The reading from today’s service at our church: Matthew 25:31-46:
31 “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. 32 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, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
34 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; 35 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, 36 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.’ 37 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? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 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.’
41 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; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 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.’ 44 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?’ 45 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.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
I am always reluctant to contest the label of “Christian” to any person who claims it, because that sort of differentiation is often the tool of those who would divide Christians by various categories, usually for what seem like trivial reasons, and often to a bad end. “You don’t believe in doctrine X!” “You’re wishy-washy in dogma Y!” “You don’t profess the Correct Things to be a True Christian.” “Burn the heretics!” Etc.
But it is difficult for me to grant the title of Christian to those who act against this core passage of the Gospel.
Jesus doesn’t qualify the poor, the hungry, the needy, the imprisoned by worth or deservedness or justification.
He doesn’t say “Well, we should care for the people who work really, really hard but are oppressed by the greedy and therefore deserve our care.”
He doesn’t say, “There are hungry people who aren’t lazy, or who make only good decisions in their lives, or who are otherwise admirable, so those specific people are the people who you should help.”
He doesn’t say, “There are a lot of innocent people in jail, so we should extend mercy just to those prisoners who are unjustly oppressed by impositions on their religious freedom or who are otherwise innocent of their crimes.”
He doesn’t say, “There are a lot of people who have made all the right decisions, and have believed all the right things, but who are still in unfortunate circumstances, and therefore should be treated as good people, and therefore deserve your charity.”
It’s a metaphor, people.
God grants His grace to anyone who needs it, regardless of whether they “deserve” it. That’s what grace is about.
Thus, any Christian — any follower of Christ — is called to extend their charity to anyone who needs it, regardless of whether they “deserve” it. Because we are called not to judge, lest we ourselves are judged. We are called to be good neighbors, to care for people based on their circumstance, not on their virtuous outlook or theological purity or being (in our eyes) “good” people.
People who claim to be Good Christians but who disdain and reject people who they feel don’t deserve charity, love of neighbor, feeding of those who (for whatever reason) are hungry, caring for “the least of these” who (for whatever reason) are the least …
… are, frankly, piss-poor Christians.
Lovely, +Dave Hill. I guess having been raised wholly outside, leaves to be desired on the front of understanding key verses and points of the Gospels. This one is obviously special, since it seems to incite making an exception for it, people like you and +John Wehrle who'll ordinarily shy away from risking their sermons mistaken for sacred book proselytism.
In turn this correlates with my outsider's autonomous perception of (degenerate) religious roots to a revolting prevalence of merit-based reasoning in the US. I am regularly dismayed by how comfortable (some) Americans are with giving keystone position to the concept of deserving, applied to differentiate between people and to justify outsize rewards and punishments that your system doles out.
The passage deserves commending for the magnificence of how it anticipates its own landing in ironical position in spite of being perfectly explicit. Something in its marriage of irony and morality, reminds me of the "French pun from the future" that I've been using in the last couple years to argue that we need to stop taking airplanes like they were buses, if we mean to get serious about curbing emissions. It's based on the fact that the French "avions" is both the translation of "airplanes" and the continued past tense of "to have", first person plural.
+Boris Borcic Passages like this are a large part of why I claim to be a Christian, and why I resent so much people who use that same label in an exclusionary way over theological doctrine or railing against social changes they are uncomfortable with.