Reading Matthew right
The Gospel reading today in the standard lectionary is Matthew 25. That leads to a number of issues in the culture and in politics.
Take this verse (40):
‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
That recalls, for one thing, part of an answer Barack Obama gave Pastor Rick Warren in the Saddleback Civil Forum.
Warren’s question:
Now, you’ve made no doubts about your faith in Jesus Christ. What does that mean to you? What does it mean to you to trust in Christ? And what does that mean to you on a daily basis? What does that really look like?
Obama’s response:
As a starting point, it means I believe in — that Jesus Christ died for my sins, and that I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis…
But what it also means, I think, is a sense of obligation to embrace not just words, but through deeds, the expectations, I think, that God has for us. And that means thinking about the least of these.
It would be nice, for once, to hear somebody ask him to explain who constitutes “the least of these” in his opinion. Especially now that his pay grade is the chief executive of the U.S.
Because if you exclude any class of human beings from care and human rights, you have rendered them unworthy to even be considered among “the least” who are deserving of attention. And president-elect Obama does exclude human beings in their youngest and most vulnerable stage from human rights. So….how to reconcile that?
Then there’s the Matthew 25 network that supported Obama in the final months of the campaign. Which was always a jarring alliance.
But this story reflects the right reading of that scripture.
As more Americans turn to charity amid worsening economic gloom, operators of food banks and other aid groups are relying on the surprisingly resilient generosity of their neighbors and finding that even when times are tough, people still give.
In Seattle, Boeing Co. employees tripled their cash donations this year to Northwest Harvest, operator of Washington’s largest food bank. And every week, Northwest Harvest spokeswoman Claire Acey says, companies call to say their employees have decided to skip their holiday party and buy food for the hungry instead.
“We see things like that and they are little beacons of hope,” Acey said.
Hope we can truly count on.
