Another provocative sermon from my theologically liberal friend Harry Cook. You don’t have to agree with his theology (I don’t at many points), but what he says about the Matthew 25 parable is very timely. Rowland.

A Triumph of Humanism

Harry T. Cook

11/23/08

Matthew 25: 31-46

If I ever I were to attend a huge sporting event and were a little more adventurous, I would try to smuggle into the stadium a gigantic banner with the legend: MATTHEW 25: 31-46. What one usually sees of that kind of thing is JOHN 3:16, as in “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that all that believe in him may not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16 has to do with what a god supposedly has done for you. The reference to the Gospel of Matthew has to do with what we should do for other human beings. Same Bible. Different, totally different religions.

The gospel lections of this liturgical year end, appropriately, with Matthew 25: 31-46. The text has all the force of a concluding movement of a symphony. Think Beethoven’s Ninth or Mozart’s 41st, the Jupiter. The listener knows when the finale is approaching and building to climax. It is that to which the work has been headed since the opening note or chord. Matthew begins his crescendo with the parable of the wedding banquet and its warnings about being prepared and the consequences of not being. The intensity builds with the parable of the five wise and the five foolish young women where again the issue is preparation and the consequence of not being. Time is marching on. Finally, the clock has run out, and it is now time to assess the results. If you have sought out the least of these with food when they were hungry, with water when they were thirsty, with clothing when they had none, with comfort when they were sick or company when they were in prison, then you have done what you should have done and should enjoy the reward of having done it, which is having done it.

If on the other hand you have done none of those things, then the consequence is that you have nothing to show for living, according to Matthew and Matthew’s Jesus.

Your reward is not having done what you should have done — should have done by virtue of your being human. Now is not the time to cry, “Lord, lord.” Now is not the time to make amends. Too late. The least of your sisters and brothers have died of starvation or thirst, have frozen to death from lack of raiment, have perished in sickness untreated, have withered away in prison from neglect. The clock has run out. Thus does the symphony ends on a joyous major chord or a somber minor one.

The staff paper, as the musicians call the sheets upon which composers compose, is blank save for the lines. We each get to pick the key, the time signature, the clef, the melody, the harmony and all things that make up a musical composition. We put the notes upon the staff paper, and what we have written ends up sounding like what we wrote. When the ensemble plays it, that is the composer’s reward. Or, putting it another way, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” The passage from Matthew before us today is saying that nothing matters except what we do unto others — especially whom he calls “the least of these my brethren.”

It does not matter what creed you mutter, what theology clogs your thinking process, what prayer book you scan, what you espouse by way of abstract doctrine. What matters is what you do. This is the triumph of humanism over creed and catechism. When our congregation several weeks ago heard a call for blankets for the homeless from our church’s social service agency in Detroit’s inner city, our altar was covered with them the next Sunday. Of that outpouring a parishioner said to no one in particular, “This is what it’s all about.” Some one else said the blankets were necessary, to be sure, but the object was to end homelessness. That’s certainly part of what it’s all about. For sure, though, the hokey-pokey of religious observance is not what it’s all about. It’s all about what human beings with resources do with them to the benefit of those with none. It is, in fact, what our President-elect was criticized for during the recent campaign: “Spreading the wealth.” That’s the triumph of humanism, the satisfying end of the symphony we compose with our proper work as ministers of grace and goodness. I’m talking here about a religion that asks, “What can we of this religion do for others?” as opposed to “What can our religion do for us?” The Epistle of James includes that well-known dispute about faith and works with the epistler’s challenge, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.”

Without works, faith — whatever that may be — is dead. Dead as one of the least of those who starved to death because we did not feed him, or died of thirst because we did not give him to drink, or froze to death because we did not clothe him. You don’t like this sermon? Blame it on the Bible and, in particular, Matthew 25: 31-46.

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© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.