Sunday, November 26, 2017 | 8:00, 9:30, and 11:00 a.m.

When Did We See You?

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 95
Ephesians 1:15–23
Matthew 25:31–46

If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

Aboriginal activists’ group
Queensland, 1970s

Today’s Gospel passage is so familiar to many of us that I was afraid you would just respond, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We already know all that.”

We already know God calls us to love our neighbors, especially those in need, and we already do that as a church. We have had ministries with low-income people for decades. In fact, some of the language of this parable—“the least of these”—was part of the mantra our former pastor, Elam Davies, used in the 1960s and ’70s for the focus of this church’s ministry. Dr. Davies led Fourth Church’s mission to be for “the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely.” Many of our current outreach ministries were begun during his tenure.

And those ministries have expanded. Our Meals Ministry served more than 36,000 meals last year. The Chicago Lights Elam Davies Social Service Center stocks a community food pantry, daily gives away clothing, and helps people find stable housing and employment. We have a new prison ministry to visit inmates. We keep our sanctuary open all day, every day, so people can come in off the streets to a safe, warm space to rest and pray. The Chicago Lights Urban Farm employs and teaches job skills to at-risk young adult African American men. The Chicago Lights Dance Academy provides youth a way to build their self-confidence and develop their talent. The church manse is used as a drop-in center for young women escaping from sex trafficking. Our showers are available on a weekly basis for the homeless. In the past two years we have helped resettle three refugee families. Our Deacons befriend guests at Sunday Night Supper and pray with them. Our Stephen Ministers reach out to those going through difficult times. And there’s more.

In many ways, this church embodies Jesus’ teaching that the most important thing we can do in life is love our neighbors in need. Many new members say they join Fourth Church because of our mission outreach. That is certainly why I am here. Your rich legacy of serving the community is why I came here to work with you. Your commitment to continue caring for others is why I stay.

So, yes, in many ways, this church can say, “Yeah, we got this.” I am grateful we can say that.
Except . . . Except when we dig a bit deeper, we find in this Gospel story of the last judgment that it is not individuals or churches that are gathered before the throne of the master. It is all the nations. The nations. Uh oh. When it comes to our nation, we cannot say, “Yeah, we got this.” If the separating of people into sheep and goats is based on how their nation treats people who are most vulnerable, we are in trouble here in the United States.

Even though our national unemployment rate has been declining for the past eight years, our church and Chicago Lights have seen a big increase in the past year of low-income persons seeking our support. Sometimes the Social Service Center staff sees as many as eighty people in one day.

Many social service agencies in Illinois have reduced or stopped services due to a drastic reduction in state funding. Mental health services are scarce. People are evicted from public housing if they have been formerly incarcerated or a family member is caught using drugs. A single hospital stay may wipe out whatever savings a family may have had. There is a lack of affordable housing in Chicago. Immigrant families increasingly fear having their only breadwinner deported. The federal administration recently ruled that the 59,000 Haitians who were given temporary visas to live in the United States since the 2010 earthquake devastated their home country will be sent back soon, even though Haiti has yet to recover from that disaster and others since. The number of refugees permitted to enter the United States has been drastically reduced. The proposed federal tax reform bill would dramatically cut funding and programs that help keep people out of poverty. Bread for the World, a faith-based advocacy organization, reports that, if passed, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R. 1) would end the Child Tax Credit for 3 million children in low-income immigrant families. The bill would also eliminate the New Market Tax Credit, which has done more to fight food deserts than any other program and has created more than 750,000 jobs in low-income communities. The bill would also make deeper cuts to vital safety-net programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. We hear a lot of commentary on the impact of the tax reform proposal on corporations and middle class but not on the poor. We have to ask whether, in God’s eyes, we as a nation are truly caring for the most vulnerable in our midst.

In reaching out to others, we are called not only to care for individuals but to work to address the root causes of poverty in our nation. The Community Renewal Society recently held a training seminar at Fourth Church on how to work for justice through public advocacy. We learned about systemic power and how to make real change.

We also learned about the difference between charity and justice. Charity is directed at the effects of injustice. It does not change the status quo but focuses on the immediate needs of individuals. In charity, the donors hold the power in relation to recipients. Justice, on the other hand, is directed at root causes of injustice. It challenges the status quo, with a focus on changing systems, and hopefully justice is worked for in solidarity with those who suffer.

In our training, our teacher asked participants to write on individual Post-it Notes each of the ways our church serves those in need. We then placed our Post-it Notes on a continuum of whether our ministries are justice-oriented or charity-oriented. Seeing where all our Post-it Notes were placed made a striking visual statement. Ninety-five percent of our Post-it Notes were on the charity side. Only 5 percent were on the justice side in our response to poverty.

Clearly our charity efforts are needed and important, but it is crucial that we strengthen our work for justice, so that the long-term systemic roots of poverty will be addressed in our nation.

The story of the last judgment also challenges us to examine how we see others who are materially poor. No one likes to be categorized or seen as anything other than a full person. That is the downside of the phrase “the least of these.” It diminishes the capabilities, resourcefulness, and dignity of those we put in that category. Years ago a news article about Fourth Church misquoted Elam Davies as saying we serve “the least, the last, the lonely, and the losers.” No one wants to be seen as a loser—or as the least, or the last, for that matter.

This was brought home to me a decade ago when I went to Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. I went with a small group of white citizens from the United States. We didn’t go there to do any service projects but to live with several Haitian families in their homes in a poor, rural village and to let their lives have an impact on us.

One of our biggest learnings came from our Haitian host, Harry Nicholas. Harry said, “When you look at someone, please see them without materialistic eyes. Don’t see whites and think money, and don’t see blacks and think poor.” He also said, ”It is a very big thing that you come to what is called the ‘Third World’ not to do anything but to build person-to-person relationships. That is a 180 degree difference. It is a big deal that you come without a project to do, because historically Westerners have come to do for us, not learn from us. To have people with economic power, whose worldview is North American, come to learn from a social context different from your own is revolutionary. Eight million Haitians live in this country. We have feelings, reason, ideas, hopes. The difference between us and you is that we have a shortage of material things. Unfortunately, we Haitians have been taught to think that we are people of little worth, with no gifts to offer others.”

“We have 300 years of history as a nation that began in slavery,” he went on. “Throughout our history, outsiders have either come in as colonizers, as church people to do good works, or as nongovernmental agency workers. Such interventions say, ‘We know what is best for you, and you can’t do that for yourself.’ Their projects often are done without any understanding of the social and economic context of Haiti. They tend to be short-term, not in partnership with the Haitian people, nor supportive of the Haitian people’s initiatives. There is a big difference between ‘help’ offered as if a person couldn’t do anything at all and a ‘giving a hand’ offering to assist what another is already doing.” Harry went on, “The way you Americans are now coming to be with us, and not do for us, brings us hope for healing from our long and painful history between the black race and the white race.”

Most North Americans who travel to Haiti are white, with many more material resources than Haitians. They engage in well-intentioned projects, wanting to relieve pain caused by poverty—others’ pain and their own. But their efforts can actually diminish the dignity and self-development of the people they seek to serve, and they do little to advance justice, to address the root causes of poverty.

This is captured well in a poem by Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche Community in France:

Everywhere around us
We see two worlds
     The world of misery
     the world of those who wait
the world of those trying to get out
Then the other world
the world of riches
the world of those shut up
in harshness and security
     Between these two worlds
     a huge wall
     which prevents direct contact
     meeting, communion
sometimes there may be exchanges
     but never any direct contact
The comfortable
throw money
or things
over the wall
but the last thing they want

is to see or touch.
They send roses
They don’t give them
they throw them
over the wall
faded roses almost dead
but they look like a present

“What does it matter?
They’ll make them happy
those others
those poor creatures
on the other side.”

It helps us believe
we are superior
and makes others believe the same
because we are the kind of people
     who are able to help
     our inferiors . . .

(Jean Vanier, Be Not Afraid, pp. 1–2)

With charity, there is always a lopsided power dynamic.

For visitors to Haiti, almost everyone in the community there looks uniformly poor. Visitors can’t see who is calling the shots or know that this woman now begging just lost her land to a local big shot with fraudulent papers. Rarely do visitors arrange for conversations with Haitian people about local social and economic structures that keep people poor and hungry. Little do they learn how military interventions and presence by the United States in Haiti have historically contributed to a loss of dignity and power for the Haitian people.

It is important in our work for justice and compassion that we listen and learn from those we seek to serve and that we work in partnership with them for justice.

The staff of the Chicago Lights Elam Davies Social Service Center know this. They meet with many of our guests personally. They learn their names and hear their stories. They let the guests guide the conversation and tell the staff what they want or need, not the other way around. The staff remembers that no one likes to be categorized or feel worthless or be invisible. They believe in their guests and honor their dignity and initiative.

It is also significant that our Social Service Center staff are asking critical questions. Those questions include, What impact can we have on the bigger picture—the systems that cause and perpetuate poverty and homelessness? How can we engage in advocacy efforts alongside our guests to raise public awareness and work for change?

We should not leave those questions to the staff of our Chicago Lights Social Service Center alone to answer. These are questions all Christians are called to answer. These are questions our nation needs to answer. And God will hold us accountable for how we answer.

Just writing a check (though we do need your money) or just hoping our elected officials will do the right thing isn’t enough. Letting the Deacons or Stephen Ministers or social workers reach out isn’t enough. God calls all of us to address injustice and alleviate the suffering of others.

“When did we see you?” asked both the sheep and the goats. “Lord, when was it we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison?” “When did we see you?” They didn’t know that when we see neighbors in need, we are seeing the face of Christ in each one. And that upon seeing, we are to care. To care for others in ways that honor their dignity. To care by working with them for justice so all of us can live the life God desires. When you reach out in these ways, you are loving Christ himself. When we reach out in these ways, we can truly say, “Yeah, we got this.”

Amen.