Jesus and the Suffering.

Matthew 25:31-46.

I.

            One of the things that amazes me the most about the Lord is that he lives in the real world.  By that I mean that he has little patience with theories, or even hopes and dreams about how life should be.  Jesus is direct and personal.  His ministry is situational – and by that I mean that he addresses human beings in concrete and immediate situations.

            Jesus has little to do with anything we would call philosophy.  He doesn’t even really preach any theological doctrines.  He doesn’t care about theory, or statistics.  His main theme is the Kingdom of God, but this is not a far-off, someday thing.  The Kingdom of God is something he says is to be realized here and now in our actions and relationships.  The Kingdom of God is about living in the present.

            I find this incredibly refreshing in our time, which is one of great abstraction and disconnection.  So many of us exist in imaginary dream-worlds of our own construction that we have lost touch with the real world containing real people who have real suffering.

            Too often we cultivate in our minds a theoretical vision of the way the world should be, and then try and force the real world into our fantasy.  Perhaps we all do this to a degree.  Few of us live with the directness and immediacy of Jesus, of course.  But often we are so consumed with and controlled by our hopes and desires that we are living in denial of the real world.  And when we are faced with a person in need we have to concoct some reason for it according to our delusion.  We blame the person or make excuses for them.  We elaborately explain how this person’s poverty or disease really doesn’t mess up our theory of how the world should be.  Or we find a scapegoat to blame for messing up a world that should conform to our theories and desires.

            Someone once noted how difficult it is to get someone to understand something when their livelihood depends on them not understanding it.  Sometimes it’s not one’s livelihood but simply their self-image, or interior picture of the way the world should be.  And if you challenge this delusion they are mortally offended and can even get violent.  At least it can turn into an argument over the data and statistics, with one saying, “Well even though this person may be suffering, there’s a lot of other people who are not suffering,” or whatever.

            Jesus has no time for any of that.  When he encounters hungry people he feeds them.  When he encounters disease, he heals.  When he encounters possessed people he liberates them.  He welcomes the excluded.  He forgives sinners.  He empowers the powerless.  And he does this all unconditionally.  He doesn’t ask if anyone is worthy; their past behavior doesn’t matter.  He is unconcerned with their economic status, political views, or religious practices or beliefs.  All he sees is the person in need and he addresses it then and there.

II.

            I sometimes hear from a friend of mine who denies global warming.  Usually this happens on Facebook.  He is able to dredge up all kinds of obscure statistics disproving climate change.  Aside from his having to descend into arcane and sometimes bizarre conspiracy theories, he appears to think this is all about measurements and math. 

            The temptation for me is to counter this with my own scientific statistics and data.  In fact he’s always inviting me to come back at him with contrary information.  And sometimes I do.  And we go round and round with data and interpretations until one or both of us gets bored.           

            But the Lord Jesus would not engage in this argument over hypotheses, data, and statistics at all.  Jesus has very little interest in the “why” of things.  That’s where he is so different from us and our standard ways of thinking.  We would ask, “Well, why does that person have leprosy?”  “Why can’t that woman stand up straight?”  “Why did the girl die?”  Because we think that once we know why then we can fix it.  But Jesus is able to fix things directly, without having to know why, without messing with causes and effects. 

            “Why” is about blame.  Jesus is unconcerned with blame.  He simply addresses the pain, the disability, or the need facing him in the particular individual in a particular moment.

            Jesus would not get into a discussion of whether the earth’s atmosphere is warming, and if it is, whose fault it is.    He would first of all help people suffering from increasingly violent and erratic weather.  He would be with people in their pain and loss.  He would heal.  He would restore lives.        

            And, at the same time, at least as importantly, he would continue to walk on the earth in an exemplary non-violent, open, simple, gentle way.  And he would teach others to do the same. 

            The idea of Jesus blowing the top off of a mountain so as to extract the coal, or supervising the incredibly expensive and toxic process of fracking, or doing anything so arrogant and self-righteous as drilling a hole into the earth, sucking the oil out of it, refining it, and selling it for a profit, at untold cost in pollution and hard labor, is inconceivable to me.  I don’t even think Jesus would drive a car… not even a Tesla! 

            I just don’t see Jesus engaging in a violent, selfish, greed-driven, destructive, profit-making approach to anything at all.  I don’t see Jesus treating anything in such an objectifying, instrumental, callous, calculating, careless, and attacking manner, where the point is to break things – including the earth and people – so we can suck the life and value out of them. 

III.

            And Jesus will say quite clearly that living in a certain way does have actual consequences.  If we exist according to our fantasies of how the world ought to be, which is to say, if we make an idol out of our imaginary universe, and when that puts us at a variance, opposition, and contradiction against the world as God created it, then that generates a lot of friction that inevitably results in disaster and increased suffering.  The equation is: idolatry leads to injustice which leads to catastrophe.  And it happens over and over again in the Bible and in history. 

            It’s not that complicated.  God made the world a certain way; if you choose to live some other way, don’t be surprised if that doesn’t work out very well for you.  And if whole societies and civilizations choose to exist in a manner that contradicts God’s goodness, then the consequences are that much more comprehensive.  Just ask Pharaoh.  Just ask the rulers of any Empire that fell, as they all necessarily do and will.

            Jesus has no glee or satisfaction in pointing this out.  He weeps over Jerusalem because he knows its fate.  God reminds us in Ezekiel that God takes no delight in the death of anyone.

            And Jesus’ response to catastrophe, as witnessed by the church over the centuries, is to minister to those wounded and harmed in the consequences.  There is no sense of leaving people to suffer even if we conclude that they deserved what they got.  There is no sense in the Scriptures of Christians being raptured into heaven while the world screams in agony.  Christians have always followed the Lord’s example and stayed with people in their pain.

            Jesus certainly doesn’t abandon the world.  He intentionally bears the pain and death doled out by the world’s authorities.  On the cross he identifies with the suffering of all the scapegoats and criminals, all the victims of what the powers-that-be insist is justice, but really has nothing to do with God’s justice, but is really vindictiveness, cruelty, and retribution.  On the cross, Jesus expresses God’s solidarity with the tortured and murdered.

            And here he identifies with the suffering of broken people.  And he judges us, everyone, not by our theories, theologies, philosophies, statistics, ideas, or even our beliefs.  But by how we ministered to those in need.  Period.

            As in his ministry, the parable about the Last Judgment does not indicate anything about the quality of lives lived by those who were hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, or in prison.  Jesus doesn’t care about the why.  He only cares about the fact of their suffering.  And that is the criterion by which the whole world is judged.  With the just going off to eternal life, and the unjust… not.

            The way to life, apparently, is to give life, healing, blessing, service, food, drink, clothing, hospitality, and our time and presence, to people who need it the most.  With no distinction between needing and deserving.

IV.

            Jesus says to live according to the way the world truly is.  The way God created the world: in love, justice, peace, goodness, and beauty.  Even when everyone else seems to think the world is a violent dog-fight arena with scarce resources that have to be fought over and exploited, still we, the disciples of the Lord, are called to live the truth.  The world of greed and violence is a lie.  We are people of blessing no matter what.  And we go precisely to the places and people where there is the most need.  With the Lord Jesus Christ, we are in solidarity with the victims.

            The real world is one of abundance, where there are more than enough resources for all.  It is one of sharing, and community, and mutual participation, and respect for all of life, and profound thanksgiving and joy.

            And I think Jesus is also saying that if there are enough sheep who live like this – in gentleness, peacemaking, generosity, hospitality, and healing – then “the Kingdom prepared for [them] before the foundation of the world,” will be realized here in this world that God made.  In Revelation, John sees a time when “the kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Messiah.  And he shall reign forever and ever.”

            In the Beatitudes, Jesus proclaims that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor in spirit, and the gentle inherit the earth… I don’t think these are two different places or two different groups of people.  But the more we reflect and express Jesus’ unconditional love in our own lives, the more God’s saving Presence becomes real in our world.  This world.

            This is where we are – where the church is – at our best.  When we are most effective and faithful in our discipleship, we are casting our lot with the broken losers of the world: the sick, the alien, the imprisoned, the poor, the hungry and thirsty, the shamed and defeated, the failures, the disabled, and the rejected.  And we are serving them directly.  Without self-serving schemes that only bring resources to the needy indirectly, as a result of some other social or economic experiment.  Like “trickle down”….

V.

            And we do this in innocence and freedom.  Both the sheep and the goats ask Jesus, “When did we see you?”  Both groups were responding to people, unaware of the implications or the consequences.  We at least now have this warning and encouragement from Jesus.  We at least now have no excuse.  We know where and in whom we will see him.  We know very simply and directly how to receive eternal life.

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