Shortly after completing graduate school, Trey and I spent a year in Scotland. We did not have a car so we availed ourselves to public transportation or walked to the groceries store with our little trolley cart to bring home our supplies. But when we were fortunate enough to venture out of the city, the countryside was filled with sheep. Almost every time you glanced out the window you could see a wooly and white animal grazing in the field. There were so many sheep that one of my few souvenirs from Scotland was a green sweatshirt with fuzzy sheep grazing in the pastoral scene. One day a friend and I took a trip to Glasgow which is on the other side of the country. I enjoyed looking out the window and seeing the heather covered hills, the rolling pastures and of course the legion of sheep. We had passed so many sheep that when I saw some different animals off in the distance I commented, “Oh look bald sheep” thinking they had just been sheered. On closer inspection I realized they were really pigs. I had become so used to seeing sheep that even when it was another kind of animal, and I can tell the difference between a pig and sheep, I did not adjust but rather changed reality- I interpreted what I wanted to see. So for a long time we laughed about the bald sheep story.
Now both of our passages are about sheep and about perception. In the Old Testament we hear tell of God as the consummate shepherd the one who will find the lost sheep and care for them as only a devoted shepherd can. God will feed his sheep on the mountains of Israel and will take them to the best flowing streams. It harkens back to the 23 psalm and the care God will provide for us even in the darkest valley. Yet the scene changes when God then becomes the judge, the one who brings justice to the fat sheep and the lean. For the fat ones had butted and bullied the lean sheep and scattered them to the wind. In other words, the fat and strong have been instrumental in the persecuting of the weak, and hence God’s judgment. God will end the ravaging and save the sheep. Of course this is referring to Israel’s being exiled into Babylonia and reminding this lost nation that God’s care still abides. Yet it also paves the way for our Gospel lesson and Christ becoming the shepherd who will separate the sheep from the goats.
A friend of mine told me a story about her interchange with a group of people- colleagues really of both she and her husband. They had been at a conference together and she was saying how everyone likes her husband- because it is true John is a likable guy. But then she said everyone except for one. In her mind she was referring to someone who had challenged her husband professionally and had gotten him fired. But she realized standing there that everyone else thought she meant she was referring to herself as one no vote against her husband. Then she described the overwhelming sense of pity they had in their eyes. She hated being on the receiving end of pity. Not only had they misunderstood her meaning, now she had to deal with their misdirected and unnerving pity. Have you ever received pity? Have you been in need of something and as someone was offering you help they have a pitying look in their eye? How did it feel?
Now I know pity is a sympathetic sorrow for someone’s suffering but that is only when it is done well. Sometimes pity can strip a person of their dignity and be a way of elevating the giver. Pity can create a chasm between the weak and the strong, and to be honest the strong like it that way. Yet as I was thinking about pity on this the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I realized that pity is the inverse of gratitude. For when we pity someone we focus on what is lost and feel the pain in that situation. But gratitude is seeing the abundance of God, seeing the ways that God has blessed our lives and wanting to bless others in response.
Thanksgiving is gratitude for the now. We thank God for all the blessings we have received, from home and hearth, health and hope, family and friends. We thank God for life and love, breath and blessings, perspective and peace.
Our gospel lesson speaks of when the Son of Man comes in all his glory a new day will dawn. The shepherd will separate the sheep from the goat. On that day, when God sorts out who was for God and who was against God, all that matters is how we treated the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoners and the strangers in our midst.
Yet those being sorted seemed to be a bit confused. Both the sheep and the goats wondered when they had
Visited the prisoners
Given food and drink
Clothed the naked
Welcomed the stranger
Cared for the sick
The “sheep” wondered when they had done these things for Jesus. Surely they would have remembered giving food to Jesus. While the “goats” said, Jesus if we had only known it was you we would have risen to the challenge. Oh how we can relate to those goats. This brings us to perspective. When you shop for food for the recuperative care center, when you hand out personal hygiene items to the homeless, what is in your heart? Pity or Love? Do you see the face of a stranger or do you see the face of Christ? Jesus clearly states whatsoever you do to the least of these you do unto me. So when we give our clothes, buy food, when we welcome strangers, not only are we giving and serving in the name of Christ, we are actually showing compassion to Christ himself.
One commentator wrote, “The meeting between the most essential human needs and God’s glory illumines our understanding of service to others. We do not run hospices for the dying, soup kitchens, thrift shops, mobilize political opposition, provide sanctuary for illegals and refuges, educate the public on environmental issues, run former inmate resettlement programs- all because we think that the recipients of our service are worthy of pity. Rather we recognize that this is the place where Jesus chooses to be present. We serve because in their faces we see the image of God.” (Seasons of the Spirit 11/24/02)
Imagine on Christmas Eve being homeless, cold and without a place to lay your head, sort of like how the Christ child entered the world. But as most of us gather together with family and friends and even enter a warm church to sing carols, some have a very different reality. While I was living back east, Maureen’s Haven, an organization housed the homeless each night at area churches, much like Associate Faith Community does here, this reality was transformed. People volunteer each night but they had a hard time finding a church, because all were hosting their Christmas Eve services. To be honest, it was tough finding people willing to stay on this holy night. But then a husband and wife, along with her two grown sons, decided to make their holiday about ministering to Christ in each of the people who showed up that night cold and hungry. They saw the face of Christ in each person and I am sure the glory of the Lord was in that room.
When we give to women and men in need, we not only see the face of a humbled Jesus, a servant Jesus, even an infant Jesus. When we look into the face of the hungry or the imprisoned do we see Christ the King, the one who paid the price for our sins, the one exalted next to God? Jesus has, is and will continue to reveal himself through the women and men who are marginalized so that we can encounter the risen Lord in our midst. But only if we choose to perceive the glory. On this Christ the King Sunday we get to hold fast to the glory of the coming of the Son of Man. On an equal footing, we get to minister to those who society forgets or even oppresses for whatsoever you, you and you do for the least of these you do also to Christ the King.
I want to close with the story of Izaete Ramao Afujo, a little girl from the slums of Recife, Brazil. She was the fifth of eight children. Her mother was an alcoholic and her father worked odd jobs. Izaete worked too, as the maid for a rich family, and she washed clothes, scrubbed floors and cooked meals. When she returned home, her mother would beat her. One day a neighbor invited Izaete’s mother to attend a nearby Mennonite Church, where she was welcomed and loved. Within weeks, Jesus changed her life. Izaete too became involved in church and eventually went to college, became a pastor and returned to minister to those in the slums where she grew up. Today she is a pastor, she says, because someone cared enough about her to welcome and accept her: a stranger, an outsider, a kid from the slums.” Christian Century 11/18/08 pg 20.
So as you are embroidering names on stockings for CASA children, staff the showers for the homeless in our community, give food for the food drive for Second Harvest – and thank you to all who are so generously giving, remember that what you do for the least of they, you do for Jesus. For we will never know how God will use our efforts to transform a life, as we minister to the Christ in the people we serve. Amen.
