman tell. She says that when she was thirteen, she found some alcohol and got quite drunk, virtually passing out on the porch. Her father, a strict disciplinarian, found her there on the porch and picked her up to carry her inside. And all the while the girl was thinking, “he’s going to scream at me, ‘you’re bad, you’re bad, you’re bad.’” Instead, when he got her inside, he laid her on the couch and said, “There will be no punishment here. You have had an experience.” And she knew that her father really got her. She felt deeply seen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwENbKn3tqI). It’s fair to say that her father had seen the Christ in her.
This is what we’re called to—to see across the divides and the dismissals and the fear and the judgment, and to see the Christ in each other. Where are you, Christ? There, and there, and there. May we gaze with reverence, and accompany each other, and elicit and listen to each other’s stories. And as we do, we will find Christ. And it will be the deepest and most resonant of all blessings.