Free to Serve
Sermon by Anne East
Readings: Jeremiah 29: 10-14, Ephesians 2: 1-10, Matthew 25: 31-46
What does freedom mean to you? A group of people were asked this recently by a reporter out on the street with a roving mic. One woman, in a hurry to get to work, said, “Getting off the hamster wheel.” An older person said “Getting out and about.” A younger man said, “Opportunity. Freedom means opportunity.” Other replies were, “liberation, not being held back by anything, my own ability to choose, religious freedom”, and a young woman said, “It’s wonderful to be a mum – but I’ve just popped out for coffee with a friend, and that feels like freedom.”
Then the programme cut to the inside of a prison and asked the same question of an inmate, ‘What does freedom mean to you?’ And he replied, “It used to be about getting out of this place, but now, for me, it’s about being free in here’” And he touched his heart.
Are you free? I’m thinking of this because we are the beginning of Prisons Week, when we pray for those who are deprived of their liberty as a result of offences against the law. But there are other kinds of prison. Are you free? When that question was asked of the people in the street, the business woman waved her mobile phone and said, “Well I’m not free of this thing!” She’s not the only one. Me too. It sometimes seems that life has shrunk to the size of a screen and our peripheral vision is disappearing.
Other kinds of ‘prison’ might be to do with patterns of behaviour, patterns of thought, habits, dependencies, addictions, coping with difficult memories, challenging relationships. There are many ways in which we might struggle to claim that we are truly ‘free’.
Yet the man in prison told the reporter that he was ‘free.” His freedom came from God. We read today in Ephesians chapter 2: ‘You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived following the course of this world . . . but God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us . . made us alive together with Christ .. and raised us up with him.”
God knows us better than we know ourselves, our hurt and harm, our brokenness, the truth about our past and present, all that traps and imprisons us.
‘Come’, says the King, ‘inherit the kingdom prepared for you.’ That Judgement Scene in Matthew’s gospel is the only description in the New Testament of the great final assize, it comes in Jesus’ end discourse with his disciples. He is talking to them privately on the Mount of Olives just before he goes to Jerusalem for his trial and death and there is a sense of urgency about what he is saying: ‘The Passover is coming and I am going to be handed over and crucified. This is what you need to know..’
In this parable, people of all faiths and none are gathered before the throne of God and their past actions are recalled. They are shown how, some of them, in their thoughtful service to others they have unknowingly been serving the God of love.
“…just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”
They will get their reward: “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you’”
But the others “will go away into eternal punishment,” Of course they had not knowingly ignored the king “If we’d known it was you Lord, we would have helped!” But they are told, “Just as you did not do it to one of the least of these … you did not do it to me.”
This is a king who identifies with the weak and the vulnerable, and in ignoring them, they had ignored the king. Profound, radical words. Hard-hitting.
This powerful parable is a statement about God. That God is not a remote supreme being somewhere ‘out there’ in the mysterious reaches of the universe. Jesus is saying that God is here – in the messiness and ambiguity of human life. God is in your neighbourhood, you want to see the face of God? Look into the face of your neighbour.
In the judgement scene the righteous are surprised to learn that they had cared for the King, they had simply given of themselves to help others, without calculation or expectation of reward. The others are shocked that they had missed those opportunities. But the king was looking for a natural overflowing of love, the kind of Love that Jesus (whom we call the Servant King) demonstrated and shared in his life on earth. Compassion, dignity, the respect we owe to our fellow men and women.
On the micro-level – you and me in the street - it’s about how we treat others, how we show God’s love to the people we meet everyday. Matthew 25 makes me very uncomfortable when every week I walk past people asking for money. I cannot help everyone. I do have either the money or the time. Besides, how do I tell who is really needy and who simply wants a bottle of cheap wine? What I can do and am called to do is to remember what Jesus says, “When you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”
The hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoners. Note that phrase “the least of these” – not just the certifiably hungry, the truly deserving – the only criterion Jesus set was ‘the least of these’, which means those who are weak and vulnerable.
So what you and I are called to do is not to ignore and over-look, but to look into a human face and to see there the face of Jesus Christ, because that is what he said
We are talking here about Glass Doors, an initiative we can support to give shelter to the homeless, and we heard last week about the Food Bank, supplying basics to those in need.
Christ tells us to look for him in the faces of prisoners – those in detention centres, immigration hostels, refugee camps. Jesus’ words lead us to seek a social structure based on the dignity and value of every human being. They are not to be abused and tortured, because Jesus said that ‘what you do to them you do to me.’ So in His name we must expect and demand more from our leaders and politicians, those in positions of power and authority. We must demand accountability and responsibility, careful supervision and high standards of conduct.
Today we heard a reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. I like to think about those very early followers, how they might have put their faith into practice. In Lebanon, the excavation of the cemetery at Tyre has revealed the burials of early Christians. The inscriptions read: “Adelphos, tapestry-maker and sub-deacon”, “Anthony, deacon and goldsmith”, and “Theodorus, presbyter, silversmith, the friend to all..”
Their Christian identity and their work identity came together to make those people who they were. We can imagine the passers-by dropping in at Theodorus’ work-shop, watching him shape the precious metal and telling him about their mother’s illness, their worries about their daughter’s marriage, their son’s military service. “Theodorus, friend to all” Well we can be that, can’t we? Hearing and responding to those around us.
St Benedict had two simple questions he asked after people visited his community: “Did we see Christ in them? Did they see Christ in us?”
That is the criteria: whether or not you saw Jesus in the face of the needy and whether or not you gave yourself away in love, in his name.
“Come,” says Jesus, “You that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you”. We are welcomed into the life of God. As we share in the Eucharist today, and we pray ‘Your kingdom come’ let us ask God to show each one of us what we can do to make the difference, how we may play our part – in Christ’s kingdom of love and justice in the world.
Amen.