“As you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”
Matthew’s strong and disturbing words are apocalyptic. They are part of what is sometimes called the Matthaean apocalypse. The opposite of apocryphal, which is to say, the things that are hidden, apocalypse refers to what is unveiled, unhidden. As such it belongs to an important and fundamental feature of the season and of the Christian religion, namely, revelation. God makes something known to us about himself but also about ourselves. Apocalyptic writings especially belong to the revealing of things in this world as seen from the viewpoint of God, from a standpoint of ultimate judgment. This cannot not be disturbing; neither can it be ignored. It is powerful stuff.
The words of Matthew are meant to challenge us and to make us reflect on our lives in relation to God and to one another. They are meant to make us think more deeply about the radical meaning of Christ’s coming, the Advent of Christ.
Advent signals the coming of God towards us in a variety of ways: his coming as Judge and Saviour; his coming in Word and Sacrament; his coming as the Babe of Bethlehem and the Christ of Calvary; his coming in the flesh and in the many acts of kindness, random or otherwise, in human lives. Judgment is inescapably part and parcel of the Advent, whether that judgment is looked at from the standpoint of the endtime, a kind of final or last judgment, or as an ever-present judgment. Indeed, the two are very closely intertwined. For this ‘last judgment’, as it were, sounds a very strong and convicting note of judgment for all of us right now. A kind of moral imperative arises out of this apocalyptic vision.
The challenge has to do with how we have acted towards one another, towards all the forms of humanity in our midst and in the larger world from which we cannot escape. We are all very much members one of another in the so-called global village, though that is but a small part of what it means to be “members one of another in the body of Christ”, which is cosmic and universal, embracing the multitudes of generations before us. We are inescapably neighbours to everyone in the whole of our suffering world. The question is not, it seems to me, what can we do so much as what do we do? Something or nothing? And what are the principles which animate our actions? These are the questions which occupy our imaginations, whether globally, as in Copenhagen this week, or locally, in our daily lives here in Windsor.
What gives this challenge a heightened necessity is the inescapable connection between our actions towards one another in the human community and our actions towards God. That is the power, I think, of this passage and the glory of the Advent season; our actions towards one another are bound up with our actions towards God. “As you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”. And, of course, the corollary is also present. “As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me”. Therein lies the difference between the sheep and the goats in Christ’s parable of ultimate judgment.
It has altogether to do with seeing Christ in all of the little ones, Christ in all of the suffering ones, Christ in all of the wounded and diseased ones, Christ in all of the sick and dying ones, whether they are suffering from cancer, from aids, from plagues, from famines, earthquakes, floods or storms, whatever. The Advent of Christ means nothing less than his being with us in the midst of the storms and tempests, of whatever form, in our world and day.
This is, I think, the ultimate meaning of Christ’s Advent. He comes to enter into the human condition. He comes into the mess of our world.
But to what end? To add to the mess? To become another casualty in the endless story of our sin and shame? of our violence and degradation? of our destruction and desolation? of our despair and fearfulness? No. He comes to address the sufferings of the world; he is, most profoundly, “the Word made flesh”. He comes from without – for there is no cause, no principle from within our wounded and broken world to make it whole again. But he comes to enter into our world and to speak to it from within. He comes to bring salvation.
That is the wonderful note sounded by Isaiah. “Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you”.
What does that salvation mean? Isaiah goes on to say what it means. It means the healing of our broken and wounded humanity: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dumb speak. There is even the sense of the cosmic dimension in this salvation, “the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom”, light and life come to the barren darkness of our wilderness world. In some sense, these are all the things which we heard about last Sunday in Jesus’ response to John’s question, “Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?” to which Jesus replied,
Go and show John again, what things ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.
Exactly. But the emphasis in Matthew is something more; in a way, it is the realization of those things in our lives. What he presents to us are known theologically as ‘the works of corporal mercy’. They are, traditionally, seven in number, six of which are directly present in this passage: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, taking in the stranger, visiting the sick, ministering to prisoners, and lastly, and by extension from these, burying the dead.
These are all works done in the body for the body and by the body, body being understood both literally and metaphorically. The word corporal pertains to the body as in corpus which literally means body, hence corpse, or corps in a military sense, but more suggestively, there is the understanding of ourselves as members of the Corpus Christi, the body of Christ, nourished and sustained by the sacrament, itself the Corpus Christi, the body of Christ, which compels us to lives of service and sacrifice as the Corpus Christi, the body of Christ.
The works of corporal mercy are ultimately rooted and grounded in something more than just a heartfelt impulse and assertion. They are rooted and grounded in the radical meaning of the Advent. God’s reaching down to us requires our reaching out to one another. It is part of what Isaiah calls “the way of holiness.”
Isaiah sounds the prophetic note of the purpose of God’s coming: the restoration of our wounded and broken humanity, the blossoming into life and joy of a dark and fearful world. The wilderness becomes paradise. But Matthew recognizes the moral demand which belongs to this coming of God. It is this. We are engaged with the God who has engaged us by virtue of his coming to us.
Everything points to Christ, even as John the Baptist points not to himself but to Christ in the great gospel for this day, the gospel of the record or witness of John. He points to the one who comes, “Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”. Only in Christ can we hope to be with the sheep and not the goats.
“As you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church
Advent IV, ’09