Our reading for today is part of that same teaching, and this time, instead of giving us a parable, Jesus gives us a classic judgment scenario, which by its terms is set in the future. He begins, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory” – meaning that when Jesus returns at the end of time (when that will be he does not, of course, say), there will be a judgment, just as a king, hearing the petitions of his subjects, renders judgment. But as you will hear, once again Jesus drives home the message that what

I am glad that it is the Board of Outreach which is meeting today after worship, and not the Board of Deacons, because I suspect that the Outreach folk might be delighted with today’s reading from the Bible, the Deacons perhaps less so. At first glance, at least.

In this judgment scenario, the people are divided into insiders and outsiders, the sheep and the goats, the ones who enter into life eternal and the ones who are not so blessed. And what is the basis of this division? Is it because they have accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior? Is it because they have believed in their hearts, recited the correct creed, attended Bible study and adult Christian education, been taken into membership into the church? Is it because, under the tender care of the Board of Deacons, that they have properly attended to their spiritual lives? No, none of that it seems.

Those who inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world are those who see a thirsty person and give them something to drink, who welcome a stranger, who cloth the naked, who care for the sick, who visit those in prison, who staff the Boar of Outreach and participate in its programs; what counts, it seems, is acting with love and care towards other people, it’s a matter of hands and feet, of walking the walk not talking the talk, of doing not believing.

It is a matter of us helping them.

The challenges for us here are two-fold. First, we can’t help but wonder if somehow we are slipping into a sort of works-righteousness here, the idea that our salvation is all up to us, that we can in effect buy ourselves into God’s good graces by what we do. And, second, we can easily fall into the trap of seeing others, those we reach out to help, as being the only ones in need; when we take on the role of the rescuer, we – as individuals and as a church – can fall into the trap of thinking that it is only “them”, out there, that stand in need of rescue, of healing, of help. We can unconsciously slip into thinking of them as the objects of our good works.

Perhaps it might help to look, first, at how Jesus approached this healing business, and then at an example from our history.

In Luke 5 we read,

Once, when Jesus was in one of the cities, there was a man covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” The Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do choose. Be made clean.” Immediately the leprosy left him.

If we are to fully understand what Jesus was up to here, we need to know a little history, both medical and cultural. Leprosy, a disease of the skin, was contagious, passed on, it was believed, through human contact. But it was more than a medical issue: people with leprosy were banned from home and family – they had to live on their own, outside of the village. By law, whenever they came near other people, they had to yell out “Unclean! Unclean!” As a result of these laws and customs, those with the disease would of course have internalized the message that they were unclean, unfit for community, unworthy of love. And so when Jesus approaches the man with leprosy, he does not meet Jesus eye to eye – that would imply equality, worthiness – instead, he bows his face to the ground.

And then Jesus heals him, cures him of the disease. But what is truly remarkable is how he does it – he purposely reaches out and touches the man – and, although the text does not explicitly tell us, we can expect that Jesus touched him under the chin, raising him up to look into his eyes. Asian theologian C.S. Song tells us,

When Jesus touched him [Jesus] (1) healed him physically, (2) ended his familial and communal exclusion and isolation, and (3) demonstrated to him that he was not outside the circle of God’s people/love. Here is the good news that accompanied Jesus’ healing, the all inclusive love of God for the “least of these.” For the leper, healing and salvation coalesced in Jesus’ touch.” (C.S. Song, Tracing the Footsteps of God, p. 46).

This teaching was brought to life in the fourth century in Asia Minor, where a famine struck and church leaders such as Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa sought Christian responses to the tragedy. Basil boldly challenged the wealthy to share of their abundance, to open their granaries to the starving poor: “Give, therefore; don’t market it or keep the grain in the storehouses. Tell me, what good are heavy purses? You and all your wealth will share one death.”

Gregory of Nyssa applauded his brother’s approach, but took a different tack. For him, the issue was not whether to help others, but how theywould be helped, particularly those with diseases like leprosy. Those who gave charitably, did so at a distance – he wanted to break down those walls. First, Gregory argued that we ought to see our common humanity, our common nature, and so realize that when one part of the body suffers, we all do, and that therefore to condemn the sick and the starving is to in effect condemn ourselves. But beyond that, he questioned the assumption that “we” are the healthy ones, that we are not, in our own ways, in need of our own healing. Drawing upon the lessons of Matthew 25, Gregory argued that encountering those with lepers, not just giving them hand-outs at a distance, is a life-giving opportunity for both. Susan Holman, a scholar of Gregory, put it this way:

The persons who assist [the lepers] may receive healing of their own ‘diseases’ of wealth and greed. In this way the church needs contact with lepers in order to cure spiritual diseases. Yet lepers also need contact with the healthy to relieve their own vey physical suffering. (From “On Giving and Receiving, Todd Billings, Congregational Life Nov. 23, 2008, p. 104, reprinted from Sojourners).

At the center of Jesus’ healing ministry, imitated by the ministry of Gregory of Nyssa, is the encounter between “us” and “them”, an encounter in which each may see in the other the light of Christ. What Jesus is looking to do in his ministries, what he is urging us to do in our ministries, is to build relationships, relationships in which acts of compassion may become expressions of God’s presence, moments when others might see the light of Christ in us – and when we might see the light of Christ in others; moments that might lead to healing, not only for them, but also for us.

And so when Kathy and Tim Warren go off on that mission trip to Chile, expecting to give of themselves to help others, they come back finding that they have known a healing in their souls unlike anything they have ever experiences, enriched beyond measure. And so Jane Alcock ventures off year after year on an arduous journey to the Cook Islands, where she helps put together school curricula, and Sarah Wyatt goes off for months at a time to the Bahamas to teach school, and Sue Benwood is a mentor to adults struggling with addiction, and Lily Tu builds relationships with folk at the Sheriff’s Youth Ranch, and Cornell Bretz meets people as he drive the BBus and Roy Thomas does the same as the drives veterans to the VA Hospital, and the Board of Outreach is setting up an opportunity for eight of us to go up to the Pine Street Inn and serve a meal and meet some folk who struggle with homelessness. And so this congregation, all of us, together tithe and pledge and contribute our financial resources so that the infrastructure supporting al these ministries and many more can be maintained. They do so, and we do so, not just because the needs of the world are so great, but because we recognize that in the giving, we receive, in the healing, we are healed, that there is, in the end, no difference between “them” and “us.” We do so because we are, in fact, responding to Christ, answering the call of the One who came to serve us, that we might serve others, and so be healers, and so, be healed.

And so that we might know the joy of entering into eternal life, not someday, but now, today, here, in this lifetime.

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