St. Francis, Dunellen
“Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you? The answer will come, ‘the truth is, as often as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.’ “
through whom “everything was made that was made.”
So how do we get from the immensity of the first moments of creation
to sheep and goats?!
We begin by understanding that God is not a “being “out there,”
not a “feeling within me (us),”
but the power which blows through the entire universe,
the power that made and continually re-makes creation.
God is the power, the being, the bubble, and the air in which we live.
Each & every thing we do, or say, or think or are
is an expression of the power of God.
If you love someone – you are loving them with God’s love,
If you help someone – the grace and power you use are coming from God.
If you cry with someone, you are shedding God’s tears.
If you bring a new life into the world,
you are a channel of God’s creative power.
If you offer someone hope, that power behind that hope is God, not you.
If you truly forgive someone, that forgiveness flows from God,
Human beings, especially we who wish to follow Jesus,
are meant to be occasions of grace.
We are called to be channels of God’s
power, hope, love and forgiveness to the world.
So, to keep us from escaping today to the glories of shining thrones and the crystal sea and the “life of the world to come, “
I propose some standing – and sitting up exercises.
(Anyone who actually can’t stand is physically exempt from standing, – but I‘ll bet your arms work!)
Now not all of us will be doing the same things at the same time, and that is, of course, one of the points.
OK, here we go:
Every person in this room who has a place to call home
for the next eight weeks, stand up.
If your home has a working toilet and clean running water,
And it is and will remain warm,
raise your right hand.
If you always have enough food for one full healthy meal a day raise your left hand.
If you have at least two sets of clothes, several sets of clean underwear, & comfortable shoes, wave your hands back and forth.
If you have living friends and or family and you know where - and how - they are and no one is shooting at them, drop your arms.
If you have a church, an available and well - stocked store,
regular and emergency medical care of any kind,
and a way of getting to those places safely, sit down.
And, if you haven’t been scorched, frozen, blown, flooded,
Epidemic-ed, earth quaked or bombed away;
if your house isn’t in foreclosure and you haven’t been laid off,
and thus can safely look forward to the Winter Solstice,
Christmas and the New Year.
Say, “AMEN.”
We, my sisters and brothers, are among the blessed of the earth.
There is no way to overstate our riches.
We are blessed beyond most human imagining.
What Jesus asks of us in return is that we be instruments of God’s healing and grace in the middle of this world, which is on fire.
Jesus’ judgment, Jesus’ expectation, is simple, unequivocal,
clear and easy to understand:
We Christians exist to minister to Jesus
What can the Lord of all the glory of creation possibly NEED?
What does Jesus want for his birthday?
Food, drink, shelter, friendship, clothing, medical care, and hope –
for the least of his sisters and brothers.
This year of the world on fire calls to us to stop worrying about the prices of gas in our cars and furnaces
(hey folks, we HAVE cars, and we HAVE furnaces)
Forget whether each of us is keeping up sufficiently with the local “Joneses.”
(We are, every person here, in the richest most over-possessioned two percent of the peoples of the history of the known world.
And, I suspect, that if I talked quietly over drinks or a dinner to any one group of you, you would agree.)
Somewhere inside most of us, we know that we have as people,
as communities and as a nation, gone far off the track
in our obsession with “riches.”
Fr. Tom Ehrich, a priest of St. Bartholomew’s in NYC and an Episcopal
blogger, commenting on the elections a week ago said the following:
I [think] that Tuesday's balloting wasn't just a referendum on
incompetent leadership and greed run amok. It was also a mass shuddering at
what we , ourselves, had become: self-indulgent, non-saving consumers of stuff
and more stuff, houses we couldn't fill with life, weight we couldn't lose,
ruining our planet,
glaring at strangers, trying to escape the ambiguity of being ourselves by
emulating ad-driven lifestyles that weren't worthy of a nation built by
pioneers and immigrants. (underlining mine)
I think we looked in the mirror and voted for change --
in ourselves. (REPEAT)
This election won't end the recession, but maybe it will signal our collective victory over greed and self-indulgence.
Then we will [recognize our] true abundance.
For Thanksgiving, Christmas and in the New Year I call upon all of us,
I beg you, and I tell you as a priest.
As soon as you get something special
for that wide-eyed youngster in your family and
something loving and heartwarming for your spouse, siblings and parents, STOP.
Stop buying things, until you’ve sent at least 10 percent of what you spend on the holidays – including food and transportation and entertainment –
to Episcopal Relief and Development, or any one of the other disaster charities whose requests fill our mailboxes, newspapers and magazines,
our TV screens and our trips to
the mall.
Remember that while our children worry about the capacity of their I-pods,
Baby Jesuses, and young Marys are up in the Himalayan Mountain snows
without shoes, a tent or even a cave,
There are children in Darfur with no food, dysentery infected water,
and both their parents dead.
In the coastal south, people still search for their families and livestock.
In the far west, they look at the burned ruins of their lives.
While on “tribal lands” the magnificent peoples and civilizations who first built this land starve and freeze their lives away in poverty and hopelessness.
Here in Dunellen & Piscataway, the elderly and the homeless need food, medical care, shelter hope and human companionship.
Organizations such as Heifer International, Care, the Salvation Army, Planned Parenthood, Doctors without Borders, Unicef, Church World, Service, the Red Cross, the local newspaper’s “grant a request” section --
(Or see the NY Time’s neediest cases - etc. etc. etc.) --
all do Christ’s work, day after week, after month, after year after decade.
Recall what you learned in kindergarten about sharing.
and remember that you are now “grown up.”
Pull several donation cards/envelopes out of your mail,
Add your address sticker and send in a substantial donation or several.
Go to a website or three and learn more about how to help an organization.
(see: “ redefineChristmas.com “)
Put $5.00 on the bill every time you purchase any holiday foods.
Fill up the soup-kitchen basket. Better yet, also send the soup kitchen $25.00 to buy the things one can’t put into an unrefrigerated basket.
Give till it hurts, and then give some more until it feels wonderful again.
Put your ERD check in the offering plate.
Do that every month. – or become a credit-card supporter of almost any of the excellent extensions of God’s kingdom I named above.
Then send a note to someone you love, or like, or appreciate or admire,
and tell them you are celebrating them in Jesus’ name.
THAT is a true Christmas gift – a wise one’s gift to Our Lord and God.
They are other important things to be doing, but first, we must serve Jesus
by recognizing Our Lord in the cave dwellers,
the hopeless, the lost and the least of our world.
Everything you give to the “least of these, my brothers and sisters,” will lighten your life, brighten your heart, and bring you closer to the God whom we serve with joy and love.
And, someday, when we all must stand before the great judgment throne of Christ,
We will actually recognize the Word made flesh,
The King of Glory,
Because we have seen him in the faces of people in need
in the world around us.
We are living in
apocalyptic times,
not because there are wars and fierce religious arguments in the Middle East, in Darfur, in Congo, in Asia and around the globe,
but because we are being offered daily, hourly, even minute by minute,
chances to advance the rule and the presence of the Kingdom of Christ.
Many peoples’ lives and happiness, certainly our own
and that of our friends and families,
will be deeply affected by our words and actions,
or by our lack of words and actions.
The story of the world will be different because of what we do
or do not do.
But in this celebration of the Reign of Christ,
The promise of the Kingdom of God, assures us that whatever we do -
or fail to do,
God has, does, and will triumph
That God’s Glorious Kingdom is the heritage of all who hope
not in their own strength,
but in the saving weakness of Our Lord, Jesus,
and in the power of the Holy and Undivided Trinity
To whom be glory and dominion throughout all creation
Forever and ever.