March 21, 2010
 
Scripture:         Matthew 25:31-46
 
Sermon:           “Take Care of Others”
 
            Turning our hearts and minds now to the word of God, let us read together the scripture lesson for the day.  Turn with me to the Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 25 where we will read together verses 31 through 46.  You can find that easily on page 38 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.
            Next week is Palm Sunday, so today will be the last in our Lenten sermon series that has moved us along through self-examination as followers of Jesus.  We’ve taken some time to look inside and consider how God calls us to take care of ourselves in mind, body, and spirit.  It’s a necessary first part of responding to God’s grace.  Look inside.  Deal with our own stuff.  Take the log out of our own eye before trying to wipe away a speck from someone else’s eye.  We begin with ourselves.
            You know, a lot of people stop there.  Faith in Jesus gets kind of stunted in its growth.  Folks get satisfied with the idea that they have personally connected with God in some way.  Do you know what I mean?  As if it is all about them?  It isn’t.  There’s a purpose much bigger than any of us at work.
            So, it is time for us to step away from the mirror and look at the bigger picture.  Take care of yourself so that you can be a part of God’s work in the world of taking care of others.  There are all kinds of scripture lessons in the Bible that point us in this direction.  The message is pretty loud and clear.  But, I want to turn to one that has always been one of my favorites.  It is also one that continues to haunt me day after day.  They are the words of Jesus describing how the world and its people will be judged.  He’s the good shepherd, after all.  And he knows the members of his flock.  He can tell the difference between them.  This is the word of the Lord…
 
            “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angles 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 to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’  Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’  Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’  Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’  And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
 
            The shepherd will separate the sheep from the goats.  You heard that part.  The sheep will stand over to the right.  That’s where you’d like to end up, you know.  The goats?  They will stand over on the left.  Don’t wind up there.  You don’t want to be there.  No, no.  That’s a bad place to be.
            Let’s play shepherd for a moment.  Let’s do a little separating ourselves.  I did not grow up on a farm.  Most of us here didn’t.  I certainly couldn’t tell you much about shepherding a real flock of animals through green pastures and such.  I’m a city boy, I guess.  But, let’s play shepherd for a minute anyway.  Separate the sheep from goats.
            Where will this little fellow go?  Right or left?  Sheep or goat? Sheep.  Yes.
            And now this one?  Aww.  He’s a cutie.  A goat.  I happen to love goats, by the way.  Love ‘em.  I wish I could have one or two in my back yard.  But, he’s headed to the left side, unfortunately.
            All right now.  How about this guy?  Sheep or goat?  Take a guess if you need to.  This is what you call a billy goat.  A goat.  This is the one that will come up behind you, you know, and kind of buck you off a cliff.  So, you know where’s he’s going.  To the left.
            Well, now, who is this fellow?  That last one was a goat.  This one?  Anyone?  A sheep.  Kind of looks like that billy goat.  But, he’s a ram.  A sheep.  So, good news for him.  Over on the right.
            I really didn’t know that they could look so similar.  I had no idea.  Sheep and goats.  I might not make a good shepherd, actually.  What about you?
            Maybe this will help.  Which one is this? [click for sound] Sheep?  Goat?  This is the baa and meh of sheep.  Technically, it’s called a bleat.
            But, what about this? [click for sound]  Pretty close to the one before it, don’t you think?  But, it’s a goat.  And that’s technically called a bleat, too.  The sound they make has the same name.  Bleating.  I didn’t know that.
            Think you can separate sheep and goats?
            It’s a metaphor, of course.  Jesus was good at that.  Metaphors.  Parables.  Make you think a little bit.  The Good Shepherd separates the sheep from the goats like this: [next slide—list of animal traits]
            I mean all of these things are about taking care of the needs of other people.  People in need.  Faith has something very important to say about the desperate situations that folks are in and how the rest of us respond either with God’s own love and grace or not.  Right?
            What does Jesus say about it?  Sheep gain this wonderful reward of eternal life.  Goats?  Well, it isn’t so pretty.  I’d say Jesus is pretty serious about those who claim to follow him and how they take care of people and take care of the world.
            What all can you fit into these categories, anyway?  Folks need new, clean, clothes for their growing kids in school.  AIDS.  He didn’t seem to say much about how people ended up in those situations, either.  He just said take care of them.  So, folks in prison you might say criminals.  Nursing homes.  Shut-ins from the church.  Cancer.  Homeless folks looking for a meal.  It’s a little overwhelming, really.  And it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with who you vote for.  It seems to say something about what you do personally.
            Sheep and goats.  Taking care of people.  Ignoring people.
            Let me ask you something.
            Which one are you?  Are you a sheep or a goat?  Did you meet the real, physical need of the last person you encountered?  Or, did you find a way out of it?
            This really haunts me, actually.  Because Jesus didn’t mince any words with this.  And I can think of so many ways that I have been a sheep.  I really can.  A lot of us can.  And I know what we do as a church and as individuals to respond to people.  Not going to lie, though.  I’m a goat, too.  Pretty good one.
            I don’t really know if I’m a sheep or if I’m a goat.  I probably confuse the Good Shepherd as much as I am confused looking at sheep and goat pictures!  Are you a sheep or a goat?
            I’ll tell you a secret.  Nobody’s a sheep.  And folks you’d swear were nothing but goats can shock you with the ways they’ll bend over backward for somebody else.  Lots of good stuff is happening by folks who never darken the doors of a church.  And lots of folks in the pews seem to forget about words like these of Jesus when the time comes.  But, mostly, we’re all sheep and we’re all goats.  Aren’t we?  Just depends on what moment you happen to catch us.
            I have a feeling Jesus knew this would be the case with us.  He seemed to know that you and I would have our moments.  It seems to me that if he really wanted to say that there were good, giving people among us and rotten, selfish people, too, and we could just be separated out and sent off to our eternal reward or punishment, he would have chosen something a little easier to distinguish than sheep and goats.  He’d have said that the we’d be judged like a basketball fan choosing between Hoosiers and Boiler Makers.  Wouldn’t he?  But, sheep and goats?  He knew that we’d have a hard time with that.  You and I could be either one at any given moment.
            What keeps us from acting on the compassion that Christ calls us to have?  What gets in our way?  And why do we follow through with it at other times?
            You know, when I’m unmistakably a sheep, serving meals down at Main Street Methodist on Wednesday nights, traveling to Mexico to build houses, walking into a hospital room—you have your own list of sheep things that you do—but, when I’m being a sheep, I have this notion that Jesus is within me.  And that’s not entirely wrong.  But, I have this notion that I’m bringing Christ with me to someplace and somebody that needs what I’ve got.
            What does Jesus say?  He said, “When you did it to somebody who needed it, you did it to me.”  He said that he was already there and I was serving him.  Do you think it would make a difference to how I acted if I recognized that Jesus was already in the very places where I think I’m bringing his presence with me?  Would it make a difference if I understood that he’s lying in the hospital bed, sitting behind bars, waiting in line for the dinner I’ve prepared, living in the house I’ve worked on with my hands?  Would it make a difference?
            Mother Teresa was known as the Saint of the Gutter by the time she died in 1997.  In the 45 years of her ministry, which began in one of the most desperate places on earth, Calcutta, India, the organization she founded was operating 610 missions in 123 countries.  They served as hospices for patients of HIV/AIDS, leprosy, tuberculosis.  They served countless meals to some of the world’s poorest people and worked to meet their real, physical needs.  You know a lot of this.  She would say, “Every one of them is Jesus in disguise.”
            Isn’t that what Jesus was saying?  He’s already there if we’d only look with the eyes of faith.  He’s already there waiting to be served.  We think that we’re bringing him with us.
            Here is something else Mother Teresa would say:  “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”  I like that.
            I was in Mexico this past week with a wonderful group of Disciples college students on a Spring Break Mission Trip.  We were building casitas, little houses, for some folks living in desperate situations in the border city of Matamoros.  A lot of folks of winding up there within just a few miles of our own nation’s border.  Refugees from violent places in their own country.  Family members of others who have come to the United States in search of work.  Just an awful lot of people moving into Matamoros who don’t have much of anything.
            And you know poverty in places like this is not like the poverty you and I are mostly familiar with.  Poverty that we can see comes with things like cable television, public transportation, running water, phone service, mail.  I’m telling you about people who are moving onto land that used to be a city landfill because it is cheap or because they are just squatting on the land because there isn’t anything else.  There’s a little bit of electricity.  Houses are mostly scrap wood pieced together until a family can save enough money for a new, concrete structure.  Roads are bumpy and muddy.  There’s no running water.  Plumbing is a latrine.  And there is no mistaking it, this land sits on top of an old city dump.
            What are your prospects to be born into this situation?  And there were children everywhere.
            The mission organization that our church has down there sends people across the border to build these more durable structures in order to help families endure the conditions long enough to maybe get a foothold on a new life and begin to prosper.  No guarantees, of course.  But, that’s the hope.  And that’s what we were doing.  My group spent most of four days building a 12 foot by 16 foot house for Elpidio Porton and his family.
            Here’s what I first noticed:  there was a chicken cage on their little piece of land.  There were four chickens and a rooster in it.  That dog gone rooster wouldn’t quit crowing as we worked, either.  It about drove me crazy.  But, then on the second day, I thought that maybe there were only three chickens there.  I wondered if one of them got away.  It wasn’t any of my business, so I ignored it.
            Somewhere around two o’clock that day, Senora Porton came out to us with a big helping of a dish called molé.  Do you know what molé is?  Chicken seasoned with cocoa and chili powder.  And it was amazing.  But, that’s where chicken number four wound up.  The Porton family saw some people who were hungry, you know, and understood that they had something to give them.  So, they fed them.  It just happened to be us.
            We thought that we were giving them a house.  But, what happened is that we put a roof over Jesus’ head and they put some food in his stomach.
            Do you think the world might be transformed if we took that seriously?
            I get the impression that Jesus believes it would.  He seems to believe it.  And if you haven’t noticed yet there is a whole lot of transformation just waiting for our compassion.  Take care of others.  Take care of Jesus.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)