Looking for Jesus
a sermon based on Matthew
25:31-40 and Luke 17:23-25
by Rev. Frank Schaefer
"When the Son of
Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne
in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will
separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from
the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed
by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the
creation of the world. For 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
invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked
after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and
feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a
stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see
you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' "The King will reply, 'I tell you
the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine,
you did for me.'” Matthew
25:31-40
Advent is really not so much about Christmas theology but
rather about expecting Jesus Second Return. Jesus himself said to his disciples:
I’ll be back! Of course, he didn’t use these exact same words. But Jesus also
left it very much open exactly how and when he would come back.
When you study the Scriptures, there are at least two
different ways in which Jesus himself describes the kingdom of God: he says a)
the kingdom is now and b) the kingdom is to come! A little confusing, isn’t it?
Let’s delve into it:
Once, having been asked by
the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of
God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it
is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you.” --
This passage speaks to the “Now” aspect of God’s kingdom.
On the other hand, Jesus also taught his disciples that there will be a time
when he will physically return and calls us to be vigilant: for the day will
come unexpectedly. And that day will be Judgment Day according to Matthew 25
which we read earlier.
So the question then is how are we as Christians supposed
to live in this tension between the now and not yet of God’s kingdom. How are we
to expect Jesus’ coming? Where are we to look for Jesus?
When you study the Scriptures, you will notice that the
disciples very much expected to see Jesus physical return to happen during their
lifetime. Especially when the world started persecuting them, they thought for
sure the end-times had come.
That’s what they believed and preached. After a while, when
it didn’t happen, they had to come up with an explanation. People were starting
to wonder: “what takes him so long?” Why hasn’t he come back yet?” Peter offered
this explanation for the delay of Jesus return:
“But do not forget this one thing,
dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years
are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand
slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to
come to repentance.” --2.Peter 3:8-9
So, now about 1,900 years later we’re still waiting for
Christ to return. Even today, some church fellowships believe that the urgency
of Christ’s return and the imminence of the end-times need to be preached.
I remember hearing many sermons during my childhood and
teenage years about how we live in the end-times. Jesus is coming back and it
could be today. Are you ready? Are you ready for his return? Do any of you
remember Bob Dylan’s Christian album he produced right after his conversion
experience? One song I remember expresses this very sentiment: “Are you ready?
Ready… Are you really ready?”
As a result of end-time preaching I grew up thinking that I
would not get very old. I used to pray as a teen: “Lord, please wait a little
longer until you come back. Let me at least experience some things in life, like
having a wife and children. I also remember that I thought a couple of times
that I missed the rapture. I couldn’t find my parents. I was panic-stricken, I
looked through every room in our apartment. They were nowhere to be found and I
was convinced Jesus had come back to get his chosen ones and had left me behind
because of some un-confessed sin. Turned out my parents had just stepped out
for a few minutes, but I sure was traumatized.
When I shared this experience with our assistant pastor,
she started laughing because that exact same thing happened to her too. She
said, she remembered how she and her three younger sisters couldn’t locate their
parents one day and they were wondering amongst themselves whether they had been
left behind. Clydette recalls her youngest sister, barely four years old,
saying: “Yeah, I think I ‘hoyd’ a trumpet.”
Today, I don’t believe in the kind of end-time preaching
that strikes fear and trembling in the hearts of believers. I don’t think Jesus
calls us to live in fear of an event that should be joyous. I believe Jesus
calls us to be vigilant by serving others in his spirit—in the way he would have
served them. That’s how we are to wait!
That’s why I believe Jesus told us in Luke 17:20: “The
kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say,
'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."
I believe the key to how Jesus wants us to live lies in Mat
25. At the end of times, Jesus is going to judge us based on how we lived in
this world as Christians while we were waiting for his return. And it appears
that the way we are to wait for him is to seek him in others. Jesus says in Mat
25: “Whatever you have done to these the least, you have done unto me.” Waiting
for the kingdom of God is serving others. Again: waiting for Jesus’ coming
means to look for Jesus in the people around us and to help them, while we’re
waiting for his return.
The resurrected spirit of Jesus is still living in this
world, on our planet and in our neighborhoods. Jesus is wondering the streets
in search for a safe place to sleep during the cold night; you will meet him in
the man who is on his deathbed dying from aids; you will meet him in the lesbian
teenager who has been humiliated and ridiculed by her peers and is wondering if
there is a place for her in the church or even in the world.
Mother Teresa worked with many aids patients and she tried
to make a case to the world about aids victims who were at one time treated like
the lepers of Jesus time. She said this remarkable thing: “"Whenever
I look into the eyes of someone dying of
AIDS, I have an eerie awareness
that Jesus is
staring back at me.”
I have to admit that I almost
made a mistake three months ago. A person called me whose father used to attend
our church many years ago; he asked me to be the spiritual caretaker of his
long-term girlfriend and partner during her last days in hospice care. My first
reaction was: “I’m already busy and I don’t want to take away time and energy
from my faithful members and attendees at church.” But this man hounded me, he
never gave up; he kept calling the church, my cell phone. It was like in the
parable Jesus shared about the unrelenting widow knocking at the judge’s door to
get justice.
I finally gave in and decided to
visit her about 3 weeks ago. When I stepped into her house I almost stepped
right back out. Not only was I greeted by three or four barking dogs, not only
was the place utterly messy, but I also could not breathe because the woman is a
smoker. My first thought was, here she is on oxygen and there is a big sign at
the entrance that says: “No Smoking--Oxygen in use” and the patient is merrily
smoking away.
I judged her even before I saw
her, and I had already made up my mind at that point that I was just going to
see her that one time and never again. But then I met her and we started to
talk and as she was talking, I met Jesus. She talked about seeing Jesus
standing in the room and Jesus was saying to her: “My child, I will come to
fetch you and I will make you whole again.”
I tell you what, when I thought
about this experience later, it was almost like Jesus was saying to me: “ok
Frank, if you’re not going to visit her, I hope you don’t mind that I will.”
Needless to say, I have visited with her ever since.
As we approach Christmas, let us not forget that one of the
reasons Jesus chose to come into this world as a pauper and as an “illegitimate”
child (in the eyes of the world), is to teach us that God is present even in
persons that we think of as least worthy of receiving God’s grace. God is
present in those who fill our prisons; God is in the prostitute, in the heroin
junky, in the dying person and in the homeless.
And we all know very well why that is, don’t we? It’s
because of God’s Amazing Grace. If God’s grace is big enough to include those
least and last, God’s grace is all sufficient for anybody and everybody. Nobody
is beyond the scope of God’s grace; nobody is flying under the radar of God’s
grace.
We as God’s children are to demonstrate that same grace
especially to those that are considered the least and last in this world. Truth
is: they are not considered the least or last in God’s eyes and neither should
we consider anybody that way.
According to Mat 25, it’s the way in which Jesus wants us
to get ready for his final return. By reaching out to the ones that we
instinctively think of as “not worthy,” the ones that messed up and the ones
that are bullied by society for no good reason, we are readying this world for
the kingdom of Christ. Indeed, in this way Christ’s kingdom is already reigning
in us and among us. Amen!
