As much as you have done…

So I’m finally here with a blog. Hey it’s Joel. I hope to be here a bit more in the near future joining within the blogging community. I been struck recently by Matthew 25 and Christ’s parable of the righteous verses the unrighteous (also called the Sheep and the Goats). I am not taking this to the normal churchy argument of “works salvation” verses “works of salvation”, but to more of a globally socially conscious way of understanding Christ’s call to us. I’ll begin with a way that I think even the secular/humanist could resonate with. In Christ’s statement “as much as you have done to the least of these my brothers, you have done unto me” Christ is calling us to recognize that our actions of love or hate, for or against the “least of these brothers” is directly related to our treatment of him. So as we serve “the least of these” we serve God. So, who are the least of these? I would view the “least of these” as anyone who is oppressed, limited in their rights, abused or neglected due to the sins of a group or individual. So when we look at examples of this we may see victims of rape or incest, abused children, issues of homelessness both domestically and internationally, poverty and hunger (About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes), poverty and the Aids pandemic (AIDS kills over 2 million people a year), poverty and the drug war (until global poverty is combated the drug war will rage), racism and genocide (in Christ’s eyes the hate of a race or people group is genocide in the heart), and many more that would be to extensive to name. (but please feel free to blog in some more)  So how do we respond to these in light of Christ’s story?

Let me take this to a weird angle in hopes of connecting together my beliefs of the call and responsibility of individuals (especially those of faith) to the “least of these” and in turn Christ. Let’s say that you were to entertain Christ for the evening (whether you were to believe him to be the incarnate God, a prophet, a great teacher or a dynamic man) What would you prepare? I would say, most of us, just because of Christ’s prominence would spare no expense in preparation or purchase of the meal. We would clean our house and make sure that where he was to sit at our table or in our living room was cleaned well and the most comfortable place to sit. Most of us would go out of our way to let others know… “Hey, Guess who’s coming to dinner?” (not Sidney Poitier) We all around would make sure that this meal would be a meal to remember. I am reminded of the likes a wedding reception, where parents and the betrothed spend unbelievable amounts of money to make this (hopefully) once in a lifetime event into a glorious occasion. How much more would we spend to entertain Christ? In Christ’s call as much as you have done this for the least of these you have done this to him. The food, the drink, the comfort, the celebration that we would give to Christ, we do give in actuality through our giving to those who are in need.

I was going to here take the obvious angle of loading your minds with statistic that would inundate your brain and bring on some overwrought feelings of guilt and devalued self-worth in hopes that we all would “give a little more”. But as I have seen in my few years in ministry, that has done very little to change peoples hearts. It’s so easy to look at the big and say… “Well its not just me then.” or to just see it as so insurmountable that we fail to act out of fear. How I would like to take it and end with is just to think. What kind of party would you throw for Christ? Is that how we party with the “least of these”. Do you have a “spare no expense” attitude to the “least of these”? Or do we find that we ignore this call as “Just another one of those teachings”. So now. THINK.