According to our Church lectionary today is the last Sunday of the Church year. The Holy gospel comes from St.Mathew 25:31-46. “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me…. When you did it to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.” One of the bedrock tenets of the Christian faith, especially within Lutheranism, is the understanding that sinful man is not saved by his works, but through faith alone in God’s grace alone, which He freely bestows upon us because of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ alone. Blessed reformer Dr.Martin Luther said the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament of love, motivates our desire to help the “least of these.” He wrote: “As love and support are given you, you in turn must render love and support to Christ in his needy ones.” This is part of the beautiful surprise for the blessed, that as they served and cared for the least of these, the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned—they did it all for Christ. Jesus Christ is found in His needy ones. Those calling for our mercy and help provide us an opportunity to serve Jesus. We too should recognize our selfishness, and the times when we pass by opportunity to show charity to Christ in His needy ones, to put our faith into practice. Jesus said: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Inherit! Inheritance doesn’t come because we’ve earned it, or as wages for what we have done (Rom. 4), but inheritance is a privilege of sonship, whether natural born or adopted. Their surprise is: “Lord, when did we do these things, to you?” All that we receive is pure gift and inheritance. As Jesus completes His judgment, there remains another surprise; call it the “surprise of the cursed.” Jesus speaks to the goats on His left: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me” (Matt. 25:41-43). We should all clearly understand that good works do not save, but they provide evidence of the love of Christ in us. We have earned and deserved nothing, but Jesus’ death and resurrection has sealed our inheritance, His love predestined us before the world began, and even our good works were prepared and performed through us by His love. So “Come, you blessed by my Father, Inherit!”
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 07:29:42 +0000
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