"I am thankful," says an unknown author, "for the alarm that goes off in the early morning hours, because it means that I am alive . . ." Then he adds, "And for the person behind me in church who sings off-key because it means that I can hear." (1) There is somebody who knows how to be thankful.
This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. It is a day when we will celebrate our bounty as a nation, and we will express our thanks to the One who is the source of all that we have. Maybe we will even give some thought to those who are not as blessed as we. For truly, we are some of the most fortunate people on this planet. Our text for the day calls us to pause at our well-filled tables and reflect on those less fortunate--or else we will have a serious problem with our credibility as followers of Jesus.
Dr. Robert R. Kopp, a pastor in Pennsylvania, was driving through traffic one day when he spotted a cheery bumper sticker on the car ahead of him that read, "Honk if you love Jesus!" Naturally, Dr. Kopp honked. The driver responded with an obscene gesture. (2)
Ouch! Somewhere there was a major disconnect between that driver's beliefs and his actions.
It's like the story of Stuart Berger, a former health columnist for the New York Post for a number of years. Berger was also the author of best-selling diet and health books, such as Forever Young: 20 Years Younger in 20 Weeks and Dr. Berger's Immune Power Diet. Imagine the surprise of Dr. Berger's fans when, in 1994, he died at the young age of forty. People were especially surprised to read that he weighed 365 pounds at the time of his death. Needless to say, when those who were following Berger's regimen heard the news of his obesity and his untimely death, Berger's credibility died with him. (3)
Credibility is a vital issue in our cynical and disconnected society. Trust--whether in our neighbors, our institutions, or in our businesses--is in short supply. The evening news brings us stories of the average guy-next-door or girl-next-door who turns out to be an axe murderer. The CEO of a major corporation fills his employees' pension plans with worthless stock. When the business folds, the employees are left penniless. Police chiefs hire hit men to murder their rivals; pastors have affairs or embezzle church funds. And the local Scout leader has a drinking problem.
The Christian Church should be especially concerned with the issue of credibility. After all, we represent God, a God of perfect holiness and perfect love. Those are some pretty big shoes to fill. And we were given the job to live as Godly examples and to spread God's message. If we are not credible witnesses, then why should anyone listen to us?
OUR BIBLE PASSAGE FOR TODAY REMINDS US THAT ONE AREA IN WHICH THE CHURCH'S CREDIBILITY GAP IS MOST EVIDENT IN OUR LACK OF COMPASSION FOR THE POOR AND HURTING.
In 1982, New York City was facing a budget crisis. Winter was approaching, and the city's social service agencies were unable to care for all the homeless citizens who needed help. Mayor Ed Koch called upon Manhattan's religious institutions to help care for 36,000 homeless men and women who would "fall through the cracks" that winter. If every one of the city's 3500 churches and synagogues would help out 10 homeless people, the problem would be solved. According to an investigative piece in The New York Times, the churches and synagogues didn't exactly jump at the idea. The article quoted one Protestant minister who said, "The mayor never mentioned this to me. Nobody in his office apprized me of this." The Catholic spokesman sidestepped the question, and a leading Jewish rabbi said, "We haven't money to heat the building for this extra service." (4)
Why is this issue of helping the helpless such a big deal? Why is it the deal-breaker, the thing that separates the sheep from the goats, the issue that decides who inherits the kingdom of God and who doesn't? IT IS BECAUSE WE, THE CHURCH, ARE SUPPOSED TO REFLECT THE NATURE AND PRIORITIES OF GOD. AND GOD LOVES THE POOR.
In Deuteronomy 15, God guarantees His blessings upon the Hebrew people if they give generously to the poor. In Leviticus 19, God instructs the Hebrews to leave behind some produce in the field for the poor to glean. In this way, the poor can accept charity with dignity. In Amos 5: 21-24, the Lord tells the Hebrew people that He hates their religious ceremonies and refuses to accept their offerings. Why? Because the people were unjust toward the poor. In Isaiah 61: 14, the prophet Isaiah prophesies that the coming Messiah, the Savior, would come "to preach good news to the poor." And in Matthew 11, when John the Baptist asks for some assurance from Jesus that he is the Messiah, Jesus doesn't call down a great miracle to prove his identity. He simply quotes these words from Isaiah: "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." To Jesus, these were the deciding marks of the Messiah. These acts demonstrated the priorities of the kingdom of God.
In fact, Jesus so identified with the poor and powerless in his society that he claimed that any good act done for them was, in essence, done for him too. As he says in verse 40, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Why is it so hard for us to take those words at face value? We say that our greatest desire is to see Jesus. Do we really mean it? Then there is a simple solution: reach out to the poor and needy of society. According to this passage, we will see Jesus in their faces.
A man named Michael Christensen spent some time with Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta. In his book City Streets, City People, he tells of the incredible burden of suffering that Mother Teresa witnessed each day. He reports that one day Mother Teresa rescued an abandoned baby from the gutters. The child's hand and feet had been gnawed away by rats. At the end of that day, Mother Teresa asked Christensen if he had seen Jesus. Christensen, still focused on the horror around them, admitted that he didn't see Jesus anywhere. Mother Teresa explained Jesus' teachings from Matthew 25 about taking care of the poor, the hungry, the weak. And then she said quite simply, "You did it to me." "You did it to me." Mother Teresa saw Jesus all around her every day. (5)
During the war in the Balkens, a Catholic nun in Croatia found a unique way to get help for the war refugees. Dressed in her nun's habit, she would go to a door and plead with those who answered her knock, "I have no place to stay. I'm hungry. Can you take me in?" Croatia is a deeply Catholic country, so the answer to the nun's plea was almost always, "Of course, Sister." Then the nun would step back to let the real refugees with her be seen. They were usually taken in by the family. (6)
That nun understood the nature and priorities of Jesus. OUR TREATMENT OF THE "LEAST OF THESE" IN OUR SOCIETY DIRECTLY REFLECTS OUR LOVE FOR JESUS. We can talk all day about our being a "Christian nation." We can plaster the walls of our public buildings with posters of the Ten Commandments. We can dress from head to toe in WWJD clothing. But all our devotion and worship is worthless in God's sight if we don't take care of the needy.
According to a 1994 report from the organization, Bread for the World, "The global community has the capacity to provide every man, woman, and child with adequate food, clean water, safe sanitation, primary health care, and basic schooling by the end of the century at an affordable price. UNICEF estimates that the U.S. share of such an effort would be an additional $2 billion a year. That's less than what people in the United States spend MONTHLY on beer." (7)
The famous evangelist Billy Sunday was once asked, "What must I do to go to hell?" Sunday answered, "Nothing." (8) That's the message of Matthew 25 also. If we want to have hell on earth and hell for eternity, then we will look the other way. The goats were those people in Jesus' parable who saw the need, but did nothing to help. The goats' response is captured perfectly in this paraphrase of today's passage: "I was hungry and you said apply for food stamps. I was homeless and you said there is a shelter in town. I was lonely and you said get a Sony Walkman. I was beaten and you said avoid dark alleys. I was naked and you said a local church has clothes. I was sick and you said apply for Medicaid. I was illiterate and you said there are library cards. I was poor and you said God loves the poor. I was imprisoned and you said try the parole board. I was depressed and you gave me a Smile button. I was dying and you said there is eternal life.
"Now I know why the answers are not solutions." (9)
We, the Church, are called to be the answer and the solution to poverty, need, and injustice in our society. We serve an all-powerful God who cares for those who are powerless. We worship an Almighty Father who is a protector of widows and orphans. We claim as Savior a man about whom it was written in II Corinthians 8: 9: "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich." The Lord's perfection includes perfect love, perfect mercy, perfect justice, and perfect peace. That is the plan for the kingdom of God. And those people who try, however imperfectly, to create those conditions here on earth are doing kingdom work. They will be blessed.
An army chaplain was visiting wounded soldiers in the hospital. The chaplain offered to read some Bible passages to one young soldier. But the soldier said, "I'm cold," so the chaplain wrapped his own coat around the young man.
Next, the soldier asked for something to drink. The chaplain propped up the soldier's head and held his own water canteen to the young man's lips. Then the chaplain asked again if he could read some passages to the young man. This time, the soldier replied, "If there is anything in that Bible that caused you to do what you've done for me, yes. Please read to me that part of the Bible." (10)
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." The world will judge the Church by how well, or how poorly, we follow this teaching. Honk if you love Jesus? I don't think so. Treat the poor and hurting and needy the same way you would treat Jesus. That's how we are commanded to show our love.
1. From St. George Orthodox Church, Flint, MI: Cited in Joyful Noisletter, Nov 2001, p. 1, "Thanksgiving Thoughts." Contributed by Dr. John Bardsley.
2. "God is Love, But He Hates . . ." By Dr. Robert R. Kopp Feb. 18, 1996, p. 1.
3. "The Empowered Life" by David Wilson, Preaching, Nov./Dec, 1998, p. 34.
4. Bruce Larson, Living out the Book of Acts (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1984), p. 80.
5. "Loving the Unlovely" by Michael E. Williams, Preaching, Sept./ Oct. 2000, p. 44-45.
6. From Plough magazine, cited in Salt, as quoted in "Sisters of Mercy," Connections, 20th Sunday OT, Year A, Aug. 1993. Fuller, Gerard, O.M. I. Stories for All Seasons (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1996) p. 36.
7. Bread for the World Background Paper (quoted in Salt, Jul/Aug 1994), Current Thoughts & Trends, September 1994, p. 38.
8. A. Philip Parham, Letting God: Christian Meditations for Recovering Persons (Harper San Francisco, 1987).
9. "Peace Times, Salt, June 1994, p. 24.
10. "In His Own Words: "˜By This Everyone Will Know That You Are My Disciples,'" by C. Thomas Hilton, The Clergy Journal, August 1998, pp.31-32.