Transcript of a sermon by Rev. Tom Keyte

Read Matthew 25

I want to share a line of thought with you that has
often been with me and I hope it makes you as uncomfortable as
it always makes me. I want to ask you a very searching question:
When did you last see Jesus? Do I hear anybody say, `What do you
mean? Nobody has ever seen Jesus in our generation. They saw him
2000 years ago, but nobody sees him now?’

But you see him every day…

It’s the question that was asked by those on either
side of the King – by those who were acquitted and by those who
were found guilty. And the answer was, ‘Inasmuch as you did it
to one of the least of these you did it to me.’ This is a searching
question as I say, because it is just at this point that our Christian
beliefs are subjected to judgment, and what makes this so uncomfortable
is that it isn’t the judgment of harshness and censoriousness
and power and sternness. It’s the judgement of love.

We call this the last judgment, but surely the point
of it is that the judgment has been going on all the time, but
it’s only now that the full significance of their actions is seen
for what it was. Every day is judgment day. Every day demonstrates
that we are becoming more and more a certain kind of person, either
a more compassionate, unselfish person, or a more self-centred,
self-enclosed one. And in one sense I believe that the real rewards
and punishment are simply that we become that kind of person.

There are many questions that this parable has raised.
Some of them don’t matter much because they don’t alter the main
thrust of it. But let me say just a word or two about a couple
of them. I must refer to the dreadful doctrine of everlasting
punishment that has been based upon this parable chiefly. I have
the authority of scholars like William Barclay and a number of
others for saying that in all the range of Greek literature the
word for punishment here is never used in any other sense than
that of remedial punishment. Now think over that.

The other question arises: this doesn’t in the least
run counter to what the whole New Testament speaks of when it
says we are saved by faith in Christ. This isn’t contradicting
it in the least. It’s simply saying that our Christian faith isn’t
the genuine thing unless it issues in certain kinds of behavior.
James said bluntly, `Faith without works is dead.’

Now, back to the sheep and the goats. In one case
real humility concealed from them the significance of what they
were doing. There’s an honesty here that wouldn’t accept even
Heaven in virtue of a possible mistake. What they did was so spontaneous
and humble because people were poor and hungry that it never occurred
to them that they were doing anything meritorious in Christ’s
eyes. ‘When did we see you hungry and thirsty?’ (Don’t be surprised
if one of these days the judge’s face reminds you of someone you
have seen).

In the other case they were so preoccupied with their
own affairs that the cry of human need went unheeded, and there
is a suggestion here, `Of course if we had known that you were
interested in that kind of person, Lord… But we didn’t know.’
They didn’t know him well enough to share his involvement in the
needs of the world. There were certain persons and certain things
they didn’t want to see because they were disturbing. And for
this they were convicted, because they weren’t compassionate enough,
and even in the end it seems, they were still blind to the enormity
of their offence in his eyes.

A principle emerges here: to know Christ in any real
way is to share his involvement in human concerns. The Word became
flesh and dwelt among us. In Jesus God involved himself totally
in our human predicament. In Jesus he identified himself in the
closest possible way with everything in our human lot. He was
spared nothing. He was born in a stable. He started his public
ministry by taking his place in a line of sinners going down to
the Jordan to be baptized by John. In token of his complete immersion
in our humanity where he was immersed to the last hair of his
glorious head. In the completeness of his dedication to the task
of saving us, being one with us, he left this life on a gallows.
He was so sensitive, so one with us, he heard cries for help…
Every little shy signal of distress that people raised half hoping
you won’t see it was recognized instantly for what it was, and
responded to whole-heartedly.

And Hebrews says, `For this reason he isn’t ashamed
to call us brothers.’ We don’t get nearer to Christ by withdrawing
from people. Let me say that again: We don’t get nearer to Christ
by withdrawing from people. That’s the mistake the hermits made
in the monastic movement. Sometimes we must withdraw temporarily
as he did, but for most it must be only temporarily.

I know what the philosopher Whitehead meant when
he said, `Religion is what persons do with their solitariness.’
There’s some truth in that. But we are members of the Christian
community and the human community.

It’s necessary, as the old hymns suggest, to soar
through worlds unknown to see beyond the judgment throne. He’s
very near us every day looking out at us through the eyes of other
people.

John makes this brutally plain: `If someone says,
"I love God", and doesn’t love his brother/sister, they’re
a liar. If you don’t love your brother whom you can see, how can
you love God whom you have not seen?’ It’s just as if Christ has
nominated needy people as his proxies so that that what we would
gladly give to him if he needed it, and if he were here, we must
now give to them. And it seems it’s not possible to obey either
of the great commandments to love God with all that is within
us and our neighbour as ourselves, unless at the same time we
are obeying the other.

John Woolman was an American Quaker at the end of
the eighteenth century, and he became a pioneer in the movement
to liberate the slaves because of a dream he had. `I saw a mass
of matter of a dull, gloomy colour between the north and the east,
and was informed that this was human beings in as great misery
as they could be in and still live, and that I was mixed up with
them and henceforth must not consider myself a distinct and separate
being.’ It’s a far cry from Cain’s querilous rejoinder, `Am I
my brother’s keeper?’

By contrast John Paul Sartre has another way of looking
at people – the people who limit your life, the people who put
you on the defensive and who humiliate you and expose you, people
who are a nuisance to you and cause you to be uncomfortable through
their very presence. He makes a character in a play say `Hell
is other people. Hell is other people.’ I think we know what he
means. Those who keep nagging at us with their poverty and their
pleadings just when we found security and prosperity for ourselves,
people with empty stomachs and aching hearts. If only we could
get rid of them and forget all about them and sweep them under
the mat.

Yes, hell is other people. But, listen. For a Christian,
other people are Christ. The very literal interpreter will miss
the point of this. I have taken this risk because Jesus took it.
Other people aren’t Christ, and yet in a very real sense they
are Christ. Christ is that alcoholic who has become a nuisance
to you because of his repeated failures. Christ is that person
you avoid because you don’t want to become involved. Christ is
that shy person who feels out of it when we’re gathered in the
foyer in a tight little circle with our own particular cronies
after Church. Christ is the child playing in the street waiting
for her mother to come home late from work. Christ is the migrant
separated by a lonely wall of prejudice and language difficulties.
Christ is that old pensioner living alone in a cold room in winter.
The people from our church who visit prisons see him every time
they go, very literally. The people who work in the half-way houses
see him every day. We can extend this list indefinitely…

This principle comes to its sharpest point in the
church, for according to Paul the church is the destined instrument
of the unity of all humankind in Christ. This is what lies behind
Paul’s familiar words about the body of Christ. It’s not difficult
to see where this came from. There was a day on the Damascus Road
when he heard the risen Christ say to him, `Saul, why are you
persecuting me?’ Not why are you persecuting James and John and
the Christians, but, why are you persecuting me? And, as somebody
said, thereafter Paul could never look into the face of a fellow-Christian
without meeting there the level gaze of Christ.

The New Testament is full of this when you look for
it. Paul: `When you sin against another and wound their weak consience,
you sin against Christ.’ And what a word here for those who have
given a home to adopted children, `Whoever receives one such little
child in my name receives me.’ Receives me!

But what if I am the needy one? What if it’s me who
am on the receiving end? I still meet Christ in my neighbour,
and I have to sink my pride and receive at his hands the service
he would render me as if it were Christ rendering that service
to me. What a humbling thought it is that my neighbour meets Christ
in me, and there are times when I to him or her am Christ. That’s
frightening, isn’t it?

I spoke of the dream of John Woolman the Quaker.
Here’s another by Tershineff (sp?), the Roman novelist. `I saw
myself in a dream,’ he said, `a youth, almost a boy, in a low
pitched wooden church. It was dark and dim in the church. There
stood before me many people, all fair-haired, peasant heads. All
at once a man came from behind and stood beside me. I did not
turn towards him, but at once I felt that this man was Christ.
Emotion and curiosity and awe overmastered me, and suddenly I
made an effort, and looked at my neighbour’s face like everyone’s,
a face like all men’s faces. "What sort of Christ is this?"
I said to myself, "Such an ordinary, ordinary man… it can’t
possibly be. I turned away, but I had hardly turned my eyes away
from this ordinary man than I felt again overwhelmingly that this
was none other than Christ standing beside me. Again I made an
effort over myself, and again the same face like all the other
faces, the same every-day features, and suddenly my heart sank,
and I came to myself. Only then did I realize that just such a
face, a face like other faces is the face of Christ.’

So, we come to where we started, and I ask the question
again, `When did you last see Jesus?’

Shalom! Rowland Croucher