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This sermon is not about the 1994 film. (Everyone agreed that it was a good film.)
It is not about half truths or little white lies.
It is about the stories we read and see in film
that are lies but which might teach us something.
This is about scripture that purports to be one thing but is another.
Scripture that fools the reader into thinking
that Jesus said something that he did not,
or did something that he did not do.
Scripture that tells falsehoods but often in order to tell a truth,
while still being false in other respects.
My bias is that I worked for and still work with the Jesus Seminar scholars
who are concerned with what Jesus most likely said and did
in order to better understand the 2000 year old traditions
about him that we have inherited.
This sermon began when I discovered only in the last few months
that our denomination, the PCUSA, began a program
several years ago called “The Matthew 25 Vision.”
The only churches that would know about this tend to be urban,
or with pastors who identify strongly with denominational leadership
as I used to be.
Congregations are being recruited to lead members to commit in new ways
to be disciples, followers and students of Jesus Christ,
more deeply and more seriously than ever before.
THE PROGRAM has three parts:
FIRST, because this story is about helping others,
the hungry and thirsty, the naked, the sick, prisoners.
So the denomination is teaching us to address systemic poverty,
by seeking to change conditions which cause poverty,
including sharing our wealth to lift them up.
We will help the poor, but not only by directly helping the poor.
A lot of people are confused when overly educated nerds like me
speak of poverty as “systemic.”
What this means is that being poor has been found to be the result of
political decisions, and cultural habits of treating the poor differently,
as inferior to the rest of us.
This is dangerous stuff to some. Sounds like socialism.
But Jesus was a kind of socialist. That is another sermon.
SECOND, because this Mt. 25 story speaks of strangers and prisoners
this program addresses systemic racism.
(This is the stuff that is now banned in 7 states and may be banned in another 16 states this year.)
Race and ethnicity defines most strangers.
They are non-white and non-European,
and most prisoners fit this description.
We imprison those who are most strange among us,
and people of color are obviously different.
Our prison policies and practices directly come from the time
of slavery when militia hunted down runaway slaves
and Jim Crow laws put Blacks in prison
where they did the forced labor they had done as slaves.
It is “systemic” because they mostly do not have the wealth or education,
and the opportunities and acceptance by the justice system
that would keep them out of prison.
Furthermore, it can be shown that we as a society
have created these conditions.
So the Mt. 25 project encourages us to open doors, break down walls,
and challenge hate to overcome our differences and our indifference.
Violence is not in this story, but it is a concern in the news today
and is related to poverty and racism.
We can observe that violence is often committed by poor people of color.
I listened to a podcast the other day where residents of NYC
explained clearly how systemic racism and poverty create violence.
THIRD, the Matthew 25 project focuses on Congregational Vitality
encouraging all of us to look at ourselves
and find ways to live our faith, to stand up for Jesus,
and to show Christ’s love by speaking truth to power,
I just learned of this program early this year.
10% of congregations have signed on since 2019.
A lot of materials have been produced;
I downloaded and read many of them.
At first, I had difficulty getting my head around the program.
It took a while to figure out how they related
systemic poverty and systemic racism with the scripture,
because of course these were not terms used in the first century.
But I did that for you a few minutes ago.
Before I explain the great truths in this scripture,
I need to tell you the lies,
because there are some big problems with the scripture
and therefore with the Matthew 25 program.
The first thing to say is that THIS IS NOT A PARABLE told by Jesus
BUT A FICTIONAL STORY:
Some of the materials for the Mt 25 Vision call this story a parable.
But as I have said before a parable is a special kind of story
and if we lay all of them out next to each other
we can see how and why they are told.
They are stories about nature or about people doing common tasks,
or involved in common conflicts, and they end oddly,
often completely opposite of how we think they should.
They don’t have a lesson or moral at the end,
and they are not allegories about God.
(An allegory is a story about one thing that is really about something else.)
If they do have such morals or lessons,
we can usually see that someone added it to the original parable,
and by removing it we can better understand the parable.
Such stories with morals or as allegories don’t comport with other things Jesus said,
but rather Jesus seems to have told parables as puzzling stories
in order to get people thinking and talking about the issues he raises.
Real parables are discussion starters about the mysteries
of the ways of the world and of faith,
like sowing seeds or yeast,
and how people should treat each other,
like the prodigal son or the good samaritan.
The Second PROBLEM is that JESUS DIDN’T TELL THIS STORY:
Jesus no doubt told his disciples to feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
welcome the stranger, and visit the sick and those in prison.
True sayings of Jesus are clearly seen in the Luke 6 passage,
but Jesus did not put them in the context of the last judgement.
Too easily we lump all scripture together as if it were all equal
and can all be harmonized with everything else in the Bible.
But there are many authors of bible books and stories.
They often don’t agree or are in conflict with each other
and sometimes they purposely tell us things that didn’t happen,
because that was the normal and usual way
of telling stories and writing history in the first century.
The Jesus scholar, Dominic Crossan, has said repeatedly that
“It is not that those ancient people told literal stories
and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically,
but that they told them symbolically
and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.
They knew what they were doing; we don’t.”
The THIRD PROBLEM is that this story is about “The Last Judgment.”
It is a type of story called “apocalyptic,”
which meant revelation of meaning, but came to mean
a prediction of the end of the world.
Jesus didn't tell apocalyptic stories.
There are several places in the gospels where Jesus is reported
to have told stories about the final judgment by God
of those who have violated his will.
Again, if we lay out all the teachings of Jesus side by side,
we see that these kinds of stories are few
and they don’t sound like most
of the other stories and sayings of Jesus.
In fact, everyone agrees that the most common thing Jesus taught
is the kingdom of God, and we better understand this in recent years
not as a future event of judgment
but the way God wants the world run now, politically and economically,
as opposed to the way the Romans and other tyrants
since then have run it.
In other words the stories and sayings of Jesus about “apocalyptic”
are lies written by others and put into his mouth.
People tend to tell apocalyptic stories when their societies are collapsing,
but that is another sermon.
But the FOURTH and biggest problem is that this is a story
of judgment and punishment and revenge.
Words given to Jesus about judgment and punishment and revenge
don’t fit the rest of his story.
Jesus did not speak of punishment and revenge in these ways,
but observed that the rain falls on the just and the unjust.
Our responsibility is to be just.
In this story it is as if a different Jesus has appeared,
not the one about love and mercy and forgiveness,
but as the judge of righteous vengeance.
We tend not to notice this because it’s scripture, right?
So this story is not a parable, Jesus didn’t tell it,
Jesus didn’t tell stories about the end of the world
rather than the world we live in,
and Jesus isn’t coming back to judge and punish anyone.
Those are big problems to Bible scholars and ought to be to us.
[And if we lay out all the words of Jesus we see that he didn’t seem to talk about himself,
except in the gospel of John or elsewhere as the cryptic “son of man,”
so the story fails on that ground.]
NOW I CAN TELL WHAT IS TRUE in this story,
the truths in a work of fiction, the truth told through the lies:
We don’t notice there is anything wrong with this story because
it includes what we expect from Jesus:
Feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, visit the sick and those in prison.
There are literary twists in this story that really drives home
Jesus’ concern for people in need.
He calls “the least of these,” my brothers, my family!
Who among us sees or in Jesus' time saw the poor and the immigrants and the prisoners as family?
The teaching to help those in need is intensified
by making sure that we all understand
that we are all one family including those who are the worst off.
The twist continues when the story has Jesus say
“When you help the least of these, you have really helped me.
I was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, and in prison.
And if you don’t help them, you are not helping me,
you are making me to suffer.”
Wow. Everyone would want to help Jesus,
especially those who call Jesus “Son of God.”
And so those who don’t help the needy are called “accursed”
because they don’t see Jesus in the poor and the marginalized.
Wow.
In a hundred ways we usually hear or speak of the poor, the strangers, and prisoners
as "accursed."
Jesus is saying according to this story,
that people in need are NOT the dirty inferiors we see and try to avoid,
because they are humans like us.
They may have been born into terrible situations
but they did not start life as bad or criminal or violent,
and now they are not so different as poor and despicable,
but they are humans like us in need.
Those in need are the Christ, because they are of God,
they have the image of God in them,
they are children of God, our brothers and sisters.
We ought to get it, because this story makes that connection.
Do we?
One commentator says:
"Feeding the hungry, welcoming strangers, and visiting the sick
are mundane acts.
In this sense 'virtue is not far from us,
it is within us, and is easy if only we are willing.' (Anthony the Great)
The Son of Man does not demand supernatural feats
but simple, unobtrusive charity....
Charity is accordingly the true test of faith." (Oxford Bible Commentary)
The positive side of the lesson today is seen in the teachings of Jesus from Luke 6,
which is Luke’s “sermon on the plain,”
a different version of what Matthew tells as “the sermon on the mount.”
These are hard lessons on how to live and how to respond to oppression and violence
with non-violent resistance,
showing the violent that we will not be sucked into it as they expect.
The violent always want us to respond to violence with violence
because then they can say, “See, you are violent, too!”
So through this story we have learned again the golden rule;
that we should do for others what we would want them to do for us, if not for Jesus.
When we help others we are helping ourselves.
We should help others in need
because there for the grace of God or luck or good fortune,
we would be in the same lot.
