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| A really cool stool given to me on Father's Day several years ago |
Matthew 25:31-46
This stool I have right here was a gift from my family. It was a Fathers Day gift several years ago. It is supposedly a Chiefs stool. I don't know which culture it comes from but apparently a leader of a tribe/community would have something like this and it is a symbol of his authority. It isn't the most comfortable thing though. It is a little too low and there is this metal work that takes away as much comfort as it adds design and beauty.
We, in the adult discussion group, have been talking for the past couple of weeks about Christmas and the best gifts, the worst gifts and the most appropriate gifts to give that demonstrate love and honor Jesus. Rather than being participants in a hyper-consumerist frenzy that ends in disappointment on or about December 26th every year, we have been exploring ways to make the celebration of the coming of the Savior a more intentional, more meaningful event. And more than that: Not just a day but the whole season can bee steeped in generosity that doesn't have to show it's self in meaningless spending but its a generosity that truly demonstrates the unbounded, unrestrained, unconditional love of god for us.
We were talking about specific gifts we had been given that were meaningful. I failed to remember one very important gift I received. It was a gift that produced in me so much gratitude I couldn't have expressed it adequately with words. What I received on one particular summer day in either 1992 or 1993 I can't exactly remember any more, was one that, though I don't remember the year I will never forget the gift it's self
Now you might expect me to tell about a time when I learned something from a beloved friend or relative that taught me a valuable lesson. Or perhaps I came to a realization about some truth of life through some hardship that I went through. Well, such examples are valuable and can be gifts to be cherished, this, example however is nothing like that. The gift I received was an actual object given to me with out any expectation of return.
It was a t shirt. A single brown cotton blend t-shirt. There were no words printed on the front of it. It didn't come from a particularly special person. I didn't receive it on a particularly auspicious occasion. Just a t-shirt. The thing is, is that the thing I needed most at that moment was indeed a t-shirt and when I needed it, it was given to me.
It was a hot-hot day in that summer of '92 or '93. I was in Grayling Michigan with my National guard unit. We were on a long movement, walking through the woods, ruck sacs full, up and down those hills trying to stay focused, trying to get to where we were going. We stopped. Someone was down. Someone in my unit was suffering from heat exhaustion. We were in too remote an area for an ambulance so we made a litter a stretcher and carried him to the nearest place where an ambulance could pick him up. We moved on. Hot and sweaty we pushed on. When the storms clouds rolled in we saw it as a welcome relief from the heat. When it started to rain we didn't even put our rain gear on because it felt so good. But that turned out to be a mistake. I would find out days later that the National Weather Service reported that the temperature that day dropped 40 degrees in less than 30 minutes. Now I don't know if it was 100 degrees and dropped to 60, or if it was 90 and dropped to 50, I just know that when you are wet, tired, hungry in 40 or 50 or even 60 degree weather it's cold. In fact one of our soldiers went into hypothermia. Sgt. Steed earned a lifesaving medal that day when he lent his own body heat to that down soldier while we waited for the med-evac helicopter to come. We were to far in the woods to carry him back to the point where an ambulance could get to him. We were all cold. I was shivering violently and uncontrollably. I could have been the next one to do down. Until one of my fellow soldiers handed me a dry brown t-shirt. I took of the wet one I had, put the dry one on. Covered it in a rain jacket. Instead fighting to keep my body temperature normal I was able to focus on the task at hand, which was getting out of the woods and going home. I felt such relief and such gratitude.
We serve a Great, Big God. That this great God uses small things to reveal himself to us. He didn't call the elite or the powerful to be his disciples, he called the outcasts and the not-good-enoughs. He wasn't born in a palace but in a barn.
God doesn't call us to to be the biggest and the best. God doesn't call us to draw attention to ourselves with the grand gesture. He calls us to offer water to the thirsty, visits to those who are sick and in prison, food to the hungry and might I add, a t-shirt to those who are cold and wet.
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| Does this look like a throne of a king? Perhaps. |
This is Christ The King Sunday. This is the last Sunday of the liturgical year. At the end of this year we are at the very edge of a new beginning. Next week we begin again a year with the season of Advent. Christ the King, bumped right up next to Christ the baby born in a barn to a teen-aged mom. The baby who lived under Roman occupation, the baby who would be a refugee in another country for a time. That baby would be come Christ the King. Our king! Jesus said, “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory?” I wonder what that will look like.
What will the throne of Jesus look like? Have you ever seen the movie Indiana Jones and the last Crusade? There is a scene in which Indiana Jones has to choose from dozens of goblets the one that belonged to Jesus during his earthly life. He bypassed all the big, bejeweled, and shiny Goblets in favor of a small simple cup. “The cup of a carpenter” he said. We serve a big God, we serve a powerful god. But God is a god of the small, the simple and the humble. Rather than big and shiny and bejeweled, I figure God's throne might look something like this Chief's stool. Simple and wooden.
We might be tempted to make the faith and to make the season about grand gestures and events and really great feelings. But Jesus says it's about giving a cup of water to the thirsty, some food to the hungry and taking care of the stranger.
So how is it with you today? Your King requires something of you. Mica 6:8 says, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? We can't say we never knew what we were supposed to do. Its right here in his Word. If you did or did not do it for the least of these who are members of his family you did or did not do it for Jesus. Simple as that. Would you pray with me?
