Seeing the Face of God
Chuck Wildman
West Parish, West Barnstable, MA
January 1, 2017
Matthew 25 :31-40 When was it that we saw you naked…hungry…imprisoned…and ministered to you?
I.
Happy New Year! And congratulations to all of us! We have arrived here on the first day of this new year. The Year of our Lord, 2017.
We’ve been through a lot to get here! The year just ended has not been easy for any of us. I dare say for anyone anywhere on earth.
Think about it. Close your eyes if that helps. Breathe, reflect…
(silence)
What was last year like for you? For this community, nation?
What was it like for families on Chicago’s South Side…Detroit…everywhere?
What about Barnstable…Cape Cod?
Long line at ABC- diapers, baby clothing, small toys
A few days before Christmas
Elsewhere- Refugee families by the thousands, on the move, hoping to escape war…yearning for a new start somewhere with peace and opportunity.
Following an ancient trail well worn by our ancestors.
We have emerged from a year of deeply disturbing images and words, gunshots and bombs…
To today’s blank page…A New Day washed by rain and snow and possibility
It’s like a have been traveling through a long, dark tunnel and…suddenly emerging into…
The brightness of possibility…the sweet smell of a new, crisp, clear world.
What will we do with it…this new chance?
What is our greatest yearning?
What do we most want from this new chance?
No, I’m not referring to New Year’s resolutions… Something deeper.
Where is our heart, yours and mine? What, when life is all said and done, do we crave?
Love, family, successful children and grandchildren, wealth.?
Go deeper..
Presbyterian author Frederick Buechner has said said that our deepest yearning is for Home..
With a capital “H”
German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a poem on New Year’s Day, 1945, from his Nazi prison cell, in which he included this verse:
Today, let candles shed their radiant greeting:
lo, on our darkness are they not thy light
leading us, haply to our longed-for meeting?
Thou canst illumine even our darkest night.
Calcutta’s missionary sister, Mother Teresa, from arguably the worlds worst slum, writes,
It is only when we realize our nothingness, our emptiness, that God can fill us with Himself. When we become full of God, then we can give God to others, for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.
…And this from a saint who confessed that, while serving the poorest of the poor, lived in a terrible darkness of the soul, longing to see the Light of God, the shape of the holy, without success…until much later.
II.
It is my contention that, deep down, we all long to see God and, by some miracle of grace, be forgiven and made whole…knowing then that our efforts at life matter.
That is the Light, Home, God’s filling of our soul with goodness.
In this life, here and now, when 2017 is still in diapers, we can begin.
Service is the key, getting out of ourselves in spite of whatever hinders and disables us…
To do acts of mercy and grace for others.
It ought to be no surprise, then, that today’s gospel text is assigned by lectionary writers as the gospel text for every New Year’s Day, every year!
Matthew 25 is about serving others and discovering we are serving Jesus, God’s own.
Scholars agree these are words from the Post-Resurrection Church, as believers sought to ground Jesus’ message.
This preaching became so central to understanding what Jesus was teaching about how we are to find life abundant, that it was included in the Canon.
Yes, it also includes judgment (which I conveniently left out our reading )
For we bring judgment upon ourselves if we fail to daily serve those in need. The judgment may be literal “outer darkness….” But it may feel like that….
…until, in the end, we experience God’s grace.
Serving shows us God’s Face, that for which we all yearn!
Serving tells us for sure that God is real and present in the here and now!
III.
No matter who are or what we have done, giving the cup of cold water to a thirsty stranger is to see the Face of God!
Visiting prisoners…
Counseling student
Pastoring congregations
Mentoring a young person
Providing AA
Never giving up on an adult child who struggles….
The Face of God has many shapes and hews, but is recognized by the heart!
That warm, sensitive feeling when we have mattered to another
That firm handshake we receive when we have given our all to an ethical business endeavor that provides good jobs and needed benefits to the community.
That tearful moment when all of our effort to help a child grow up feels deep inside like the most important venture in God’s world.
Knowing that, in UCC language, “no matter who we are or where we are on life’s journey, we are welcomed in God’s life and care….
Our self-centeredness checked for once, our fearfulness quieted into holiness.
For we are welcomed, not just because of who we are, but because who we are is a servant with good gifts to give.
The past is past…Out with the old year…in with this fresh-faced chance…
to work for justice and peace…giving our all as we are able…to the building of God’s realm on earth…
day by day!
The days ahead may be stormy, the actions of leaders, frightening or worse. Wars may continue to rage, refugees still on their roads to Hope…
In all that is ahead, may we keep on serving…generously, fretting less for ourselves, and ever more for others in need.
Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis days after WWII had officially ended. Still his witness of a life lived in the service of justice amidst unimaginable oppression has not been forgotten,
Nor his “Letters and Papers From Prison,” including that verse,
Today, let candles shed their radiant greeting:
lo, on our darkness are they not thy light
leading us, haply, to our longed-for meeting?
Thou canst illumine even our darkest night.
Amen.
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