Monday of the First Week of Lent: Matthew 25:31-46
One day, on the Peanuts comic strip, Linus and Charlie Brown were having a discussion. Linus was telling Charlie Brown about someone else he didn’t like. Charlie Brown replied that God wants us to love humanity. Linus retorted, “I love humanity! It’s people I can’t stand!”
Sound familiar?
It’s very easy for us to proclaim our love for humanity, or the Church, in our heads. It’s easy to feel this love as long as ‘humanity’ or ‘Church’ is only a concept, an idea. The proof comes when we are with real people – people who have their wonderful gifts, and who also have their rough edges, their less appealing traits. People who annoy us in some way.
But even here, we make distinctions. We are more willing to put up with rough edges and imperfections, as long as they are somehow ‘our’ people. People who are ‘our kind of folks’. People who are related to us, who agree with our politics or theology, who look and act like us. People whom we can count on to reassure us that, if we slip, it was really nothing. Our kind of folks. Our ‘neighbors’, so to speak.
But what about those who fail to make the cut? What about ‘them’? Well, these are the people we blame for whatever seems to be wrong – in our country, our Church, or whatever we are discussing. They are the problem. They are the enemy. They are wrong, while we are right – if not always, then at least 99 44/100% of the time!
Sound familiar? This seems all too familiar in our world, our nation, and our Church. We want to distinguish between “us” and “them”. Sure, we will love and forgive “our” kind, but we don’t have to love or forgive anyone like “them”. We are “humanity”, they are “people we can’t stand”. ‘They’ quickly become convenient scapegoats. We secretly want to designate some people as “not like us”, “not as good as us”, and therefore not deserving of love or help or human respect. Name almost any group of people in this country or in the Church today, and there is some other group who thinks of them as “them”, not “us”.
But Jesus will have none of it. He will not allow us to get away with this kind of game. Jesus gives us a glimpse into our future. He appears as the Son of Man, the King, the judge of all peoples everywhere. Everyone is brought before him. He then separates them into two groups. One is praised and welcomed into paradise. The other is shown the door to hell. And what is the basis of this judgment? “Whatever you did (or did not do) for one of these least brothers (or sisters) of mine, you did (or did not do) for me.”
Who are these least brothers and sisters of ours? Precisely those we assume do not matter; those we assume are wrong or crazy or dangerous; those we feel are less than ourselves, for any reason whatsoever. Depending on which group we usually hang out with, the “least” could be almost anyone: the super rich or illegal immigrants; Catholics who insist on the Latin Mass or Catholics who demand women’s ordination; “progressives” or “deplorables”; the super-cool or the mentally/emotionally challenged; the young or the old; women or men; Christian, Muslim or atheist; the saintly or the sinners. We do not love them because they pass our desirability test. We love them because we are children of our heavenly Father, as Jesus taught us, whose sun shines on the bad and the good, and whose rain falls on just and unjust alike. We love them because God loves them. Period. We do good for them, no matter what others of “our kind” think of it. We do good for them, whether or not they thank us for it. We do good for them, because God has done good for us. All of us. When none of us deserved it in the least. To fail to live in this way is to deny that God is our Father and that we are his children. It is to serve something else. Another ‘god’. Not the God of Jesus Christ, who alone has given us life and light and mercy beyond all telling.
Therefore, we should be able to see through the ploys that seek to divide people into “us” and “them”. ‘Divide and conquer’ is the oldest demonic strategy. We see it on the news every day. It’s all over the Internet. But Christians shouldn’t be so easily fooled. Christ has broken down all the walls that divide us by his own death and resurrection. Anyone who would be his disciple will do the same.
The Lord has promised us that he will empower us to do all that he asks of us. He has shown himself to be trustworthy beyond any human measure. Why not trust God, and love as he loves? This is how God gives us true joy, true happiness. Believe it. Do it.