I spent 20 hours this fall volunteering at Southington Community Services. Now, lest you think that I am telling you this because I want you to know how good I am, I volunteered there because I was required to do so to fulfill a requirement for a class I am taking this semester. I spent most of my time working with one of the employees there whose primary job is to help people apply for financial help—food stamps, rental assistance, fuel assistance and so on and so forth. I learned from the director of Southington Community Services, Janet Mellon, that the employee I was working with did a lot of social service work outside his job, in fact, he had been hired by Southington Community Services because of the extraordinary work he and some of his friends had been doing over the years to help those in our community in the greatest need, the chronically homeless.
I was very curious to learn more about his work and to know his story. He was very eager to tell me about the chronically homeless in town, because he hoped to bring awareness to their plight, but he was reluctant to share his story of his own work with them, he seemed very reluctant to toot his own horn. But as we spent time together he did share more of it with me. There are 5-6 chronically homeless men in Southington. These are people who live outside all the time. They won’t go to shelters for many reasons. This employee of Southington Community Services and his friends began several years ago befriending these men and keeping track of them. They know all of them well. They make sure that they have the supplies they need to survive the cold weather (tents, blankets, jackets and so on). They check in on them after particularly cold or inclement weather to make sure they are alright and still alive. They accept these men as they are--mental illnesses drug and alcohol addictions and all. They treat them with respect and dignity. They treat them as human beings.
I was very curious to learn more about his work and to know his story. He was very eager to tell me about the chronically homeless in town, because he hoped to bring awareness to their plight, but he was reluctant to share his story of his own work with them, he seemed very reluctant to toot his own horn. But as we spent time together he did share more of it with me. There are 5-6 chronically homeless men in Southington. These are people who live outside all the time. They won’t go to shelters for many reasons. This employee of Southington Community Services and his friends began several years ago befriending these men and keeping track of them. They know all of them well. They make sure that they have the supplies they need to survive the cold weather (tents, blankets, jackets and so on). They check in on them after particularly cold or inclement weather to make sure they are alright and still alive. They accept these men as they are--mental illnesses drug and alcohol addictions and all. They treat them with respect and dignity. They treat them as human beings.
This is a truly remarkable thing. Most chronically homeless people receive nothing but judgment and derision from the rest of the world. We either ignore them or we try to change them. Sometimes we do even worse and treat them like they are scary wild animals. We try to keep them away from us and our children. But you know what? Each person in this community without a home was once someone’s child. Each homeless person in this community is a child of God and is therefore loved by God. And the reality is that the chronically homeless are more likely to be a victim of crime than to actually perpetrate a crime themselves.
What I also learned about this employee at Southington Community Services is that he and his family and his friends belong to no religious community. They consider themselves spiritual but not religious. They are not doing the work they do with the chronically homeless out of some religious principle or to ensure themselves a place in heaven in the next life. They are simply doing the work they do because they believe that this is what it means to be human. They believe that to b human is to help other human beings, and that any one of us could be in the same position as these chronically homeless people are in. Any one of us, were we to be faced with the same life circumstances that these people have faced, could find ourselves living on the very fringes of society, without a home, without friends, without dignity and respect.
What I also learned about this employee at Southington Community Services is that he and his family and his friends belong to no religious community. They consider themselves spiritual but not religious. They are not doing the work they do with the chronically homeless out of some religious principle or to ensure themselves a place in heaven in the next life. They are simply doing the work they do because they believe that this is what it means to be human. They believe that to b human is to help other human beings, and that any one of us could be in the same position as these chronically homeless people are in. Any one of us, were we to be faced with the same life circumstances that these people have faced, could find ourselves living on the very fringes of society, without a home, without friends, without dignity and respect.
I was over-awed by his work and his commitment to these men. In this man, who would not consider himself a follower of Christ in any way shape or form, I saw Christ. And though he does not consider himself a follower of Christ, I believe that if he were standing before Jesus on his throne, Jesus would consider him to be one of his sheep and place this man at His right hand. And I believe that he would be just as confused as the righteous from our parable today to be in that position--for he does what he does, not for reward but for love. He does what he does because he loves the people he serves. He is a living embodiment of the righteous in our Gospel reading for this morning.
For, if you look closely at our gospel reading for this morning, you will see that the righteous—those who fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked and visited the prisoner—are just as confused by their place at Jesus’ side as are the accursed—those who didn’t feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and visit the prisoner. We would expect the accursed to be surprised, for it is often a surprise when our short comings are shown to us. But the righteous are surprised? Weren’t they doing what they were doing to earn a place in heaven? Apparently not. Apparently the righteous weren’t trying to get anything for doing good. Apparently the righteous were doing good simply out of love.
So often we hear in Christianity that to be saved is to profess certain beliefs. Or we hear that to be saved we must do good things. Both messages exist side-by-side in Christianity. But this parable of the sheep and the goats turns both of these messages on their head. Nowhere in this parable does it say that the righteous held the “correct” beliefs or said the “correct” prayers. It was their actions and their love that earned them their place at the right hand of Jesus. Presumably the accursed could have had the most correct beliefs in the world and said all the right prayers, but they did not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger and visit the prisoner, so they are accursed and tossed into eternal punishment. Correct belief doesn’t seem to be the key to eternal life.
For, if you look closely at our gospel reading for this morning, you will see that the righteous—those who fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked and visited the prisoner—are just as confused by their place at Jesus’ side as are the accursed—those who didn’t feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and visit the prisoner. We would expect the accursed to be surprised, for it is often a surprise when our short comings are shown to us. But the righteous are surprised? Weren’t they doing what they were doing to earn a place in heaven? Apparently not. Apparently the righteous weren’t trying to get anything for doing good. Apparently the righteous were doing good simply out of love.
So often we hear in Christianity that to be saved is to profess certain beliefs. Or we hear that to be saved we must do good things. Both messages exist side-by-side in Christianity. But this parable of the sheep and the goats turns both of these messages on their head. Nowhere in this parable does it say that the righteous held the “correct” beliefs or said the “correct” prayers. It was their actions and their love that earned them their place at the right hand of Jesus. Presumably the accursed could have had the most correct beliefs in the world and said all the right prayers, but they did not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger and visit the prisoner, so they are accursed and tossed into eternal punishment. Correct belief doesn’t seem to be the key to eternal life.
But neither does doing good works seem to be the key to eternal life. The righteous have no idea that what they are doing is earning them a place at the right hand of God. They don’t even seem to be concerned about heaven and earning a place next to Jesus. Kind of like the man working at Southington Community Services. They seem very simply to have opened themselves up to the suffering of others and to have responded to this suffering with love. We have no idea whether or not they are followers of Christ. It doesn’t seem to really matter. What matters is that they see the world with the eyes of Christ. What matters is that they treat everyone around them with respect, dignity and love--even those that the world reviles—even those that the world does not love.
This is a tough message, for it is hard to see the world with the eyes of Christ. Human beings like to break things down into categories. We also frequently operate from a place of fear. So when we categorize people and things, we place the things we know in the same category as ourselves and declare them safe, and we place the things that are strange to us in a separate category as ourselves and declare them unsafe. Those who are chronically homeless for example can seem strange and different to us. We want to distance ourselves from them. They scare us a little. And so we place them in a different category from our own and we declare them unsafe. We see them as less than human, less than deserving of our love and God’s love. Holding the correct beliefs and saying the correct prayers doesn’t change our hearts in this case. What changes our hearts and enables us to see every human being we encounter as a beloved child of God is actually going out and feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked and visiting the prisoner.
And when we do this, our hearts will break wide open and we will find love pouring forth from our hearts. We will feed, clothe, welcome and visit not
This is a tough message, for it is hard to see the world with the eyes of Christ. Human beings like to break things down into categories. We also frequently operate from a place of fear. So when we categorize people and things, we place the things we know in the same category as ourselves and declare them safe, and we place the things that are strange to us in a separate category as ourselves and declare them unsafe. Those who are chronically homeless for example can seem strange and different to us. We want to distance ourselves from them. They scare us a little. And so we place them in a different category from our own and we declare them unsafe. We see them as less than human, less than deserving of our love and God’s love. Holding the correct beliefs and saying the correct prayers doesn’t change our hearts in this case. What changes our hearts and enables us to see every human being we encounter as a beloved child of God is actually going out and feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked and visiting the prisoner.
And when we do this, our hearts will break wide open and we will find love pouring forth from our hearts. We will feed, clothe, welcome and visit not