Christ, ever-stranger, ever-near
Sermon from Sunday, November 26, 2023 + Third Sunday of Advent + Seminarian Jackie Miller
When I served as a student chaplain this past summer, I immediately got to know Virginia. She was the sweetest lady in the memory care unit, and I have to imagine she was quite the socialite in her day because she loved people and was always looking for someone to talk to. She was often excited for me to spend some time with her, even while clearly not recognizing me. Virginia always had lots of questions about where she was and what was going on. Her instance - often multiple times an hour - of "I don't know what I'm doing here," was frequently accompanied by "I don’t know any of these people" - said while gesturing at the other residents, her neighbors who she saw every single day. I saw her introduce herself to her table mates over and over again and decide that she was going to spend time with them, play a game with them, and share a meal with them. They were present with her most of the day, every day, and did just about everything together. On a practical level, they were her best friends, and these women spent more time together than many of us do with our closest family members. And yet, she had to wake up every day and discover them anew. They were strangers that had to be welcomed again and again and again.
Each Advent, we prepare to welcome Jesus again and again. We are waiting, open and willing to see something new. To see Christ where we may not recognize Him.
As our gospel for today describes, before the angels and the throne and the coming in glory, there is a stranger – someone who needs food, water, clothing, care, welcome, companionship.
Before the heavens opening, the miracles, and the resurrection, there was a newborn with no place to lay but a cattle feed box before being carried to a foreign land by night to escape mass violence.
Our gospel lesson today calls Christ a king, but we are dealing with a very different kind of king – not one who throws people in prison but who says, "Visit the imprisoned because I am imprisoned with them." Not one who shelters in his castle while the common people get sick but one who says, "Take care of the sick because I am with those who are sick." Not one who takes from the people until they no longer have what they need but one who says, "Give people what they need because I so stand with those who lack food, water, and clothing that whatever you do to them will be like you are doing it to me." Not one who fearmongers about the stranger – the migrant, the refugee – and turns them away but who says, "I am the stranger. Welcome me."
Recognizing Jesus there is easier said than done, of course, as the people in our gospel found out. Jesus describes separating those who help someone in need from those who don't. But which group – the sheep or the goats – better understands the coming of Jesus? - - - - - Neither. Both are shocked by what Christ reveals of Himself. Both are just as clueless and have the same question: "Lord, when was it that we saw you?" And Jesus responds, "Not where you would expect, but as a hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned stranger."
In the waters of baptism and around this table, many are made one as the body of Christ. When our siblings in Christ are hungry and have no one to share food, thirsty and without someone to give drink, imprisoned without someone to visit them, sick without someone to care for them, a stranger without a welcome, the body of Christ is broken. We are broken. When we inflict those circumstances on them, when we turn our backs, we are tearing the body of Christ in two. We are doing it to Christ.
This is an immense calling. It can weigh on us with that little voice in the back of our heads saying, "There are so many people in need. How are you supposed to treat every one of them like you have just seen the face of Christ?"
My friend at seminary recently said she was “overwhelmed by so much face of Christ all the time.” She has a great passion for jail and halfway house ministry, and this is the story she told: The ministry where she works was helping this man who had just been released. As he began to get organized to have a life again, his SNAP application just hadn’t been processed yet, so he had gone hungry for four days. He called my friend, and she invited him into her own home to share her own food.
Would you have been able to do that? I don’t think I would. What would our world look like if it had more people like her, with that degree of strength and compassion? That man did not get fed. He would not have been able to get to her apartment and home before his curfew, as enforced by his ankle monitor. He had a choice between being hungry and being imprisoned. He chose hungry.
Individual generosity and hospitality are wonderful, but very often, they are not enough. Because no one person can go up against all that is broken in the world. Because no one can do it alone.
But we always have and always wait for Emmanuel, “God with Us.” We go forward in faith that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Christ is the beginning - where He came down for us to turn brokenness into healing - and the end - where the stripped, executed stranger came from death to life again. The beginning, where the saints who care for the least of these show us the way, teaching us how to love the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, the strangers. How to treat the migrants of our city like we believe in a God who says, "What you do to the stranger you do to me." Where the Holy Spirit works in us to make us into people who do it. And Christ is the end, where all things are made new. Where lack, illness, imprisonment, sin, and death are no more, and strangers are welcomed again and again and again until they become beloved friends and neighbors.
The realities keeping us from such a world are much bigger than any one of us. But thankfully, we are not meant to do it alone. We are much bigger than any one of us. God is with us, and we are surrounded by one another and that great cloud of witness - waiting, watching for what Christ makes new.
It takes all of us to create a world where the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned strangers are treated like our Gospel envisions. Like we see Christ - who is ever stranger, ever near - in them. Like they are made in the image and likeness of God. Like they are part of the body of Christ. Like they are beloved members of our communities. Like they are us. It takes all of us to answer the Christ who says, "Welcome me."
