Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
November 20, 2011 Proper
Matthew 25:31-46
I want to talk about this judgment scene in the 25th chapter of Matthew but I am going to talk about within the context of a very shocking event and so I'm going to tell you where I'm going with this because I don't want for to feel emotionally ambushed in the middle of a sermon. A couple of days ago, I was contacted by Tom Eagleburger. Tom asked me if I would consider doing a funeral for his brother Kevin. Kevin was just 49 years old. He had been laid off about a year ago and in the stress of being unemployed, he suffered a heart attack.
He was taken to Cox South hospital where he was treated and released. He tried to get onto disability but was rejected. He couldn't get a job and he couldn't get disability but Cox hospital turned over his $70,000 bill to bill-collectors who hounded Kevin until he felt that he had no option but to take his life.
Although I did not personally know Kevin, some of our church members did and that is why they called me. I agreed to do it because, quite frankly, I recognized that I am just as much a part of the society that murdered Kevin as the bill-collectors who hounded him to death.
And so, church, I want to talk about Kevin's suicide but I want to talk about first by talking about this book:
This book, this collection of 66 short books is what we Protestants call the "canon" of the Bible. The Catholic Bible has a somewhat larger canon with 46 Old Testament books, seven more than the Protestant canon and the Ethiopian Church has an even larger canon, with more than 80 books.
Different expressions of Christianity have debated for centuries what is and what is not to be included in the Christian canon. But what we become aware of pretty quickly when we listen intently to any of those groups is that they all have a canon within the canon.
Some of you who grew up here in the heartland of conservative Protestantism will recognize immediately what we mean by the "Roman Road," that is intended to lead someone to salvation by having them read from 9 different short passages in the book of Romans. My college fellowship spent time with little pocket New Testaments writing in the front cover, "turn to page 212" and on that page we underline a verse and then write at the bottom of the page, "turn to page 28" and on and on until we felt that we could leave that Bible out somewhere on campus and a lucky person would find it, follow our simple directions to about a dozen passages of scripture and find eternal reward as a result.
Such a list of favorite passages used to define the faith is called a "canon within the canon". Few people will admit to it but we all do it. A lot of the differences that exist today between conservative and liberal churches, denominations and sects is what they choose to be their canon within the canon.
Evangelicals tend to prefer the Jesus of John's gospel, main stream churches prefer the Jesus of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Pietists prefer the letters of Paul while social justice advocates prefer the teachings of the prophets and of Jesus. So, in the name of full disclosure, I will tell you today what my canon within the canon is. In fact, if you think about it, you already know because I would be bringing it up if it were not the scripture reading we have already heard.
This second half of the 25th chapter of Matthew contains a description of the final judgment found in no other gospel. It is unique to Matthew. This is certainly not a sermon preached by the historical Jesus, but it is, at the very least, an attempt by the early church to sum up the ethical teaches of Jesus in a single recitation. It is set in a final judgment scene because if you want to emphasize something as being of absolute eternal importance, you couch in the context of making the difference to you personally between going into eternal reward in the Kingdom or eternal punishment in a lake of fire.
In this account, Jesus comes as a righteous judge who divides the people of the world into just two camps, those who are rewarded and those who are condemned. The division is not between those who were baptized and those who were not. Nothing is said about who speaks in tongues and who doesn't. There is no mention here of being saved, inviting Jesus into your heart or accepting Jesus as your personal savior.
Much to the chagrin of many in our day, it was not basically a division of Christians and Muslims, or Democrats and Republicans, liberals or conservatives, Fox News or MSNBC, Wall Street Occupiers or Tea Partiers. The judgment was determined by one thing and one thing only and so we should pay very close attention to this shouldn't we? This is the one thing that we all ought to be sure that we get right!
Those who were invited to enter the Kingdom were the ones who had shown compassion.... They had fed the hungry, provided safe drinking water to the thirsty, they clothed the naked, housed the homeless, they had cared for the sick, the imprisoned, the alien in their midst. The righteous protest that they cannot remember having ever done these things for Jesus but Jesus explains that whenever they did it for a vulnerable person they were doing it for him. Mother Theresa described the poor, the homeless, the sick as "Jesus, in his most distressing disguise."
Who goes to hell in this biblical scene? The people who told the hungry to just get a job. The people who refused to help the alien because they could conveniently label them "illegal." The people who didn't want to extend health care to the uninsured or those who had pre-existing conditions because that might dilute their own level of health care and who, after all, will stand for that?
I have spent the last three days trapped between tears and rage, thinking about a 49 year old unemployed man with a big unpaid medical bill decided to kill himself. There is no denying that you and I are a part of a society that failed to show compassion at every turn and when Kevin ended up dead it is nothing but hypocrisy to try to blame that last decision on Kevin.
I spoke about my feelings on a couple of internet sites for progressive Christians and hundreds of people responded.... Some with stories of their own. One woman had attempted suicide herself after being refused medical care. Several people from Canada and the UK expressed their complete bewilderment about how a nation as great as the United States of America could continue to operate in the grips of insurance company greed while pushing the vulnerable to suicide.
Kevin's death is the fault of a Congress that has consistently refused to pass a job's bill so that unemployed Americans would have a chance to go back to work. It is the fault of insurance company lobbyists who made sure that health care reform was a joke, increasing their profits while leaving millions uninsured. It is the fault of a nation that is locked in a survivalist mentality that says that as long as I've got mine what you don't have is not my problem.
This isn't just about Kevin, it's about thousands of Kevins, hundreds of thousands, millions even who are facing the same bleak reality that drove him to take his life.
People at the hospital who had sicced the bill collectors on Kevin were so sorry. "There were other options," they said. Just because you are turned down for disability doesn't mean that you can't try again. There are charities, you know. You can be reduced to calling and begging..... I get those calls at my church office every day.
We spend a huge portion of our resources in providing food for the homeless and the poor of our community but people call who need rent money, they need their utilities kept on..... if I had ten million dollars sitting on my desk I still could not say "yes" to everyone who calls because, men and women, we live in a society that has told itself that someone else will show compassion, someone else will do it and there are not enough people who are doing it.... Not enough for Kevin, not enough for thousands of people in the same place as Kevin.
This week the "super committee" assigned the task of trying to reduce our nation's deficit spending is supposed to make their recommendations to the congress and the senate. Of course, there are three lobbyists on capital hill for every elected official there representing the profits of the pharmaceutical companies. There are lobbyists for the insurance companies, for the hospitals, for the AMA but the problem is there are no lobbyists there for Kevin Eagleburger and for the millions in America who are just as vulnerable as he was.
Republicans and Democrats are both to blame for this crisis but the lone independent voice in the Senate spoke up this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Aside from all partisan bickering he urged the congressional debt committee not to propose any cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
"This country does in fact have a serious deficit problem," he said to about 200 people packed in the Senate Budget Committee room.
"But the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars -- unpaid for. It was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. It was caused by a recession as result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit, I will be damned if we're going to balance the budget on backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That's wrong."...... which sounds eerily similar to what Jesus said in the 25th chapter of Matthew.
I was asked to speak at Kevin's funeral because a whole lot of the preachers in our area might take the occasion of Kevin's death by suicide to condemn Kevin for the choice he felt compelled to make and his family knew that was not the God they believed in and they were not in a mood to put up with any stupid religious babble that amounts to blaming the victim for the sins of the society.
A lot of preachers would look at Kevin's death and conclude that Kevin needed to have been saved. I look at it and conclude that our society needs to be saved. And on Kevin's behalf, I am not the least bit afraid to say that I am right and they are dead wrong.
