Matthew 25:31-46

You've all seen it. The person standing at the street corner with the sign "Will Work for Food." I always feel uncomfortable, as I drive by. It's hard to know what to do. You want to help, but how? Most of the time you don't have any work for them. And frankly you don't want to take a stranger to your house to do some made up job there.

So why not just give them money? But we know that sometimes people ask for money for food when they really use it for something else. I may end up enabling someone else's addiction. Oh, it would be easy sometimes to just give a buck and go on. I know. I've done it before. But isn't that just a cop out so often. Isn't it often done just to make the giver feel good and make that person go away?

We all know that there are truly needy people in this world. How do we help? That is the inner struggle that conscientious people go through And so it makes us uncomfortable when we pass by sign like: "Will work for food."

Jesus was still answering the question from his disciples about the end of the age, when he told the parable we read this morning. The end of the age - Judgment Day - will be like this: Jesus will come in glory and he will sort out the human race. He will divide the human race into two groups. To one group he will say, "Welcome to my kingdom - when I was hungry you fed me, when I was thirst you gave me a cup of water when I was stranger you welcomed me." And bewildered they will say, "But when did we do those things?" And Jesus will say, "If you did it to anyone you did it to me."

Then he will turn to the other people and say: "Cursed are you because when I was hungry you gave me nothing, when I was naked you didn't give me any clothes, when I was thirsty you refused me water, when I needed you, you ignored me." And bewildered they will say, "But when did we see you in need and not help?" And he will say to them, "If you failed to help anyone in need, you failed to help me."

Then Jesus ends the parable by saying that these last will suffer while the ones who helped will be blessed. And it makes me feel even more uncomfortable. When someone is in need my response means something. It is about more than their momentary need or my contentiousness. My response has repercussions beyond the here and now. The consequences are temporal but they are also eternal.

There's always more than one way to see Jesus parables. The story goes that a young person was leading a Bible study in a family shelter for the homeless. The Bible study was for the youth and children. In the course of their study they came upon this passage. After reading the story one of the young people in a moment of realization said, "They had food!"

We often focus on what happens to the sheep and goats. But this youth, living in need, saw something more basic. The sheep and the goats had food, and water and clothing and shelter and so much more. We have food. We have clean water. We have warm clothes.

Be thankful! We are blessed! So many in our world lack many of the things we take for granted. And it is all a gift from God. Give thanks then to God who is the author of all our blessings. Remember the bounty that was being celebrated at the first Thanksgiving was made possible by the Native Americans who helped the poor Europeans in their hour of need.

Sure, we should be thankful, but that still leaves us where we started. There is need in our world. How do we help without simply contributing to the problems of the world? I know one person who when they see someone on the side of the road with a sign "Will work for food" who will turn around and get a value meal at the nearest drive through and give it to the person. I know another who carries around granola bars that she can give out if confronted with a request for food. Churches and communities support organizations like TOTAL (Telling Others They Are Loved) and SPIHN and Habitat for Humanity to help those in need. By coordinating our efforts and pooling our resources there is much we can do.

But there are still circumstances and situations that don't fit these solutions. And so often our quick fix aid is nothing more than a band aid put on a hemorrhaging wound. How do we help those in need? How do we begin to address the systemic causes of the cycle of poverty? I think we need to start with the Lord. We have to turn to God and ask for direction.

We need to ask God to show us how to truly help. Most of the time, we don't know and can't know what a person's true needs are. But God does and the Holy Spirit can guide us if we will put our trust in the Almighty.

But I think we are missing something here. Remember that young person who said "They have food!" Yes, we have food, but we have so much more! We have food, clothing and shelter, but we also have love, grace, peace, joy, forgiveness, community� We have soul food! We have a mansion not made with hands and eternal in the heavens. We have a robe of righteousness to cover our moral nakedness.

There are a lot people who don't have these things. They may have groceries and clothing and a house. But they lack many of the things which we take for granted. Sure you don't see people on street corners holding up signs saying "I am Lonely" or "I am spiritually empty." But they are still there, and we have what they need.

What if we fail to share Christ's love with those who need God? What if we fail to share the love and the joy of the Spirit with those who feel unloved and without joy? What if we fail to invite the spiritually homeless into God's house? When Jesus comes again and sorts out the people of the world, which side will we be on?

If we are honest with ourselves, I think we would all admit that the dividing line between the sheep and the goats goes down the middle of each of us. We have all reached out to people in need. And we have all failed to offer help. If we can admit that, perhaps we can turn to the judge to help us judge what to do in the face of the needs both physical and spiritual in our world.

Matthew 25:31-46

The World is coming to an end! "Well the preacher has finally gone off the deep end." We think that only kooks and crack pots talk about the end of the world. This attitude toward the subject of the end of the world is fostered by those people who are constantly setting dates for the world's demise. Like the book "89 reasons why the world will end in 1989" those dates come and go without event. And we begin to question the credibility of those people. When we think about people saying the end is coming we think of the stereotypical lunatic standing on the street corner with a sign that says, "The world will end Tomorrow!" Or maybe we think of those cults which spring up every now and then who say the world will end on a certain date but then the date just comes and goes.

Jesus spent a lot of time talking about the end of the Age. Sometimes I think we don't realize that. He was constantly saying that the Kingdom of heaven was at hand. He said when the Son of man returns it will be as if this. Or the Kingdom of heaven is like that. The coming judgment and glory of God was a constant theme in Jesus' teaching.

But Jesus seems like a level headed sort of guy. It may seem hard for some to think that he went in big for this end of the world stuff. So often times we overlook or explain away Jesus' teachings and sayings about the end of the world.

The disciples who followed Jesus could not escape the truth that their master was constantly talking about the coming of the Son of Man, or the end of the age, or the coming Kingdom of Heaven. They had heard Jesus talk about the coming of the Kingdom. And they truly believe that it was at hand. Once they even argued amongst themselves who among them would be the greatest. So they asked Jesus "What will be the signs of the end of the age?" It took two chapters of Matthew's Gospel record Jesus' reply.

All this talk about being ready for the day of the Lord probably worried them as it does many of us. I imagine they looked at one another and said, "Jesus said that we should keep our lamps filled with oil ready to be trimmed. But what do we do to be ready? Should we spend all our time trying to read signs so that we know when it is. Maybe if we study the Scriptures we can predict the time. Maybe we should read through all the news papers for events that might be signs of his return. Should we spend all our spare time looking to the sky for his return?

Jesus knew his disciples' thoughts. So he tried to calm their fears and answer those questions. He did it by giving them a parable.

That parable went something like this: When Judgment Day comes and the Son of Man comes in Glory, he will sit on a throne with all his angels around him, and he will gather all the nations of the world in front of him so that he can sort them out. It will be like a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.

Then he will turn to the ones on his right hand and say, come over here all of you. You are the ones that My Father will bless. You see, when I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will look at each other in bewilderment and they will say: "Jesus, not that we are complaining or anything but there is something we don't understand. I know I saw pictures of you in my Sunday School books. But I never saw you hungry and fed you. Or thirsty and gave you water. And when were you ever a stranger and I welcomed you or naked and I clothed you. When did I ever see you sick or in prison and cared for you. Then the king will say to them: Remember when you helped serve food at that soup kitchen. I was there. I was dying of hunger and I came through that soup line many times and you served me a hot bowl of soup each time. You over there, remember when that missionary came to your church and said that the town he worked in needed fresh water. I lived in that town. Because you gave to that missionary I had water to drink. And you, yea you over there, remember when that Chinese man stopped you on the street he could hardly speak English and you took the time to help him find where he wanted to go. Remember that. That was me. And you, with the blue pants, remember when you were a volunteer at the hospital. Do you remember that aids Patient that you talked to. Most of the doctors and nurses didn't want anything to do with me. You were the only one who wasn't scared to care about me. You see if you helped any of my brothers and sisters you were helping me.

Then the king will turn to those on his left and say, 'Get out of here, you who are cursed, and burn in the fires prepared to burn the devil, 'Cause when I came to you hungry you said, "Get a job," When I was thirsty, you polluted my water, When I was a stranger, you laughed at me because I was different, When I was homeless you just passed by and tried to ignore me. When I was sick you refused to visit me because you though you might catch my cancer. And when I was in prison you said I was a menace to society and should stay locked up.'

Then they will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or homeless or sick or in prison?' If we had known it was you we would have taken you out to a restaurant. One will say, "If I had known that was you on that street corner I would have asked you to stay at my house." Another will say, "If I had known that was your water I would have been more careful." Another will say, "If I had known you were in the Hospital or in prison I would have visited you every day and I would have brought you flowers too."

Then the King will say to them them, Look, I'm telling you the truth, if you turned your back on anyone, no matter what kind of person it was, then you turned your back on me. Those who were ignoring God's love will be surprised when Jesus returns because they were not about their Father's business. They will be punished forever. But those who remembered God's love and showed it to others, will be ready. They will enter into eternal life.

I'm sure this parable was a hard one for the disciples. And it is a hard one for us too. It is hard because each of us can see ourselves on both sides. We can all remember times when we helped someone in need. But we can also remember times when we didn't. So we are stuck asking ourselves if we are sheep or goats.

In the end we just need to let this parable be a challenge to us. A challenge to live out God's love with a new depth. A challenge to seek God's guidance to show us how to love others. And a challenge to ask for forgiveness when we fail to.

Like many of Jesus' parable it leads us back to the same point. We can only find that depth with God's help. Only Christ's love can give us the strength to love the unlovable people. Only God's Holy Spirit can give us the guidance to know how to help those who have been deemed lost cases. Trust Jesus to meet the challenge and then you will be ready. And when Jesus returns he will say to you, "You helped the least of my sisters and brothers and you helped me. Enter into the Kingdom."