Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

Giving Like Your LIfe Depends On It - November 23, 2008

Giving Like Your Life Depends On It

Matthew 25:31-40

November 23, 2008

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

At this moment our confirmands are cleaning up their dorm rooms. They'll be here for the second service. But right now they are on Lake Street in one of the tougher neighborhoods of Minneapolis.

Every year the confirmands are required to go on one retreat. Over the years we have usually taken them to a festival for church youth at one of our church colleges. At these festivals the kids usually attend two or three lectures and have some devotion time and do a couple fun activities.

But this year, something moved us to try something different. So instead, we went on what's called an "Urban Immersion Service Weekend". This is run by the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches. The idea is to immerse the kids safely in the world of homeless people - not in Chicago or Nicaragua, but right here in our very own city.

So, we drive ourselves down to this building on Friday night - a building that is specially designed to house visiting people with a staff and security system and fully stocked kitchen and rooms with bunk beds. We drop off our gear and then head to the lower level classroom for our introductory class.

There we discover that we are one of three church youth groups - another Lutheran group from Owatonna and another group from a United Church of Christ congregation five hours away in Wisconsin.

For the next two hours we get an introduction to the business of homelessness and the do's and the don'ts of what we'll be doing on Saturday. The the kids got a little free time and then we had our own devotion before bed time.

On Saturday, Vicki and Heath Jakes took half of the kids to spend the day at a homeless shelter for families. Linda Boyadjis and I took the other half of the kids to a shelter and treatment program for battered women and families. At both of these sites, we spent the first half of the day sorting donated clothes. The last half of the day we spent running a child care play group to give the mom's a break.

Then each team went on a shopping trip. Each team was given $40 and was told to purchase as much weight in unperishable nutritious food as possible with the lowest calorie count. the winning team would get the first whack at a pinata later back at the dorm. The, we went to House of Charity soup line where we had supper with homeless people of downtown Minneapolis. Then it was back to the dorm for another two hour class, followed by devotions.

Why? Because of what Christ the King told us this morning in the Bible Focus - that how we treat the most vulnerable people is how we are personally treating Him.

That first night in the opening class, we were asked a question. Jesus said that the poor will always be among us. If so , WHY should we make such a big deal about the poor? Most of the answers were in the category of simple decency: if you've got half a heart, how could you NOT care? Well, let me tell you, some of these people are very hard to like, some seem to be lazy, the problem can get to seem overwhelming...if we had spent not just a weekend but an entire year there, we could have come up with all kinds of reasons to NOT get into this stuff.

And I'll give you one of the best reasons most of us don't lose a whole lot of sleep over the poor and homeless: we can't see them. We live out here and most of them live down there. And those who do live out here are pretty much invisible. So the poor and homeless are out of sight and therefore out of mind.

THAT is why we took the confirmands down there. They're a whole lot less likely to forget the homeless now.

So, compassion and common decency work as long as you can see the person who is hurting. As followers of Jesus though, there is another very compelling reason that only Christians would even care about.

This it it: as Christians, we have been told by Christ the King, that our very eternity hangs on how we treat the vulnerable. "What you do unto the least of these, you do unto ME." In just a moment we will say in the Apostle's Creed that we believe that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. And that means assigning some to the eternal damnation of hell and fewer to the eternal joys of heaven.

And according to what Jesus said in the Bible Focus this morning, He will separate the people into those two groups based on how they have treated Him according to how they have treated the "least of these my brothers." So, when compassion does not do the trick, then give like your life depends on it. Cause it does.

Or the way Mother Teresa put it:

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motive. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For, you see, in the end, it is between you and Good. It was never between you and them anyway.