Have you ever been to one of the great Gothic cathedrals? Notre Dame or Canterbury or Westminster Abbey? If you have, or even if you’ve seen pictures of them, you know that they are literally sermons in glass and stone. In the great cathedrals, all the architectural details, all the windows, and all the sculpture are designed to tell us something about God and what God has done for us. Though not medieval, the Washington National Cathedral, the cathedral church of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, is also such a sermon in stone. Episcopal priest Frank Logue tells us that the entire building is designed to point us towards God and to remind us of God’s mighty works. As with the medieval cathedrals, the focal point of the national cathedral is the high altar. Behind the high altar the huge reredos depicts Christ in glory surrounded by over one hundred figures. But look closely: nearest the glorified Christ stand who? The great angels? The most exemplary saints? The apostles? The martyrs? None of these. Closest to the glorified Christ, at the very heart of this great cathedral, stand six allegorical figures, figures of people who are hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, sick, and imprisoned. You can’t miss the theme of the sermon: it is they, the poor, the needy, the weak, and the victims, whom Christ first embraces in paradise.
Are you surprised? Were you surprised that Jesus depicted the final judgment as a test of how we treated others, especially of how we treated “the least of these?” Jesus warned us, didn’t he? He told us that when he returned to begin his reign over all creation we would face a test. Not on whether we understood and professed every iota of the Nicene Creed. Not on whether we had read and understood the sermons of John Chrysostom or John Donne. Not on whether we had the most beautiful sanctuaries and vestments. He would test us, Jesus told us, on how visible our faith was, on how we had treated those who were poor, sick, hungry, oppressed, or in prison, on whether we had actively attended to their needs or ignored them. He would remind us that faith isn’t faith until it’s actualized, until it’s made concrete in the ways that we live out our lives. Even if we don’t always know exactly who the beneficiary of our good works is, even if we’re not always sure that those whom we help are part of the “deserving poor,” Jesus tells us that when we use our faith to benefit others, we show our love for Jesus himself.
Didn’t we already know that? Didn’t the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures tell us that? And hadn’t the writer of the Letter of James repeated the same message to his hearers when he asked, “What good is it to profess faith without practicing it?” What good is it if you ignore the needs of the naked or the hungry? Like Jesus, hadn’t James also warned us that “without good deeds faith is useless?” Or, as James Forbes, the former pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, put it, "Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor."
So Jesus’ parable – and the sermon in stone – remind us that whether we like it or not, God will ultimately hold us accountable for how we have lived our lives and how we have used God’s gifts to us. This Sunday, the very last Sunday of the liturgical year, as we recognize and give thanks to God that we are accountable to Christ rather than to any secular authority, perhaps this is a good time to pause and look at our own lives. How would you do on Jesus’ test? What do your datebook and checkbook say about you? Are you merely an admirer of Jesus, or do you truly try to do what he did? Does he nourish you in Scripture and sacrament? More important, does receiving Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist change the rest of your life? Do you notice the needs of only your closest family and friends and ignore the needs of those on the margins of your social circle? Do you know who “the least, the lost, and the left behind” in our world are, and are you concerned about them? Do you see Jesus in others, even in “difficult” people, in people you don’t like, in people who have hurt you? Do you look beyond the charitable handout and try to make a difference in the systems of injustice and inequity that trap people in poverty, disease, and disaster? Do the needs of our brothers and sisters in other countries have any claim on you?
Jesus isn’t posing these questions to us only or even primarily as individuals. All the pronouns in the parable are in the second person plural. So Jesus’ questions are also addressed to us corporately, to us here at St. Peter’s as a parish. And the questions are similar. This is a parish with many God-given gifts: physical plant, talented people, and financial resources. How are we using these gifts? If we were to lock the doors and all go our separate ways, would anyone miss us? Take a minute and think about it: where do you yearn to bring the good news to the wider community? Where does Jesus want us to go? If money were no object, and we had all the people we needed, what are we as a parish called to do in this community? What tugs at your heart? Do you think we need more money or more people to truly live out our faith? If we have the will to try to befriend the “least of these,” Jesus’ sisters and brothers whom we see around us, might not God provide the resources that we need?
Or, conversely, perhaps you find it hard to take this gospel seriously. We so easily blame the poor for their poverty. If they really wanted decent healthcare, education, housing, and a living wage, we think, they could get it. Jesus is just offering us pie-in-the-sky, isn’t he? The truth is that when we commit to following Jesus – not just admiring him, or giving intellectual assent to statements about him – we profess that the dispossessed, those on the margins of society, are the ones we are charged to care for. Most astonishing of all to us good folks is that, according to Matthew, if we really want a transformative, face-to-face experience of Jesus’ presence, we will find him in the faces of the poor. Like Fritz Eichenberg, the Quaker artist whose woodcuts frequently appeared in Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker newspaper, the truth is that if we truly seek Christ we will find him in the breadlines.
Are you beginning to feel that I am judging you and putting you on the spot? Do you fear the separation of the sheep and the goats depicted in Jesus’ parable? Where’s the good news? My brothers and sisters, here’s the good news. That Jesus holds us accountable for what we do means that our lives have consequences, and it matters to God and to those around us how we live them out. Our lives may be short, our scope of action may be limited, but our lives still matter. That Jesus also holds us accountable as a parish for how we use God’s gifts means that our life together as a community of faith also has value and meaning. It does – or it should – mean that our being here helps to advance God’s reign!
As we ponder Jesus’ last words to us, we come back to the question we have been wrestling with for the last several weeks, ever since, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus began his last sermon in Jerusalem. And that question is, how do we live in this middle time between Jesus’ death and resurrection and the full inauguration of his reign on earth? The answer is both simple and complicated. We heard Jesus himself give the answer to the question: “You must love the Most High God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. That is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: You must love your neighbor as yourself.” Love God, love your neighbor: that is how we live in the middle time.
So what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of getting your hands dirty, of not knowing what to say, of wondering if someone will ask you about your faith? Are you afraid you might lose your faith when you listen to the needs of the poor? Put yourself on the line. Do more than write a check – although checks are always welcome! Tutor children. Join Deacon Carolyn and visit a nursing home. Come to Loaves and Fishes. Help deliver the meals to the First Holzer apartments. Sit down and talk with our diners, or just greet them. Think about others in your neighborhood – or your world – who are among the least, the lost, and the left behind. See them as those beloved of God and think about how you might begin caring for them.
Jesus was a great preacher. Here are his last words to us. If we want to live in his realm, both now and when his reign on earth is complete, we need only ask ourselves the most practical of questions. Did we feed the hungry? Did we shelter the homeless? Did we care for the sick and the imprisoned? And we will answer….
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