Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
Restorative Reciprocity
23 July 2017
Daniel
7.13-14
Matthew
25.31-46
Do you ever
look at the world, and think,
‘where, in the midst of all this, is there any good news at
all?’
So much of
the world that we live in,
from the local and parochial, to the
national and the international,
is dominated by darkness, despair,
and desolation.
I could,
but won’t, spend the rest of this sermon
cataloguing just a tiny percentage
of all the things that are wrong
with the world.
I admit,
that might be a bit depressing,
but then sometimes the world is a depressing place.
In fact,
there are some days when I just want to scream at the heavens,
and call down divine judgment on
this so-called developed country of ours,
where the
poor are getting poorer
and the services designed to lift up
the unfortunate and the disadvantaged
are being systematically pared away
until there is little left of any use.
In fact,
it’s probably a good job God wouldn’t respond
to my cry for sudden and
catastrophic intervention,
or we’d all be in even more trouble
than we already are.
I take some
comfort from the fact that my desire for judgment is nothing new,
and that people have been crying out
for millennia
against the injustices
of the world.
In fact,
one of the key theological debates in the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament,
revolves around the question of why
bad things happen to good people,
while the bad people so
often seem to get away scot free.
You can
even make an argument that it is this very question
which drives the development of
theology,
as people sought answers to this
most problematic of pastoral problems.
The writer
of the book of Deuteronomy proposed a solution
which, in a nutshell, asserted that
if something bad happened to you,
you definitely did deserve it,
whether you knew why or not.
The
Deuteronomic idea was that health, wealth, and blessings
were given by God to those who kept
the covenantal laws,
while
sickness, poverty, and misfortune
were sent in response to
disobedience.
This sort
of mechanistic approach still has echoes today
in the kind of Christianity where
God is believed to reward the faithful
with happiness, money,
and good health.
It is also
found in religious traditions like Christian Science
where sickness is believed to be a
manifestation of a person’s sin;
and so the path to healing is to be
found in confession and repentance.
My
grandfather was brought up as a Christian Scientist,
and it was his teen age experience
of being denied treatment for a tooth abscess,
and simply being told to
confess his sin to make the pain go away,
that turned him into the lifelong
atheist that I knew and loved.
And the
interesting question for me in the story of my grandfather,
is whether the judgment of God falls
against him personally
for his life of
faith-less-ness,
or against the community that abused
him away from a life of faith?
Sometimes,
I think, we over-emphasise the individual response,
without giving sufficient weight
to the corporate responsibility of a
person’s wider context.
And so we
meet in the Hebrew Scriptures another strand of thought
which suggests that maybe we
shouldn’t individualise this so much
and what if we took a
broader, more communal view,
where nations and
peoples rise and fall together.
We can see
this perhaps most clearly in the personification of Israel
as a suffering servant
in the book of Isaiah,
bearing the pain of
exile for the sins of other nations done against her;
while those nations are judged
for the way they, in
turn, have treated God’s chosen people of Israel.
A further
perspective can be found in traditions like that of the book of Job,
who is depicted as a righteous man
whose sufferings are
sent as a test of his faith,
to see if he will curse
God when his blessings are withdrawn.
Throw into
this the development of a theology of the afterlife,
and the possibility that rights may
be wronged
and punishments handed
out
in some future world rather than in
the present one,
and the
stage is pretty much set for our parable this morning,
the story of the sheep and the
goats.
It’s a
fascinating little story,
told by Jesus towards the end of
Matthew’s gospel,
and it
combines some key ideas:
There’s the idea of a future
judgment;
there’s the question of human
suffering,
of why some people are
hungry, thirsty, estranged, naked, and imprisoned;
there’s the concept of corporate
guilt borne at a national level
that take us beyond
individual culpability;
and there’s the conundrum of where
God and his people fit into all this.
It’s also
nowhere near as straightforward to interpret
as it may at first appear.
I’ve chosen
this parable for our reading for today
because I think it provides an
interesting perspective
on the question of how
we, as the followers of Jesus,
might respond to the
needs of our world,
and particularly the problems caused
by poverty and homelessness.
As we all
know, the needs of the needy aren’t going away;
if anything, they are getting more
severe,
with the
rise of food banks, clothing exchanges,
night shelters, day centres, soup
kitchens, and other crisis services
all testifying to the
growing problem of people in our city
without enough resources
or support to function within normal society.
The
roll-back of state benefits has created a vacuum
into which many charities and
churches, ourselves included, have stepped
as we try to provide
help to those at greatest need and risk.
It’s what
David Cameron called ‘the Big Society’,
where we take responsibility for one
another through charitable enterprise,
rather than expecting
the state to do it collectively on our behalf
through the welfare
system.
So, what do
we think we’re doing when we feed the hungry,
clothe the naked, and visit the sick
or imprisoned?
Well, one
reading of the parable of the sheep and goats
might lead us to believe that we’re
earning our place in heaven!
Have you
ever seen an advert for a Christian charity,
asking for money to support the good
work they’re doing
with the poor, or
refugees, or children, or whatever,
and the poster has a picture of a
representative of their client group,
overlaid by the text,
‘whatever you did for
the least of these …dot … dot … dot …’?
Just stop
and think this through with me for a moment,
to its logical conclusion.
In the
parable, the nations are separated into sheep and goats;
the sheep inherit the eternal
kingdom,
while the goats are
cursed and sent away to the eternal fire
prepared for the devil
and his angels.
And what is
it that separates the sheep from the goats?
It is the feeding of the hungry and
the thirsty, the welcoming of the stranger,
the clothing of the
naked, and the visiting of the sick and imprisoned.
The Son of
Man says,
‘Just as you did it, or did not do
it, to one of the least of these
who are members of my
family, you did it, or did not do it, to me.’
So here’s
the deal:
If ‘the least of these’ refers to
the generic poor of the world,
to the homeless, the
refugees, the imprisoned,
the homeless, and the
starving,
then the only thing you need to do
in this life,
to ensure that you go
the heaven and don’t go to hell,
is to feed, clothe,
welcome and visit.
Doctrine
doesn’t matter, nor does confession or repentance,
nor reading the Bible, nor worship,
nor any of the other things we often
think are so important:
just devote yourself to
good works and your salvation is assured.
Five
hundred years after the dawn of the Reformation,
I think I can just about hear Martin
Luther turning in his grave!
But
actually, the implications of our fundraising poster are even more sinister,
because the inference is that if you
don’t give them your money,
you’re a goat, and are
going to the place of fire!
So my
question is:
are we satisfied with this dominant
interpretation
of the parable of the
sheep and goats,
or is there another perspective
which may open it up for
us in a different way?
The key
question here is,
who exactly are intended by the
phrase,
‘the least of these who are members
of my family’?
Is it the
poor of the world, or is some other group in view here?
Many
scholars are of the opinion that Matthew actually intends
this to refer to the family of
Jesus,
to Christians rather than the generic poor.
This would
certainly be consistent with elsewhere in Matthew’s gospel,
where the disciples of Jesus are
referred to as the ‘little ones’.
In chapter
23, Jesus says that ‘the greatest among you will be your servant’ (23. 11-18);
and in chapter 18, the disciples are
told
that they must become
like little children (18.3, 4);
while the warning is given that
anyone who causes a ‘little one’
to stumble in their
faith will be subjected to judgment (18.6, 10, 14).
And if this
is right, that in Matthew the term ‘little ones’
is used to refer to the family of
Jesus, to his disciples and followers,
it opens up
a whole different perspective
on our understanding of the sheep
and goats parable.
For a
start, it moves us away from the idea
that salvation directly correlates
with good deeds towards the poor.
The reason
I think this is significant,
is because the more popular reading
assumes that Christians
are wealthy and privileged enough
to offer help to those
less fortunate than themselves.
If the
‘little ones’ are the poor of the world,
the idealized division in humanity
is between privileged Christianity
and a needy underclass.
I think
that the reason the ‘generic poor’ interpretation has proved so persistent,
at least in Western Christianity,
is because all too often
Christianity is a privileged religion.
This is the
legacy of Christendom,
where the faithful did a deal with
powerful to mutual benefit,
and the established church was born.
And a
wealthy and powerful church will always be drawn
to an interpretation that allows
them to justify their privilege in the eyes of God
by giving out of their wealth to
help the least and the lost.
The
traditional reading is therefore a manifesto
for patriarchal top-down charitable
giving,
which has suited traditional western
Christianity very well.
However, if
the ‘little ones’ are not the poor of
the world,
but are the disciples and followers
of Jesus,
a more challenging and far less
comfortable interpretation begins to emerge.
In the
parable, the nations of the world are held to account
for how they treat the ‘little ones’
who are hungry, naked, thirsty,
sick, estranged, and imprisoned.
This is not
middle class Christianity,
this is the suffering church
following in the footsteps of its savior
who had no place to lay
his head,
and who died a
criminal’s death.
In terms of
Matthew’s original readers,
the persecuted minority of
Christians in the latter part of the first century,
struggling to keep faith in the face
of overwhelming opposition,
it makes
perfect sense for them to see themselves as the ‘little ones’,
suffering for the cause of the
gospel;
and in many
places around the world today,
a long way from our privileged
Western Christendom heritage,
Christians are similarly on the
receiving end
of being the least and
the last in society’s structures.
Interestingly,
all the characteristics of the suffering church in this parable:
being hungry, thirsty, estranged,
naked, sick, and imprisoned,
are also
listed by Paul in his second letter to the Corinthian church,
where he speaks in these terms of
his own sufferings
for the sake of the gospel of Christ
(2 Cor. 11.16-33).
It begins
to look as though Christians have no right to expect privileged treatment
at either the hands of the almighty or
the state,
no matter how faithful
they might have been.
We are not
rewarded with wealth and health
for our devotion, piety, or loyalty,
and any
privilege we may have is not ours by right;
which means it is not really ours at all.
At best it
is ours on trust;
but we have no claim to status or
honour.
In fact,
discipleship after the example of Christ
may well involve us learning that
the first shall be last,
and the last shall be
first (Matt. 20.16),
and that the greatest among us will
be the servant,
while all those who
exalt themselves will be humbled
and all who humble
themselves will be exalted (Matt. 23.11-12).
Can you see
what has happened in our reading of this parable?
As we have
reframed ‘the least of these who are members of my family’
away from referring to the poor of
the world,
and towards being a characteristic
of authentic discipleship,
we have
distanced ourselves from an approach to Christian charity
whereby we earn our salvation
through deeds of mercy
performed by wealthy
believers;
and we have
distanced ourselves from a theology
of privilege as a God-given reward
for faithful obedience.
Instead of
these, we have arrived at a place
where authentic Christianity is
found in the suffering church,
and
in our identification with the poor and the powerless.
And this
has the capacity to radically transform our engagement
with those who currently hungry,
naked, unwelcome, and unwell in our world.
No longer
do we throw them a gift from on high,
to secure our salvation and assuage
our consciences.
Rather, we
are called to draw alongside them,
in full knowledge that in other
places, and other times,
the body of Christ is to be found in
the gutters and prisons of the world.
We are
called to lay aside our superiority
and to meet the other as an equal;
as much a dearly loved child of God
s we are ourselves.
And this
equality of encounter opens
the possibility for a genuinely
transformatory relationship to develop.
Over the
last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking
at how we can and should develop
our church’s ministry to, and
engagement with, the vulnerable of our city.
In the
first sermon, on Toxic Charity, we saw how
a patriarchal, trickle-down approach
to charity
can end up making things
worse
by perpetuating the inequalities and
dependencies
that lead to
homelessness and disengagement from society.
In the
second sermon, last week,
we explored together what it might
mean
for us to bear one another’s
burdens,
and to discover the strength that
comes through mutual support.
Well, this
week, in our final sermon in this short series on charity,
I want us to realise that there is
simply no New Testament mandate
for one-way, top-down
charitable giving.
Through our
reconsideration of the parable of the sheep and goats,
we have seen how the key text used
to justify one-way giving
can actually call us to
something far more transformatory;
to an
equalizing of relationship
and a laying
aside of power and status,
so that a new basis for
engaging the poor can begin to emerge.
And what
comes into being from this is not charity,
it is reciprocity.
We have to
give up our isolation from the poor we are trying to help,
and instead to discover that what it
is to make ourselves vulnerable,
and to find ways of
integrating with the poor.
If we
perpetuate an ideology of offering service from on high,
we lose the truth of the gospel
and are in danger of making things
worse rather than better.
Our goal is
not to feed the hungry, or to clothe the naked,
it is to see people restored as
independent members of society,
integrated into the networks of
reciprocity that we ourselves benefit from.
Therefore
the goal of our attempts to help
must be to create networks of mutual
dependence,
rather than one-way giving which
perpetuates unequal dependencies.
Dawn and I
have been thinking long and hard about how,
in our different projects here at
Bloomsbury,
we can build in
reciprocity,
where people give as
well as receive;
and where any vestiges of a culture
of one-way giving
are transformed into
mutual, reciprocal relationships.
This may
not change the world, but it can begin to,
because all revolutions start small
and grow.
And what is
at stake here is very big indeed.
Our nation
is in a time of great transition.
From the privatisation of social
services and housing,
to the big and as yet
unanswered questions about immigration and Brexit,
we are going to need people who will
stand up
and offer a way of
engaging the poor and the vulnerable
that is
transformatory rather than punitive;
which raises people up,
rather than
keeping them in their place;
and which offers a way
out of the seemingly ever-widening gap
between the
haves and the have-nots.
This is a
societal problem, it’s a national issue,
and it goes far beyond the
individual.
So how will
our nation be judged, I wonder,
when the Son of Man comes in his
glory and all his angels with him?
The answer
to that may well depend, at least I part, on what we do next,
both individually and corporately.
A nation
that distances itself from its collective responsibility
towards the poor and the vulnerable,
and which
rolls back on commitments to, for example, universal healthcare,
sounds to me like a nation stoking
the fires of judgment.
And in such
contexts our wider community will need communities of faith,
where people keep faith in a
generous, loving, care-full God,
who cares for each person without
distinction.
So, are we
ready to be that gospel people,
will we be those who take the good
news
of the radical equality of the
gospel of Christ
and start living it into
being here, in the heart of our capital city?
Will we be
those who, in the name of Christ,
discover and share the joy that
comes
from participating in the renewal of
society,
one life at a time?
If so, then
all hope may not yet be lost,
and maybe God’s judgment,
that I am sometimes so
ready call down on,
can be justifiably deferred in the
interest of mercy and forgiveness.
