As we continue to experience The Word of the Lord together, let us pray. Redeemer of the Oppressed, light us with your life and Spirit, so that we might be empowered to do your work in the world in the name of your Son Jesus Christ. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught, but if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, thou who art our rock and our redeemer, Amen.

This is the week for Great End #5. Hopefully, by the end of these sermons, you will know the 6 Great Ends. The 1^st is the Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind. The 2^nd, The shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God. 3, The maintenance of Divine Worship. Last week, #4, is the preservation of the Truth. Next week, #6, the last one, is the exhibition of the kingdom of heaven to the world. And today, good old #5, is the Promotion of Social Righteousness. And today’s is one of the hardest. Today is like, well, being a pastor. I hear everybody’s good pastor jokes, and everybody’s bad pastor jokes. The latter far outweigh the former. But there is an old one, about a pastor who was preaching. This one is going to feel a little like meddling, but it is what we as a church are about, according to great end #5, the Promotion of Social Righteousness. So, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Matthew. Listen for God’s Word for you today. Matthew 25.31-45. The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

Back in the day, the model of preaching was simple. 3 points. In fact, I remember hearing a sermon by one of our preachers when I was growing up. He was acting like he was finished. But I had only heard two points. I knew he wasn’t finished, and sure enough, he wasn’t. Now, however, that model, of give them 3 points, is not the only model people follow. In fact, the person who regularly fills your pulpit is not typically a 3 point preacher. And, so, it is with some sense of disgrace that I give you 3 points today. Maybe it is just because I don’t want to be the pastor I heard when I was a 10 year old, but I have avoided it, until today.

Point #1, (is that obvious enough for ya?): I hesitate to bring this up, because I don’t want to seem inappropriate in light of living in our world post 9/11. I am not against our society, I think it is the best one the world has got going. But I am acutely aware that our society is not perfect. I was 20 years old. I had just returned to Atlanta for the couple of weeks left in the summer before school started again. The stories of Brooklyn Jacksonville were fresh in my mind. And I sat there in Waffle House, talking to a cook about the land of opportunity, and asked, “Where was Johnny’s opportunity? If this is a fair land, why was Johnny not given those chances?”

You don’t have to go to Florida to find that those who have, money, power, success, fame, whatever, those who have get a fairer shake than those who don’t. Look at the court system. Those with money get the best defense lawyers, and get away with, well, lots of things. We’ve seen that, have we not. Those without money, well, they don’t get so fair a shake. We put on our blinders, we know that the world is not fair or righteous, but we assure ourselves, if we don’t look to close, we can ignore it. But all of us know, each and every one of us, the reality. Social righteousness does not reign today. There are enough natural resources to feed everybody in the world, yet people go hungry and starve every day. There is something wrong. And we know it. If we’d just look outside our blinders, we’d see it, and so we’d rather not look.

The natural reaction is point 2. The natural reaction is to get overwhelmed one of two ways. The first way to get overwhelmed is to simply realize that there is so much that is wrong, one person will never be able to fix it all. How can we work for social righteousness? It seems so far from where we are now! The second way to get overwhelmed is to get jaded. How do I know which homeless people are truly needy, and which are running those scams that I see on the news? And the response that follows is to just not give, knowing that since some people do scams, I risk being burned. Better safe than sorry, you know.

And here is the call of Jesus, which is point numero three. Jesus calls us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. Jesus doesn’t say, “Well, the problem is too big, so forget about fixing it.” If we don’t work on fixing the socially unjust world, who will? Tracy Chapman song. Nor does Jesus say, “Well, don’t worry about helping others, because some of them are scam artists.” If anything, Jesus was out of control with his helping of others, whether or not they deserved it, or whether or not they were thankful. Jesus gave with reckless abandon. Might we get taken advantage of? Certainly. But I would rather do 9 good deeds and have the tenth take advantage that do nothing at all. Heck, Jesus would rather us do 10 good deeds, get suckered in 9 of them, and still get 1 in, than be so “careful” that we do nothing.

In the truest sense, I don’t need to preach to you about Matthew 25, Jesus does a good enough job of that himself. We know our world needs revamping. We know that. It can seem impossible, overwhelming, dangerous. But Jesus calls us to do it anyway. Jesus is our best example of not caring about wasted gift. Jesus died for everyone, yet clearly, not everyone understands that. But Jesus still died, not because enough of us would get it, but because some of us would. Let us go into the world with the same attitude, that helping is its own reward. Amen.