The Least of These
Frank Bernstein, STHPC, November 26, 2023
Good morning! Thanks so much to you and to Pastor Deb for inviting me to be with you today. It’s always such a joy to visit Santa Teresa Hills.
So, as you can see from the front of your bulletins, today is Christ the King Sunday. The lectionary readings for today take on various aspects of God’s sovereignty and “shepherdness,” if that’s a word. The Psalm we read, Psalm 100, refers to God’s people as the sheep of his pasture, and exhorts us to worship the Lord with gladness and thanksgiving. It is appropriate to worship the Lord, our shepherd, and to be thankful and grateful. God’s grace poured out upon us indeed is something for which to be thankful. Our faith and our worship of God are our grateful response to God’s grace.
The reading from Ezekiel takes on the theme of God’s being a shepherd to God’s people. The verses from Ezekiel earlier in the chapter from which we read speak of the inadequacy of human shepherds – shepherds who do not feed the sheep, who do not strengthen the weak, who do not heal the sick, who have not bound up the injured, who have not brought back the strayed, who have not sought the lost.
The inadequacy of the human shepherds prompts God, in the Ezekiel verses that we read, to be the shepherd for God’s sheep, to seek the lost, to bring back the strayed, to bind up the injured, to strengthen the weak. At the end of the Ezekiel passage, God refers to David as a shepherd and as a prince.
Well, wait a minute. God takes over as shepherd for God’s people because human shepherds are inadequate, but David, a human, will be shepherd and prince? Can that be right? Well, yes, I think it can. One of the study bibles that I consult takes the reference to David to be that a member of the Davidic line will function as shepherd, though as prince, but not as king. That makes sense. Jesus came from the house of David, and is the good shepherd to the people, His sheep. In chapter 10 of John’s gospel, Jesus refers to Himself as the good shepherd, and says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.”
Referring to a member of the Davidic line as a prince is consistent with David’s own characterization of himself in 2 Samuel chapter 6, where David says that the Lord has appointed him as “prince over Israel, the people of the Lord”. This ties in with Jesus’s coming as well. Isaiah chapter 9, from which we often read at some point during Advent, famously provides a number of names for the “child who has been born to us,” the “son who has been given to us”. One of those names is Prince of Peace.
The verses that come between the two portions of Ezekiel chapter 34 that we read talk about differentiating sheep from goats. And of course, when we get to the passage from Matthew’s gospel – the passage from which the PC(USA)’s Matthew 25 initiative stems –Jesus talks of separating the sheep from the goats.
A number of the study bibles I consult treat this passage from Matthew that we read as foretelling what will happen when Jesus comes again. The sheep – the faithful, the righteous – are to be separated from the goats – the unfaithful. The concept here is not that we have to do good works in order to merit salvation; it is that we are to follow Christ’s commandments to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. What we do for others – how we care for others – is a reflection of our faith, and a response to the grace that God has bestowed on us.
The lectionary spends three consecutive weeks on Matthew chapter 25. The passage in the first week includes the parable of the ten bridesmaids – five of them wise, and five of them foolish. The ten bridesmaids are awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom for the wedding feast. The wise bridesmaids have oil for their lamps; the foolish bridesmaids do not. All ten bridesmaids fall asleep while waiting for the bridegroom, who is delayed. When the bridegroom arrives the wise bridesmaids, who have oil, go in with the bridegroom to the wedding feast. The foolish bridesmaids, who now have to go and get oil for their lamps, do not complete their purchase in time, and are barred from the wedding feast.
The lesson from that parable is that we cannot know when Jesus is returning, so we should always be ready. This lesson in parable form follows a similar exhortation from Jesus in the preceding chapter, when Jesus tells the disciples, “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
The lectionary’s second week with Matthew 25 includes the parable of the talents. In that parable, a master gives talents to three of the master’s servants. To one servant, the master gives five talents; to another, two, and to the third, one. The master waits for a long time, then checks with his servants to see how they have done. The person with five talents brought back ten. The person with two talents brought back four. But the third person, with the one talent, being fearful of the master, buried the talent, and so only had that talent to return to the master, who was displeased.
The lesson there is that we should use what we are given to what God would have us do, and not be afraid of doing so. We should be like the person with the five talents, who brings back ten, and the person with the two talents, who brings back four. Each of these people used their skills and abilities and were productive. In contrast, the person with the one talent, who buried his talent for fear of the master, failed to be productive. We shouldn’t hide. We shouldn’t be afraid. We should act as Jesus would have us act.
These two parables lead nicely into the passage from Matthew that we read today. So, we know that we should always be ready, and that we should use the talents that God gave us. But to do what? Jesus answers that in today’s reading. We should take care of “the least of these”. The needy among us.
But we’re human. We don’t always feel as though we have the time or the ability to help take care of the needy. What can we do to help us have the strength to do what Jesus would have us do, and care for the least of these? Well, the last of the lectionary readings for today, from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, gives us the answer. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 17-19 say: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.”
Prayer. That’s the ticket. So: we should always be ready; we should use the talents that God gave us; and we should pray for wisdom and discernment of God’s will for our lives as we care for each other and love each other as Jesus loves us. This is how we sustain our hope for what is to come.
Jesus equates Himself with the least of His brothers and sisters. In a sense, this equation harkens back to how Jesus entered the world – as a helpless infant. In a larger sense, Jesus is referring to the needy in the world. When we use our talents – or as we say at Covenant, my home church, time, talents, and treasure – to take care of the needy – the least of these – we are fulfilling our commitment to follow Jesus.
The passage from Ephesians refers to hope. That’s one of the Advent themes. We begin Advent next week. At Covenant, during worship in Advent we light a different candle each week on our Advent wreath. Four weeks of Advent, four candles (with a fifth, the Christ candle in the middle, coming at Christmas). Depending on the source that you consult, the candles can signify different things. Hope, joy, and peace are pretty standard. But you also can choose from among love, faith, and preparation.
The last couple of years, and the last couple of months in particular, I have been hoping for peace. It’s hard to continue to hope, and not to despair when faced with the strife, suffering, and bloodshed with which we are bombarded multiple times every day. When will all of this stop? Will it ever stop? How can we make sense of any of this? How can we continue to be ready, to put into practice the things that Jesus has taught us, in the parables and elsewhere in the gospels, to try to make a difference?
For the last few years, our church has compiled an Advent devotional book. Last year, I titled one of the devotionals I contributed, “Hope for Better Understanding”. I wrote about our autistic adult son Peter, how happy he is, and how blessedly simple life is for him in his world. Our world, unfortunately, just isn’t that simple.
As I worked on a devotional for this year’s Advent devotional book, my thoughts went to Pete Seeger’s song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” The song parallels the first part of Ecclesiastes chapter 3 to a great extent. The song’s refrain repeats the line, “And a time to every purpose under heaven.” This comes from the first verse of Ecclesiastes 3: “A time for every matter under heaven”.
Like Ecclesiastes chapter 3, the song is full of contrasts. The Ecclesiastes passage has 14 different contrasts, but does not repeat any of them. The song has almost all of the same contrasts, but repeats three things: love; hate; and peace. Peace comes at the end of the sequence in Ecclesiastes. Peace comes earlier in the song, but gets repeated at the end: “A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.”
How can we reconcile “a time for war” with “a time for every matter under heaven”? Where does peace enter the equation? How can we continue to believe that “it’s not too late”?
We hope for peace, we pray so hard for peace, and we ask ourselves – ask God – why peace isn’t coming. Why must there be such strife, and suffering, and bloodshed? When will there be peace?
The Presbyterian minister Eugene Peterson wrote a combination interpretation and translation of the Bible, called “The Message”. Pastor Peterson wrote a companion text, “The Message Study Bible”. Of this portion of Ecclesiastes chapter 3, he said:
God invades our experience, whether that experience is joyful or sorrowful, and fills it with his presence, infuses it with his grace, and gives it meaning. We prefer the joyful experiences to the sorrowful ones, but the gospel brings them together and says, essentially, that to God it doesn’t make any difference. The time you are in, whether it is birth or death, laughing or weeping, is God’s time. He can bring his presence into each and every experience of life. And with his presence, his peace.
God’s time. There is a term I hear a lot, and I use a lot. Your pastor nominating committee who called Pastor Deb heard that term from me. They asked, “How long will it take to find our next pastor?” I answered, “It will happen in God’s time.” That can sound like a glib non-answer. But I also talked about prayer, discernment, and listening for the Holy Spirit. That’s where God’s time came in.
It's one thing to refer to God’s time when you’re looking for a pastor. “Peace will come in God’s time” doesn’t seem like a great answer when we see so much strife and suffering and bloodshed. And when it comes to the most recent war in the Middle East, we see that people are terribly divided, maybe more so than ever before. Previously unspoken thoughts and attitudes are bursting forth. Many are relentlessly adamant that their position is the only correct one. Many are steadfastly unwilling to consider alternative viewpoints, resorting to insults and belittlement instead of discourse and debate. I’ve experienced this. Instead of just sitting with people who agree with me, I have reached out to people who most definitely disagree with me. I have tried to ask gentle questions, to start some kind of conversation. The insults and belittlement? Yeah, that’s what happened to me. How can peace possibly be in all of this?
As difficult as it can be, through prayer we can remember that the time we are in, whether it is war or peace, love or hate, or laughing or weeping, is God’s time. As Eugene Peterson tells us, with God’s presence in each and every experience of life comes God’s peace.
Waiting for things to happen in God’s time means that we have to learn patience. In being patient, we can be a voice of persistent calm in the midst of all the yelling. And maybe, just maybe, our persistent calm can have a good influence on the people who are screaming at each other, or perhaps more accurately, screaming past each other.
Why bother to continue to engage? What’s the point? It doesn’t seem to make a difference. It just doesn’t seem possible. It all seems so hopeless. But Advent is a season of hope, a season in which we turn to God in faith, and pray for peace on earth, and good will toward all. In hopeless times especially, we need to give things up to God, whose plan for us is better than anything we can devise for ourselves. Even in the face of death and destruction.
In Phillippians chapter 4, Paul writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
This takes us back to the lessons in Matthew chapter 25. We need always to be ready; we need to use the talents that God gave us to work in the world for the betterment of others; and we need to love each other as Jesus loves us.
In faith, we can be confident that our behavior toward others does make a difference. Each of us can’t change the whole world. But we can have a good effect on our little piece of it. We can have faith that if we do what God would have us do, we will make a difference. And bit by bit, little by little, piece by piece, in God’s time, we will have the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.
Amen.
©Frank Bernstein 2023