Least of These (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

January 21, 2015

Least of These

“The last will be first, and the first, last.”  Matthew 20:16

“Let the little children come to me; for it is to such as these that God’s Reign belongs.”  Luke 18:16

“Truly, I tell you, as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Matthew 25:40

Jesus repeatedly says that the lowest will be the highest, the last first, and the weakest, strongest.    The idea in his eschatology, or teaching about the last things, is that in God’s Reign, expectations will be turned upside down. 

But implicit in this teaching lies also an ethical or moral idea:  we need to have compassion.   We need empathy and an ability to put ourselves in the place of even the most rejected, the most dominated, the least admired. 

He lives out this ethical teaching in his practice of open table fellowship, a matter that got him into trouble repeatedly and attracted the accusations from the religious and the powerful: “This man eats with whores, drinks with drunks, and has table conversation with traitors and society’s scum.” 

To it all, he replies simply, “It is the sick who need a physician, not the well.”   That means he needs to help people not because they are worthy of help, but because they need it. 

In his opening sermon found in the Book of Luke chapter 4, he makes it clear:  the arrival of God’s Reign is found in “release for captives, sight for the blind, freedom for prisoners, and a general forgiveness of all debts.”  When we are compassionate, God’s Reign is present.  When we identify with the least, we are closest to Jesus. 

Grace and peace, 

Fr. Tony+