Not All About Me

Text : Matthew 25: 31-46 “When did we see You?”

NOT ALL ABOUT ME.
November 23, 2008
Northminster Presbyterian Church
Roanoke, Va.

“Did you ever have to make up your mind? Pick up on one and leave the other behind? It is not often easy and not often kind, Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Did you ever have to finally decide? Say yes to one and let the other one ride. There are so many changes and tears you must hide. Did you ever have to finally decide? Some of you may recognize those questions that the Loving Spoonfuls used to ask. Of course, we have. All the time. Everyday we make those kinds of decisions. Paper or Plastic? Fast food or salad? CNN or Fox News? Take this product and ignore that one. Hire this person and fire that one. Life is constantly forcing us to make choices. But at the same time, we think having choices is what makes life good. We like having choices. We think it gives us a sense of power, a sense of being in control of our lives. Did you ever have to make up your mind? Certainly, I do it every day all day.
Not only do we have all those choices and decisions but most of the time we make those decisions in our favor. I make most of my decisions based on whether or not it will benefit me. I make them from my perspective. I pick up the one that is best for me. I chose those things that benefit me the most. I think that is pretty cool, but my sisters never thought it was very nice. I cut the pie so that I get the biggest piece and I am very happy, but the rest of you are not very pleased. When my sisters got to make the decisions and made them in their favor, I scream for justice. It was not fair, I yelled.
Virginia does not like it when North Carolina tries to make all the decisions about the use of the water from the Roanoke basin in North Carolina’s favor. Most of your co-workers do not like it when you make most of the decisions at work in your favor when you try to turn up the thermostat. The people in the Middle East are not happy when the U.S. makes all our decisions in their countries on the basis of American self-interest. Yeah we have often had to make up our minds and make decisions. We have made most of those decision on the basis of what is best for me, from self-interest, and yet somehow, somewhere, we realize that somebody else will have settle things a different way. Isn’t that the most common comment you hear when there is all this talk about bailing out Wall Street or bailing out the auto industry? They are not bailing out me. They are not helping me pay my mortgage.
So maybe that is why this story of the Son of Man coming with all the host of heaven, coming as the one who does finally have to decide, coming with the nations of the earth before him, coming to finally have to separate those who are part of the Kingdom of heaven and those who have no interest in that kingdom is such a blessing. Immediately the story forces us beyond where we live most of the time because the story is not just about “just me.” It is not a story about individual salvation. It is not concerned just about getting you or me to heaven. It is a story about all the nations of the earth. It is a cosmic story about the fundamental reality of the kingdom of God. The text underscores the completeness of the Son of Man’s decision in two ways – the Son of Man is surrounded by all the angels in heaven and all the nations of history are before him. The Son of Man is having to finally decide.
The Sheep are divided from the goats. It is not just Christians from Jews, Jews from Muslim, Americans from Iranians. But those who are sheep from every nations are separated from those who are goats in every nation.
Jesus tells us that the separation comes about on the basis of the things that we have done in our ordinary average days. As we went through the routines, the car pools, the junk mail, the emails, the fast food lunches, the quick trips to the grocery stores, the things way we acted form the forks in the road that separated us from others. Which of courses, means that there really is no “ordinary time.” All time is touched by eternal significance. This is Christ the King Sunday in which we bring to an end the 33 Sundays which have been called Sundays of Ordinary time, and on this Sunday we declare there really was no ordinary time, all time is charged and full of the holy and eternal purposes and opportunities.
When the Sheep asked how they got over here, the Son of Man says it was pretty simple. When they saw Him hungry, they fed him. When they saw him naked they clothed him. When they saw him thirsty, they gave him water. When he was sick, they came to help. Ahh, but the real secret is that they did not know it was Jesus. The sheep did not know who they were helping. The Sheep did not know they got brownie points for being good to those who needed help. Those ordinary people who the sheep felt compassion for and helped because those people needed help turned out to be the incarnation of Jesus. The sheep offered their help with no anticipation or understanding that helping those who were in need had any way of helping themselves. Their acts of compassion were not rooted in self-interest. They did not do them as a way of helping themselves. The gift of food, water, clothing, visits, and care were given because there was response of the human heart to a need.
There is a tv ad that is being shown in my community, it is a national ad so perhaps you have seen it. The commercial starts with one person doing an act of kindness for another person, and a third person seeing that act of kindness. Then third person does an act of kindness to a fourth person, and that person does an act of kindness to a fifth person, and all of them do the acts of kindness without there being anyway for them to benefit or to make it pay off for them.
The goats have continued to live out of their own self interest and even when they asked why they were goats, and told that they had not feed the hungry, clothed the naked, given drink to the thirsty, and so they had not shown compassion to the Son of Man, the goats said, “Hey, if we had known it was you and that it mattered we would have been more than happy to feed, cloth and visit the sick.”
Those who are welcomed into the kingdom of God are those who have discovered that great joy of compassion for those God loves and who live out of that compassion instead of living out of their own selfishness. Marcus Borg, a New Testament scholar of national reputation, says that we follow Jesus when our passion, our love of God, is so great that we forget ourselves in God’s passion for those things God loves, the world. Those who find themselves in the kingdom of God are those who find a way of forgetting about self and what is best for them and find a way to live and enjoy life for the good of all. The Kingdom of God is available and visible wherever we find that we are able to pick up the needs and the concerns and the opportunities for all creation and leave behind that constant temptation to make our decision on the basis of what is best just for me. The Kingdom of God is enjoyed and visible now and always in the times when we become caught up in the delights, in the pains, in the work, in the struggles for justice for others that we forget all about whether the decisions we make are beneficial to our self interest or not. We see some sheep begin to gather when right after a tornado people begin to show up to help the victims collect their belongs.
Isn’t that what Jesus says in other places about those who would follow him must be willing to lose their lives so that they may gain their lives. The Son of Man comes to finally decided and we are shown again that the finally decision is given to those who get so involved in the ordinary lives of the ordinary people in the ordinary days that they forget about protecting their own self interest and become full of the joy of sharing that life with others.
Which brings us to this table. Which is why this table is so central to what we believe about life, about God, about salvation, about love. It is the table where we remember that the one who comes as the Son of Man and who welcomes into his kingdom those who triumph over their own selfishness, is, in fact, the one who put aside his own self-interest, but did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but gave it up so that He might assume the nature of a human being, a slave, and bearing that likeness of humanity, he humbled himself and in obedience accepted even death –death on the cross. The Kingdom of God comes to those who make their decisions out of compassion for others, and not just the others in our own family, and offers to them the same importance they once thought of themselves. This is a table which celebrates the kingdom that is created by those who can finally decide not to live out of their own agendas and their own personal wishes, but who live out of God’s compassion for all creation.
Come now to the joyful feast of the people of God.