The Rev. Robert Lundquist Proper 29A 11/20/05 St Paul’s, Ft Collins

“Lord, when did we see you?”

From 1978 – 1982 I had a landlady in Knoxville. Her name was Lucy Nuesse. I was just out of college, and was fortunate to find a place to live with her some 500 miles from my parents’ home. I’m sure all of us have trouble describing an everyday saint in our lives – Lucy was generous, thoughtful and compassionate. She was very active in her church and in the Daughters of the King. She served for several years on the national board of the Daughters, a lay order in the Episcopal Church. When I knew her she was recently widowed from a navy admiral, so she had lived on different bases since before World War II. At each posting she became involved with the Red Cross, from knitting socks for sailors on up into the leadership. I always experienced her as faithful, prayerful, open and warm.

I had the opportunity to visit her in the early 1990’s. She was living in assisted care at the time. And though I had been told that she was suffering from some mental deterioration, it was still poignant and heartbreaking to actually see her. I realized right away that she’d lost the ability to speak clearly. But when I came into her room her face lit up, she stood up and hugged and kissed me on the cheek. It quickly became evident that she had no idea who I was. But a lifetime of grace had left its mark. She had so lived her life of faith that it transcended the loss of mind and memory. She continued to see Jesus in those around her. She saw Jesus unselfconsciously, with a reflexive compassion for others.

Lord, when did we see you?

The Evangelist Matthew makes the point in today’s reading that ministry to hurting people is the only basis for judgment. For the righteous it isn’t about some sort of earned grace, or a merit badge, or 200 hours of community service. It’s an attitude of what I think of as reflexive compassion, neither calculated nor showy. One might say that it is living faith rather than having faith.

Today is the last Sunday of our church year, a day we call Christ the King Sunday. Our scripture lessons of the past few weeks have pointed more and more clearly toward the end times, the final judgment, the time when Christ will come as Cosmic King. So it in this setting that we recall Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats. By way of context: in the Palestine of Jesus’ time shepherds would mix the sheep and the goats during the day for grazing. But at night they were separated, for goats need shelter from the cold, and sheep prefer to be outdoors. Sheep were more valuable, and thus got preferential treatment.

So we hear the story that is somewhat confused in who is doing the sorting – at first Jesus refers to the Son of Man, a figure cited in both the Incarnation and in the Passion narratives. Now often translated as “the Human One,” the term may indicate the perfected human as imagined by God in Creation. But in the parable the protagonist becomes a king with his subjects. The king identifies with the neediest of his people, and separates those gathered around him accordingly. The surprise is that the righteous were unaware that they were indeed serving their king! The key is that reflexive compassion, the attitude of love which guided their actions. Not because they sought reward or recognition, but because they recognized, they saw Jesus. The others? I don’t believe they were evil or malicious, simply clueless, un perceptive, unable to see.

A friend of mine once told me about working at a downtown homeless shelter. He came to know the clients by name. When he drove down the street, he no longer saw “bums,” or “homeless people,” he saw Al, John and Raymond. “At that moment,” he told me, “the category of “bum” simply ceased to exist for me.” Lord, when did we see you?

Perhaps the end of the concept of “us” and “them” is what heaven is about? I’ve always been struck by this illustration: It seems that in the afterlife everyone ends up in the same place, around an enormous banquet that stretches nearly endlessly from end to end. And it seems that everyone has the same handicapping condition – their elbows don’t bend. Their arms are stiff and straight as board. And affixed to one hand is a two-foot long spoon, grasped at one end (so it can’t be “choked up” like a baseball bat). So there is this magnificent food laid out before everyone, and of course everyone is famished. Now at one end of the table (the “hell” end) folks are going crazy trying to get food into their mouths! No amount of gymnastics and stretching gets even a morsel to the tongue. But they keep on trying. Down at the other end (the “heaven” end) everyone is feeding each other… Seeing Christ in the other.

“Lord, when did we see you?”

The response seems to go something like this: When you looked into the eyes of one of the least of my family, and responded with reflexive compassion and an attitude of love,

You did it to me.

May we, in the mystery of the Divine Presence, be given the grace to truly see.

AMEN

A Parish For All People!