{"id":351,"date":"2011-11-20T11:00:03","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T16:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=351"},"modified":"2020-01-28T18:30:56","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T23:30:56","slug":"where-will-you-spend-eternity-the-next-24-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2011\/11\/20\/where-will-you-spend-eternity-the-next-24-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Will You Spend [Eternity] the Next 24 Hours?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the entire service.<\/a>
\nClick here to hear the sermon only.<\/a>
\nMatthew 25: 31-46
\n<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Jesus tells this story to his disciples:\u00a0 the ones who have pledged their allegiance to him; the ones who are serious about following his leadership.\u00a0 He has already identified himself to them as the one who is the Son of Humanity.\u00a0 Now they are all on the way to Jerusalem and two days from their last Passover together, and now Jesus tells them what it will be like when he comes in his glory as King.<\/p>\n

But what a very strange king!\u00a0 A king who names as \u201cmembers of his family\u201d the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and prisoner.\u00a0 A king who identifies with these \u201cleast of these\u201d so strongly, that what is done to them, or not done to them, is the same as doing or not doing to him.\u00a0 A king who hears the cry \u201cLord\u201d from both those on his right and those on his left, but who makes it very clear who are the ones who really follow his leadership and the ones who do not.<\/p>\n

So how do disciples truly follow Christ the King?\u00a0 How do disciples inherit the Kingdom?\u00a0 There are some things in particular for us to to note this morning in Jesus\u2019 description of what disciples do.<\/p>\n

The first thing to note is that to follow Jesus apparently has very little to do with belief.\u00a0\u00a0 Here there are no concerns for which atonement theory we hold, no care as to whether we come down on the side of free will or the side of predestination, no worry about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.\u00a0 Beliefs are important, as a starting point or as a framework.\u00a0 And, we come to a place like this university in part just because we expect to be changed in our beliefs.\u00a0 We want to educate ourselves and to interact with folks from other cultures and other belief systems.\u00a0 We talk about beliefs all the time, and we know just how fleeting and fragile beliefs can be.\u00a0 Even though in his time he was not exposed to an average of 30,000 advertisements a day whose sole purpose is to change our beliefs as often as possible, Jesus also knew how beliefs can change, how we talk about them so easily, how fleeting and fragile they are.<\/p>\n

To follow Jesus is not exactly about money either.\u00a0 It is not about writing checks.\u00a0 Now, don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 Checks are great.\u00a0 Keep them coming.\u00a0 As often and for as much as possible.\u00a0\u00a0 When we give and spread money around we can do a lot of good.<\/p>\n

And, if we just write checks, we can be tempted to think that that is enough, that once \u201cthe check\u2019s in the mail\u201d we have done our bit, all that is necessary to do.<\/p>\n

Instead, part of what it is to follow Jesus is to take direct action.\u00a0 Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit those in prison.\u00a0 We might wonder how best to do these things in a particular circumstance.\u00a0 We might wonder, for instance, whether it would be better to give a person a fish for a day or to teach the person to fish for a lifetime, so to speak.\u00a0 But immediate and long-term approaches both meet people\u2019s needs and both give people hope.\u00a0 The important thing is to do something.<\/p>\n

But to follow Jesus as \u201cLord\u201d is something more even than action.\u00a0 It is to allow transformation of oneself, transformation at a deep heart level, to somehow follow Jesus so closely we do not even know we are doing it.\u00a0 As we do for the members of Jesus\u2019 family as Jesus did, somehow we also recognize at a deep level in them the one who Mother Teresa called \u201cJesus in all his distressing disguises\u201d.\u00a0 This recognition is born of a mutuality, a relationship, a companioning.\u00a0 It is to look each other in the face and to touch each other\u2019s hands as the drink, food, and clothes are passed, as the welcomed stranger becomes a friend, as the sick and those in prison experience the healing and freedom of loving care.<\/p>\n

To follow Jesus is to realize that in these mutual relationships of companionship, our giving becomes receiving and our receiving becomes giving.\u00a0 As we feed others we ourselves are fed.\u00a0 As we give drink to others so our thirst is slaked.\u00a0 As we welcome the stranger we ourselves are welcomed.<\/p>\n

This is certainly true for us in our place and time, with a globalized economy, with slavery moving up from third to become the second most lucrative form of human misery on the planet.\u00a0 My School of Theology colleague Alex Froom, in the School\u2019s weekly worship this week, reminded us in his sermon that to walk together with \u201cthe least of these\u201d is to remember that those who work to feed us often go hungry, that those who work to clothe us often remain in rags, that those who provide our water often suffer from lack of clean drinking water themselves. To companion the members of Jesus\u2019 family who are marginalized and oppressed is to remember that in the complexities and complicities of our lives all our lives inextricably intertwine.\u00a0 Shane Claiborne is a co-founder of the intentional community The Simple Way.\u00a0 He echoes John Wesley when he notes that is not so much that wealthier Christians don\u2019t care about the least of these; it is that they don\u2019t know them.\u00a0 It is in relationships of mutuality and companionship that we all become members of Jesus\u2019 family and we all inherit the Kingdom.<\/p>\n

And who knows how far it will go?\u00a0 Jesus tells us that both the life and the fire are eternal.\u00a0\u00a0 Debate rages across the Christian spectrum as to whether or not heaven and hell are real or metaphorical places, or whether we create them for ourselves in either or both this world and the next, or whether or not the judgment itself shocks us into one or the other place.\u00a0 All this, thank goodness, is beyond the scope of this sermon; otherwise we\u2019d be here for at least twenty years instead of about twenty minutes.\u00a0 But Jesus\u2019 story does seem to indicate pretty clearly that it is what we do in this life that matters, and that what we do in this life has far-reaching consequences, beyond what we can see or even imagine, not just for those we recognize as Christ, but for ourselves as well.<\/p>\n

Before she was called to move, my friend Lucy was a volunteer in an after-school tutoring program.\u00a0 The program was funded by her wealthy white church, of which she was a reasonably wealthy white member.\u00a0\u00a0 The after-school program took place in an inner-city neighborhood.\u00a0 It was the kind of place where the children informed the program\u2019s volunteers that the drug dealers on this block were \u201cour\u201d drug dealers \u2013 they were good; but those drug dealers, on the next block over, you had to watch out for them \u2013 they were bad.\u00a0 It was the\u00a0 kind of place that gentrification and most government services actively avoided.<\/p>\n

The after-school program was overseen by the street-smart and fierce African American and Latina mothers who had banded together to resist the systemic evil around them:\u00a0 not only had they brokered the deal for the after-school program with the wealthy white church; they had also brokered the deal with the neighborhood gangs to leave the not-at-all-street-smart volunteers alone.\u00a0 So Lucy went two or three times a week to tutor in reading.<\/p>\n

One of the children she worked with was Desir\u00e9e.\u00a0 Desir\u00e9e was in third grade, and was the daughter of one of the fiercer African American mothers.\u00a0 Desir\u00e9e herself was shy and quiet, and already seriously below grade level in reading.\u00a0 According to the school, she was a \u201cbad\u201d reader.\u00a0 She was also considered \u201cslow\u201d.\u00a0 But the tutoring taught the way that Desir\u00e9e learned, and she and Lucy worked well together, so that by the end of the semester Desir\u00e9e had advanced a whole grade level in reading, and was beginning to blossom.<\/p>\n

One day as they worked Lucy noticed that Desir\u00e9e kept giving her little looks out of the corner of her eye.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure enough, at the end of the afternoon, just as they had finished packing up for the day, Desir\u00e9e came and stood in front of Lucy, who was sitting.\u00a0 Desir\u00e9e very gently touched both of Lucy\u2019s hands with her own, and in a voice of quiet wonder said, \u201cYou have two hands, just like me.\u201d\u00a0 Then, touching Lucy with gentleness and care, still in that voice of quiet wonder, Desir\u00e9e went on:\u00a0 \u201cYou have a mouth, just like me.\u00a0 You have a nose, just like me.\u00a0 You have two eyes, just like me.\u00a0 You have two ears, just like me.\u00a0 You have hair, just like me.\u201d\u00a0 Then she was quiet for a minute, looking intently into Lucy\u2019s eyes.\u00a0 And then Desir\u00e9e smiled a radiant smile, gave Lucy a first, quick hug, said good-bye, and danced off to greet her mother who had come for her.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Lucy continued to sit.\u00a0 She was shaken to her very core.\u00a0 She realized that neither she nor Desir\u00e9e had ever before been close enough to a member of the other\u2019s race even to begin to have that kind of tender recognition and exchange of wonder.\u00a0 But because of their companionship in the tutoring program, Lucy and Desir\u00e9e were able to recognize each other, and their relationship changed their lives.\u00a0 Lucy began to explore and deal with her privilege and inherent racism, to transform them into awareness and appreciation of difference.\u00a0 She began to offer herself, with respect and love, as a companion in the resistance to systemic evil, especially with regard to mothers and children.\u00a0 And the last Lucy heard from Desir\u00e9e, Desir\u00e9e was a year ahead of her grade level in reading and moving ahead of that.\u00a0 Her mother reported that Desir\u00e9e was now the one to keep up with in her school and social life.<\/p>\n

The question is not, \u201cWhere will we spend eternity?\u201d\u00a0 The question is, \u201cWhere will we spend the next 24 hours?\u201d\u00a0 Will it be in a place that we construct out of acts of recognition, companionship, and mutuality as we follow Jesus?\u00a0 Or will it be in a place we construct out of denial, in which we call him \u201cLord\u201d but do not do what he did, do not companion the members of his family?\u00a0 The choice, the eternal choice, is ours.<\/p>\n

If we make the choice for recognition and mutuality, it does not have to be a burden.\u00a0 Next week we begin to wait for and celebrate the fact that Christ the King began with us as a baby.\u00a0 This Sunday that same Christ the King will not mind if we begin with baby steps and continue to grow.\u00a0 We do not have to go it alone:\u00a0 we join with those who are already are members of Jesus\u2019s family and those who join with us in that joining of them.\u00a0 We do not even have to deny our deepest selves.\u00a0 As Howard Thurman encourages us, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”\u00a0 To construct a place of recognition and mutuality needs every gift and fruit of the Spirit given to us, as well as folks from every discipline this university can offer and then some.\u00a0 It needs and invites every single one of us.<\/p>\n

What would the next 24 hours look like, what would this world look like, if we acted like Jesus, if we acted out of our own come alive selves?<\/p>\n

They asked him:\u00a0 When did we see you, Lord, and when did we care for you?<\/p>\n

And the answer came:\u00a0 When you recognized all the members of my family as Me \u2026 and as you.<\/p>\n

Amen.<\/p>\n

~The Reverend Victoria Hart Gaskell, OSL
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Chapel Associate for Methodist Ministry
\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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