St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, November 20, 2011

Downtown Jesus – Rev. David Mundy

Psalm 100 Matthew 25:31-46

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During the past few months many of you have heard about what the Bowmanville ministerial describes as a community meal. The Gathering Place as we have named it happens once a month and while it takes place here at St. Paul’s it really is a collaborative effort amongst a number of local congregations.

The Gathering Place is not a soup kitchen even though that is the way it has been described in the media. This is a sit-down meal where the guests are served with the same dishes we would use to present food to any other group. The tables and the hall are decorated to offer a welcoming atmosphere and often there is someone on hand to play the piano during the meal. This is all in keeping with The Gathering Place which says:

Within the Spirit of Christ’s hospitality, The Gathering Place provides meals without cost, served with dignity and compassion to anyone who is in need and/or is interested in building healthy relationships and connections with the people in our community.

In other words, if you come we will feed you because of Christ’s example of hospitality and inclusion. There is no “means test” for this meal although the majority of our guests are people who live in boarding houses and group homes in the community, along with folk who live in apartments above the stores and shops downtown. There are some families with small children who are struggling to make ends meet and The Gathering Place is actually a night out. For a time a single mother with two autistic teens was coming because even though she wasn’t sure about coming the first time her young people enjoyed it so much they asked when they could come back. At our last meal there were some older widowers who would have been alone on a Friday evening so they came to eat and kibitz.

The November meal ten days ago marked the end of the first year and it was our largest attendance yet, hovering around our capacity of one hundred and forty. For the first time we were scraping the bottom of the pans to feed the volunteers at the end – did I mention that the food is really good?

When we began The Gathering Place, people tended to arrive right around mealtime, ate quickly, and then were out the door in fairly short order. Now even though the doors don’t open until 4:30 some show up forty-five minutes early. We still have some folk who are gone as soon as they have finished but we noticed at this past meal that most people just stayed and visited and the buzz of conversation almost drowned out the music. And I can’t say for sure but I think I saw Christ sitting at a table off in the corner across the crowded room.

That may seem like a fanciful thing to say but did you notice our gospel passage today? This is Reign of Christ Sunday, the last Sunday before we enter into Advent and begin our journey toward Christmas. It is a day to acknowledge that Christ is the Big Kahuna of the church and our lives.

Jesus reigns! But Jesus the Christ is not like other royalty even though there are biblical images of Jesus enthroned as a king or an emperor, as well as the images in art. In Matthew, alone of the gospels, there is this very well-known passage about the final judgment, when there will be an on-the-spot assessment of all those who have claimed to be the followers of the Son of Man – that’s the mysterious term that Jesus uses at times to describe himself.

What he offers is not a parable, so much as an End Times or Apocalyptic drama with sheep and goats being separated in the ultimate judgment. This is a powerful and perplexing and ominous passage of scripture. This isn’t what we usually expect as “gospel.” Nothing is said about the grace of Christ, the free gift of God’s love in Christ. Nothing is said about the forgiveness of sins through the cross of Christ. It is about being judged on our action and inaction. In Eugene Peterson’s The Message it says:

I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink

I was homeless and you gave me a room

I was shivering and you gave me clothes

I was sick and you stopped to visit

I was in prison and you came to me.

The righteous listeners – the sheep -- take a big gulp and asks the question “just wondering . . . when did I see you hungry or sick or in prison?” Jesus responds by saying that whenever you do these things to the least and the lost you do this to me. Again from The Message: “whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me – you did it to me.” Then the passage goes on to the scary part saying that when we don’t do this we are ignoring and shunning Jesus, and we do this at our peril.

What a wakeup call that we are not only to extend support and care to those on the margins of our society, but to actually see Christ in those who may not fit our image of acceptability. You are really good people – kind and generous in a host of ways. As an example, this past Sunday evening at our choir concert and hymn-sing nearly a thousand dollars was dropped in the baskets for The Gathering Place. That is impressive. My experience of this congregation through the years is that you are what someone has called Golden Rule Christians. For all of us the challenge is to go a step farther into the deep compassion rooted in relationships, because of our relationship with Christ.

Some of you may recall an ad campaign which was used in New York City about twenty years ago with the poster How can you worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday? What a great question.

Of course, we don’t really have Street People in lil’ ol’ Bowmanville, those who are homeless or bereft in the usual sense. But we do have a fair number of people who are on the streets not far from this building. Since The Gathering Place began I have realized that many of our guests are out there every day and before they were virtually invisible to me. Now I see them constantly and wonder how I didn’t notice them before. They are people with names and personalities. One of the women used to see me and she had no idea who I was and she would ask “have you got a toonie?” Well, now she recognizes me and waves smiles and says “Hi Father, you got a toonie?” You see, that’s progress! There are plenty of others who I now look in the eye and greet and they greet me, often by name. They have altered my vision, thanks be to God.

There are ways in which people are “hidden in plain sight” in congregations, right in worship. In one congregation I pastored, a guy started attending worship who, it turned out, had started life as a girl. He was transgendered, a la Chas Bono on Dancing with the Stars. After a few months with us he took the risk of telling me his story over a cup of coffee and honestly he was quite comfortable but I felt almost tongue-tied – which is saying a lot for a minister!

What was really interesting was that he actually spent several years in that congregation as a little girl before his family drifted away. He came back as someone else in some respects and he wondered if anyone would ever “connect the dots.” I assured him that he was welcome, but I did wonder what would happen if his identity was revealed. Would we recognize Christ in this person?

We are people of Christ’s gift of grace and we are people who live with the assurance of forgiveness when we confess our sins and choose to follow him. Just the same, we need that wake-up call to see and hear those who might unsettle us or make us feel guilty or just don’t fit our preconceptions about what is normal. When we come to Christ with a poverty of spirit, a humility which opens us to the gift of salvation, then we can be truly gracious to others.

You might recall that earlier in the Fall I mentioned Shane Claiborne the Christian activist from Philadelphia who spoke at the youth conference called Rendez Vous attended by a number of our youth. In his book The Irresistible Revolution Claiborne tells of doing a survey, asking Christians about their conceptions of Jesus.

“I asked participants who claimed to be ‘strong followers’ of Jesus whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.” The Irresistible Revolution

To be Christ’s followers is a joy and our faith can bring us comfort and peace. Yet, if our faith is an “it’s all about me and Jesus” faith then we just haven’t been listening or seeing or loving. In a few weeks some people will show up in church for a little dose of Baby Jesus sentimentality and they will expect to sing the beloved carols such as Away in a Manger with those words we know by heart:

Away in a manger no crib for a bed

The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.

Well it was his born-as-a-displaced-peasant head that was in the cattle trough and there isn’t much that is sentimental about being born in a barn. The carols can be powerful statements that God has chosen to come into our midst in the muck and the mire of human existence and that God understands what it is to be human in all ways.

Maybe it is another lesser known carol which speaks more clearly about the Christ who comes to us in many guises:

All poor ones and humble, and all those who stumble,

Come hastening and feel not afraid,

For Jesus our treasure, with love past all measure,

In lowly poor manger was laid.

This improbable, Downtown Jesus does reign today and all days right here in our midst in ways which take us by surprise. Thanks be to God!