Matthew 25: 31-46

Today we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. It is one of the "newest" festivals of the Church, having been established in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. Some think it was put on the church calendar because the Pope was trying to reassert his position liturgically just after he had lost the Papal States in Europe following a revolution. But the gospel text we use clearly does assert Jesus as a supreme judge and king who sits on his heavenly throne judging all people by their response to the last, the least, and the lonely of the world.

UNICEF has estimated that the United States portion of what it would take to feed and clothe every needy person on earth would be about two billion dollars per year. But the United States still refuses even to pay its annual dues to the United Nations. No wonder we are treated with such disdain in the world courts. We spent sixteen billion defending Kuwait during the Gulf War, and it is estimated we will spend about ten times that much, one hundred sixty billion dollars, in an attack on Iraq. But we are very reluctant to be the good shepherd of the world's needy and spend two billion on them, yet we will spend twelve times as much this year, twenty-four billion dollars, on beer consumption.

The city of New York estimates that the homeless population there now in the city has risen to 36,000, about the level it was twenty years ago in 1982. In 1982 Mayor Ed Koch challenged all 3,500 religious institutions in the city to allocate shelter space for ten homeless persons per congregation. An investigative journalist for the New York Times wrote the following assessment of the Mayor's plea: A Protestant minister said to the Times reporter, "The Mayor never mentioned this to me. Nobody in his office apprised me of this." The Catholic spokesman completely sidestepped the question, and a leading Jewish rabbi said, "We haven't money to heat the building for this extra service."

I personally was in on the "ground floor" of one New York church's response, St. Bartholomew's, to answer the Mayor's plea in 1982. We rewired the Narthex of the church on Park Avenue to allow sufficient power to plug in more lights, plus coffee pots and heating coils so we could both house and feed twelve homeless persons each night of the week from Sunday through Friday night. Saturday night had to be left open to clear and clean the Narthex for the Sunday morning services. The city of New York provided the beds and nightly bedding, sheets and blankets. We did similar new wiring for the Mortuary Chapel to get enough electric power and lights to have a breakfast served there for up to 500 every Wednesday and Sunday morning. The shelter and feeding program was a bit controversial, to say the least, but over one hundred sixty volunteers staffed the two programs, the Narthex shelter and the Soup Kitchen in the Memorial Chapel. And the volunteer crews found their service was greatly inspiring for the rest of their lives.

A few of the volunteers were Jewish; one I remember in particular, a man who owned a jewelry shop, was especially helpful in getting the bread donated every Tuesday and Saturday nights from local bakeries. He did this for years up until his death.

My wife Jan and I had a regular assignment that year to pick up bread in huge black garbage bags on certain Saturday nights each month and cart it to the church in the trunk of a cab we had hailed. We read Evening Prayer together every Saturday evening for the public in the church's Chapel and then set off on our task of bread-gathering. Later in the Church's history a Senior Warden put in his will that the Church would receive a million dollars from his estate to endow these two Community Ministries. And as a result the programs continue in full force to this day. A space above the Choir rehearsal room was constructed to run both programs after the Warden died and his estate was available, so now the Narthex is a church bookstore and the Memorial Chapel has been returned to pristine quietness.

But still the homeless are housed every night now, and the breakfast Soup Kitchen goes on twice a week. St. Bartholomew's became a model for the other midtown religious institutions, and a collective was formed between Central Synagogue, St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church, St. Bart's, and some others to house several dozen homeless people each night of the week. But of course now, even with these homeless programs, New York City is suffering a renewed homeless problem, with 36,000 more homeless people. We will have to see if the new Mayor of New York will be able to solve the problem by buying retired cruise ships from the Bahamas. The temporary shelter in the city jail was ordered by the court to close, so the crisis still remains.

Here at St. John's we feed twenty to thirty folks and sometimes more every Thursday and Sunday afternoons following our church services then. The money for these programs comes from a tithe of your tithe each week. So we need you to pledge, to tithe, and really keep up with your payments towards your pledge. And of course, if you are not yet giving at least ten percent of your gross income, now is the time to begin to do so. The Bible admonishes us both to tithe to the church as well as give for charity on top of that, so more than a tithe is really what is needed. Of course we each may have additional opportunities to help people when we are away from church, so that is part of what we are called to do as people of faith. But as best as I can tell we are one of only about six or eight churches in Elizabeth that provide meals each week for the needy. Perhaps our example will help others to consider doing the same. We are seeing the hungry and homeless population grow in the city of Elizabeth as it is growing in the city of New York.

We think we have a systematic solution for Elizabeth if we can only get the Mayor and the School Board to work together to get the half a billion dollars (billion with a "b") of Abbott school funding released from the state. A college preparatory high school is already in the final design stages for Elizabeth, and we are pushing for community schools to be an integral part of the school building program for Elizabeth. These model schools in other parts of the US have brought up school grades as much as fifty percent where they have been established.

Community schools include housing units as well as recreational and health care operations and also top quality educational facilities. A Community school is a twenty-four hour a day entity, making far better use of the school space than do traditional schools. For example, in the winter traditional schools are heated for eight hours or so, then cool off during the night, and then are reheated the next morning, and thus traditional schools are very wasteful of energy as well as space. Huge quantities of heated air go to waste each and every night. The elimination of these energy drains and better school design will permit a far more efficient utilization of the land area of a school when community schools are built.

Right now the city of Elizabeth has closed several playground facilities in lower grade level schools and put up temporary kiosks for preschool and other programs. These inefficient small buildings that have been erected so far require separate heating and cooling units and lighting circuitry, with duplication for each small building, the most inefficient possible use of the land area of a school, and one that has reduced the recreational area of schools to near zero. Our Jubilee community group is encouraging the city officials to rethink their educational construction strategy and design community schools for more efficient and higher quality schools as well as much needed affordable housing. And the jobs that will be created by this enormous building program will immeasurably help the unemployment crisis in the city. We just have to get a mandate that city residents have priority in getting the new school construction and school renovation jobs.

A famous evangelist of last century, Billy Sunday, was asked, "What must I do to go to hell?" Billy Sunday answered, "Nothing." Doing nothing in the face of the needs of others is tantamount to accepting a free ticket to suffer with Satan in eternity. Let us make the correct decision always to consider what we as Christians can do for the homeless, helpless, and hungry.

Today's parable from the Gospel according to Matthew are used to separate responses into those of goats who go to eternal punishment and those of sheep who go to eternal bliss to be with the Lord at the end of their days. It is a chilling story, I think, one that really challenges us to "do the right thing" not just "say the right thing."

The publication, "Salt", in its June 1994 issue captured the goats' response quite well in the following paraphrase of today's gospel. "I was hungry, and [the goats] said apply for food stamps. I was homeless and [the goats] said there was a shelter in town. I was lonely and [the goats] said get a Sony Walkman. I was beaten and [the goats] said avoid dark alleys. I was naked, and [the goats] said a local church has clothes. I was sick, and [the goats] said apply for Medicaid. I was illiterate, and [the goats] said there are library cards. I was poor, and [the goats] said God loves the poor. I was imprisoned, and [the goats] said try the parole board. I was depressed, and [the goats] gave me a Smile button. I was dying, and [the goats] said there was eternal life."

King Duncan writing in "Dynamic Preaching" said, "We the church are called to be the answer and the solution to poverty, need, and injustice in our society." "Treat the poor and hurting the same way you would treat Jesus."

To have a positive perspective on life, think of any predicament or situation that is impossible and write across it, "Nevertheless, Jesus Christ is King!" "Nevertheless, Jesus Christ is King!"

All who have not shown compassion exclude themselves from heaven. For the compassionate there is inheritance of the Kingdom of blessedness designed by God. For the indifferent or self-absorbed there is eternal punishment, exclusion from God's presence. In other words, apathy is diabolical. Apathy is diabolical. We are mandated to care for those less well off. Christ demands a life of justice in return for eternal blessing.

On the cynical side, Thomas Merton, Catholic theologian, wrote, "The average American Catholic is more concerned about his dog and cat than about starving children."

Sue Armentrout in the publication, "Synthesis", wrote, "Every one of my actions or inactions has cosmic consequences." "I still have to live with that unsettling thought."

In the real world, goats are characteristically headstrong, wild, willful, straying, and often climb to steep heights and hide. Let us not be like them, but let us know that we are serving our Risen Lord as we serve the needy and the neglected. We are called to be Christ's hands in our dark world. May we take our task seriously. Amen.

(Comments to Joe at joe.parrish@ecunet.org.)
Church Website: http://fm2.forministry.com/Church/Home.asp?SiteId=07201SJEC