A Fourth Church Sermon by Abbi Heimach-Snipes

Sunday, April 7, 2019 | 4:00 p.m.

Lenten Sermon Series: Following Jesus through the Gospel of Matthew

Abbi Heimach-Snipes
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 23:31–46

I have a confession to make. I struggle with perfectionism. When I hear our scripture and note the bone-rattling juxtaposition of the sheep and the goats, the righteous and the wicked, my perfectionism radar flares and my mind races: Tell me what to do Jesus! Tell me what to do, so I can be right.

This problematic drive to be right and perfect gets in the way of the point of the scripture: How God wants us to respond to the world’s needs. I admit to getting hung up on the judgment.

In isolation, this text’s judgment can be daunting. Taking a step back, though, and looking at the location of the text in the book of Matthew, we see that it’s essentially Jesus’ final teaching before Matthew shifts into the story of Jesus’ death. It’s the “If you haven’t understood me yet, let me make it plain”talk. When the Sermon on the Mount teachings didn’t hit home for you, when the healings left you baffled, when the parables just didn’t make sense, Jesus said, “Wake up. Feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, support the sick, visit the prisoner. If you can do this, great! Wonderful! You can inherit the kingdom of God! If not, then eternal punishment for you!” It’s an attention-grabber, and if we haven’t gotten Jesus’ decentering gospel message yet, than our bones should be rattlin’.

We’re in the season of Lent, when we turn inward and reflect on how God calls us. Many of us take up practices that seek to move us closer to God. It’s a time of regrounding and of remembering Jesus on his journey to the cross. This Lenten season provides a lens of reflection with which we can apply today’s scripture.

What gets in the way of our following the Matthew 25 teaching? Today, I’m discussing three things that prevent us from following the gospel demand of Matthew 25—three dominant values we learn in our culture and institutions, three dominant values that do sit on a spectrum and do have a counterpoint to draw on for direction.

The first point that gets in the way of our following Matthew 25: Individualism. When I get hung up on the judgement of this text and worry about being right, I make the scripture about me. I become too individually focused when, in fact, Jesus addresses “all the nations” in verse 32. The message is not just about us as individuals; it’s about how our nation, how our systems and structures respond to the world’s needs. It’s about how the gospel demands we respond collectively.

The second is a scarcity mentality. There’s not enough time. There are not enough resources. We don’t have what it takes to make a difference. When these worries consume us, have we forgotten already Jesus’ message of abundance? When Jesus and the disciples found themselves with five loaves of bread and two fish and five thousand people to feed, somehow they found a way. Communion reminds us of Christ’s abundance. Every time we feast at the Communion table we remember that indeed there is enough for everyone and we are enough. We are imperfect and still called to share the gifts we do have for the world’s needs.

Third: False dichotomies: either/or, right/wrong. What is right and what is wrong is not always simple. In a world of injustice, the solutions are never clear and simple. Freeing ourselves from the impossible task of perfection opens possibilities where we can learn from our mistakes and keep trying again.

Now I could preach this all day, but it doesn’t hit home without an example. Former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and mentor of mine, Rick Ufford-Chase, tells a story in his book Faithful Resistance. Rick was in his twenties serving in a volunteer year at the US–Mexican border in Tuscon, Arizona. At the time, our nation was facing an immigration crisis in which thousands of migrants were fleeing violence and poverty in their Central American homes, seeking stability and safety in the US, not unlike now. Instead of following our own inviting refugee policies in the US, our government responded by deporting migrants, sending them back into the violence they were fleeing. Rick’s volunteer group visited the Border Patrol to learn about their perspective, and he was struck by how friendly and relatable one of the agents was. This man said he was just doing his job. The next site they visited was at Southside Presbyterian Church. Rick talked to the pastor at the time, John Fife, about this tension in seeing a good person follow deathly policies and John said:

You might as well figure it out now, Rick. The evil that we confront in our time is not “bad people.” In fact, I don’t know anyone who gets up each morning thinking about how they can screw up the world. The real evil in our time, the one we have to watch out for, is what happens to good people who allow themselves to be co-opted into bad organizations or systems that oppress others. Every one of us is caught in that bind. Some of us spend our lives resisting it, others seem totally unaware, and still others actually make our livelihood by carrying out the mechanisms of those institutions that oppress people.

John’s explanation breaks down the false dichotomy of judgement that can be crippling, but it also implicates everyone in how we respond to injustice. If systems and institutions often co-opt us into perpetuating oppression, thus creating the scenarios for hungry people, hostility toward foreigners, isolated sick and imprisoned people, then we need a collective response.

Southside Presbyterian Church, this same church that impacted Rick, continues to be a leader in a collective church response to immigration injustice—how we welcome the stranger. As they learned from the leadership and experiences of undocumented immigrants, Southside saw how their building could become an invaluable resource for someone fighting to stay home, united with their family. An individual could see this as a hopeless crisis, but a church institution has more power in a community than one person. A scarcity mentality could lead someone into a cycle of despair, asking, “How can we make a difference?” But Southside saw abundance in their community. They provided sanctuary for individuals—a room of their own, around the clock accompaniers who were there in solidarity, daily prayer vigils, a media campaign to gain attention and leverage in helping individuals gain power to stay in the US.

I once heard Rick share that in the beginning when they first became a sanctuary church, Southside didn’t really know what they were doing. But they took each baby step toward learning with a sense of abundance. What would someone need to make our church a home? Well, they’ll need a place to bathe for one thing, so they built a shower. Each action with a step at a time.

From the breaking down of false dichotomies to a multifaceted approach, from an individual mindset to a communal one, from scarcity to abundance, the Matthew 25 demand becomes possible. So possible, in fact, that the national Presbyterian church has a focus on Matthew 25 right now, calling upon congregations to particularly focus on building our capacity for change to help eradicate poverty and dismantle racism. Fourth Church joins in this effort with the work of our Racial Equity Council, which is currently doing an audit of our church to better learn where we, this place, are complicit in racism. This audit will inform the direction of change we take to become a more inclusive and antiracist church where all truly can feel welcomed.

Yesterday I attended an antiracism training that Fourth Church hosted for our new officers who will be rotating on to our Boards of Deacons, Trustees and Session. If you’re not familiar with Presbyterian language, these are different boards that form our church leadership. At the training I was reminded by one of our trainers that Jesus wasn’t nice all the time. If Jesus was really as warm and fuzzy and sanitized and nice as we want him to be, would we really feel the sense of urgency and need to act in transformative ways for the deep needs of the world? It’s going to take more than nice acts of charity to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, take care of the sick, and visit the prisoner. The Matthew 25 wake-up call is about nothing short of transformation but never about perfection.

I believe in a God that sees God’s self in you and me; in the hunger of a starving person, the loneliness of a prisoner, the need of a stranger. God is angry about injustice. God hurts with people’s pain. And in the saving grace where God knows us, loves us, feels with us, God calls us out into the world for nothing short of transformation.

So, are our bones-rattlin’ yet? Are we ready for the ride into Jerusalem? Jesus is ready to take up his cross. Will we follow? Amen.