MATTHEW 25:31-46

A sermon by Rev. Jan Croucher, Syndal Baptist Church, Melbourne, Australia.

This passage of Scripture is my least favourite. In fact I have often wished it were
not in the Scriptures. I’ve always held a secret hope that maybe the Lord will ultimately
have a place in his eternity for all people, but this passage blows my hope. Sure, the Son
of man coming with all the angels and all the nations gathering before him sends shivers
up and down my spine, but this line that so clearly separates is the cause of my horror.
Because of the importance Matthew gives it as Jesus’ last teaching to his disciples I have
to see it as vitally important. It is very interesting to me that Jesus commences his
ministry with a call to those who will to ‘Come, follow me’ and then to those who have
been his faithful, obedient followers to ‘Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.’

I read several commentaries to get a grasp on the passage and recognise Matthew’s
undoubted adherence to the great doctrine of salvation by God’s grace alone through the
work of Christ alone received through faith alone. It is a faith that proves itself at the
Judgment by love.

In Matthew’s gospel faith becomes love or else it is not faith.

PRAYER FOR UNDERSTANDING

It seems to me that a suitable question to ask you as I ask myself is:

‘When did you last see Jesus?’

Let me begin to explain with this true story:- Read the article about the founders of
Stanford University.

It’s easy to judge the character of people by how they treat those who can do nothing
for them.

In half the world you meet blind people begging in city streets, usually with a sighted
child who accosts the passers-by. But it’s the hidden blind in rural villages who suffer
most. They are a burden on their communities, and because they can’t contribute to the
work they lose their dignity. Throughout these countries you do find Western
ophthalmologists doing their healing work at an amazingly low cost: an operation with a
price-tag of $2,000 in a Western hospital can be done for around $50 in a Third World
country.

When Samsul Arifil returned to his village in east Java, his father took one look at
him and collapsed. He couldn’t believe that his son could see. Samsil’s people believed
his blindness was karma, his fate. So the Australian ophthalmologist had to persuade him
that it was his (the doctor’s) karma to alleviate blindness!

My husband, Rowland, was once asked to preach at a church service for the blind.
Because he understood nothing of what it meant to be blind he borrowed a white stick and
determined to experience blindness. We got to Blackburn Station car park and taped his
eyes. He kept heading for the gutter until he realised he needed to stick by the shop
fronts. I simply went as an observer 10 ms behind, intent on preventing him from changing
the shape of a vehicle. The ticket master was very kind, telling him what change he was
putting in his hand, and the station master saw him into the carriage. I was amused
because there was only one other person in that compartment. He was reading the paper and
Rowland sat quite close to him. I placed myself at the other end. By the time we reached
Flinders St the compartment was full. The man sitting close assured Rowland that it was
Flinders St and which side the platform was on. Rowland stood with his briefcase in one
hand and his stick in the other.

A kind lady offered to carry his case so that he could take her arm. She led him out
and onto Flinders St and then said: ‘I’ll leave you now to continue alone.’ Rowland
proceeded gingerly tapping the shop fronts until he reached Flinders Lane. There he
stopped. It was before green lights had sounds accompanying them. After he’d missed
several light changes I took his arm and said ‘Let me see you over the road.’ He said:

‘No, I’ve had enough. That was horrific. He pealed off his plasters in a lather of
perspiration. I asked what he and the kind lady had talked about. She had asked how long
he had been blind and he said ‘Not very long.’ Her response: ‘I thought so’.

But Rowland told the blind congregation of his experience and years later when he met
them again in various places they remembered nothing of his sermon, only his adventure.

The courage of the blind is often an inspiration. When General William Booth’s son
Bramwell had to tell his father that he (the father) would never see again, the old man
responded: ‘Son, I have done what I could for God and people with my eyes. Now I shall do
what I can without my eyes.’ Helen Keller, while admitting ‘Blindness is to sit helpless
staring into the dark with only the dark staring back’, also confessed that the one
greater misfortune would be to ‘have eyesight and not be able to see.’

Blindness according to the Biblical prophets, may be voluntary as well as involuntary.
One can choose to be blind. Spiritual blindness – the refusal to see things God’s way – is
more terrible than physical blindness. The people Jesus accused of being ‘blind leaders of
the blind’ knew their Bibles off by heart. They were prayerful, religious, good people. It
is possible for us to know our Bibles well, know all the doctrine and still not really
‘see’.

The terrible thing about this account of the last judgment is that people – like us -
can be blind and not know it. The Last Judgment is about not seeing Jesus when He is right
there in our space. Here the basis of our eternal judgment is all about the kind of seeing
we each do. The least important person – is Jesus. The marginalised person – is Jesus. The
alien person, the enemy, the sinner – is Jesus.

v37 Read to 40. So that’s why I’m asking: ‘When did you last see Jesus?’

There is no harshness or sternness in this judgment, it’s a judgment of love. It’s
called the ‘Last Judgment’, but the point of it is that the judgment has been going on all
the time. In fact every day is judgment day. Every day we are each becoming a more
compassionate person, or a more self-centred person, and surely this passage is
questioning whether our faith is genuine if it does not produce a certain type of
behavior.

It is what James said: ‘Faith without works is dead.’

Now in one case they were not aware of the significance of what they were doing. What
they did was spontaneous, because people were poor and hungry and it never occurred to
them that they were doing anything to build merit in Christ’s eyes, and Jesus had to
explain that what they did for the ‘least’ member of his family they did for him.

In the other case they were so preoccupied with their own affairs that the cry of human
need was unheard. The inference is that if they had known Jesus was interested in that
kind of person, they would have responded. But they didn’t know. They didn’t know Jesus
well enough to share in his involvement in the needs of the world. In fact there were
certain things they didn’t want to see because they were too disturbing.

There are lots of things we don’t want see today. We see genocide in Ruanda, in Kosovo,
in East Timor and there is a point when we shut off because we can’t take any more. We
can’t believe this is happening in our world in this century. In Iraq Christians are being
exterminated if they don’t convert to Islam. In Sudan, government soldiers raid areas
where Christians live. They burn crops, poison water supplies, destroy hospitals and seal
off the area, keeping relief supplies out. Christians who don’t starve are sold into
slavery – healthy Christian boys for as little as $15. Faithful Christians in India,
Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam are facing raids, beatings, random arrests, torture and
violent death.

This passage brings hope. To know Christ in any real way is to share his involvement in
human concerns. The word became flesh and lived among us, involving himself totally in our
human condition, hearing every signal of distress, sensitive to every ‘least’ cry of help,
culminating with leaving this life on a gallows. So Hebrews says ‘For this reason he isn’t
ashamed to call us brothers and sisters’. He is concerned not merely with us as
individuals but also with our life together as a Christian and a human community. It’s as
if Christ has nominated needy people as his proxies so 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 its not
possible to obey the great command to love God with all that is in us and our neighbour as
ourselves unless we are also obedient to what Jesus the King is saying here.

Jean-Paul Sartre (the French philospher) looks at people another way. There are people
(he says) who limit your life, who put you on the defensive, who embarrass you and expose
you, who are a nuisance and cause you discomfort. In one of his plays he has a character
say: ‘Hell is other people’. He refers to those who keep nagging at us with their  
poverty and their pleadings just when we havefound peace and prosperity for ourselves,
people with empty stomachs and aching hearts – if only we could get rid of them, forget
them, sweep them under the mat. But listen – for a Christian, other people are Christ. The
very literal person may miss the point. Of course other people aren’t Christ. And yet in a
very real sense they are Christ. Christ is the alcoholic who had become a nuisance to you.
Christ is the person you avoid because you don’t want to be involved. Christ is the shy
person who feels out of it when you are chatting with your friends in the fellowship area.
Christ is the child playing in the street waiting for his mother to come home late from
work. Christ is the new Australian separated by a lonely wall of prejudice and language
difficulty. Christ is the old pensioner living alone in a cold room in the middle of
winter. Those who work in the half way houses and in the prisons see Christ every day.

There was a day on the Damascus Rd when Paul heard the risen Lord say: ‘Why are you
persecuting me?’ Not why are you persecuting the Christians, but why are you persecuting
me? The N T is full of this if you look for it. Paul said that when you sin against your
brother or sister with a weak conscience you sin against Christ. 

Let’s be careful to note that Matthew here does not record Christ  resolving the
problem of the order of events at the end of the world by decoding apocalyptic signs. He
recalls his church to the requirement of love. Let’s not forget too that faith that
receives grace, becomes gracious. In Jesus vision of the future there is a great fork in
the road where people no longer make decisions but have them made for them, decisions that
determine destinies forever.

Yet there is such simplicity here. v35. ‘You see, I was hungry and you  gave me
something to eat…’We do not hear: ‘I was sick and you healed me,’ or ‘I was in prison
and you freed me.’ Big miracles aren’t happening here, little ministries are. And it is
precisely in these little ministries that the miracle of the big mystery – eternal
salvation – happens. That is the fantastic drama of this story!  Feeding ministries,
sheltering ministries and visitation ministries – these basic, mundane and unflashy
services are given Jesus’ highest honors. Whatever we call them, these ministries are
within the reach of everyone. Jesus deflects his disciples goals from great plans for
personal success and redirects them to serving others.

During these two months I have been inviting people in this congregation to join in
some of these very ministries here in the city of Monash. Tomorrow morning I’m meeting
with one of the ministers of the Glen Waverly Uniting Church and three congregational
members to see what we can do with the help of a social worker for needy families in our
city.

Our church needs to contribute three congregational members. Perhaps the Lord who is
our Saviour and our Judge is inviting you to be a part of this strategic ministry – to
Jesus himself, who is in need in our very community. If God is speaking to you… speak
to me after the service. 

I must conclude then that the lesson in this passage is crystal clear – God will judge
us in accordance with our reaction to human need. His judgment does not depend on the
knowledge we have amassed, or the fame we have acquired, or the fortune we’ve gained but
on the help we have given.  We know that he who judges the human race will be he who
died forthe human race. As we visualise that amazing scene again, with the King on his
throne with all the angels and all the nations gathered before him, visualise yourself
among the nations, gazing at Jesus and recognising him because you had seen him in many
many faces. 

Yes, it is still my worst passage, because in it I have so much responsibility. I am
responsible for others seeing Christ in me, and if I, as can happen, become so preoccupied
with self I may be guilty for  someone else’s blindness. But then I focus on the King
and place mytrust in his mercy and his  grace and with his strength I look for
Jesusin others and pray for the grace to minister to them as if  they were Jesus. Let
us as a fellowship be responsible for many to whom the Lord’scall will be: ‘Come, you that
are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the
world. You see, 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 took me in, I was without clothes
and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

When did you last see Jesus?

Related Articles:

• Michael Hardin, The Jesus-Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity with Jesus
• The Jesus Driven Life
• Paul: ‘inspired’? What does that mean?
• 25 LISTS OF EVERYTHING INTERESTING/IMPORTANT
• Miracles and the Virgin Birth etc.

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