Matthew 25 in 2025

For a moment, I want you all to remember how things felt in November 2020. Zoom was still relatively new but we knew where the mute and unmute buttons were. Covid-19 was still deadly, but we had learned that it was an airborne virus and we didn’t have to disinfect our groceries. People were out of jobs and the future felt endlessly uncertain.
 
On Thursday, November 5th, 2020, our Session met on Zoom. In that meeting, we voted to become a Matthew 25 Congregation. The Matthew 25 pledge was to, “Build congregational vitality, dismantle structural racism, and eradicate systemic poverty.”  That following summer in 2021, we had a long sermon series about this initiative and what it meant nationwide.  The following summer in 2022, we focused on what it would look like to focus on eradicating systemic poverty in Metro-Detroit.  The key to the Matthew 25 initiative is that it addresses systems in our culture.  It recognizes that poverty, racism, and vitality are not a matter of individual morality.  Rather, systems keep wealth in some people’s hands and out of other people’s, systems keeps certain communities disadvantaged, and systems keep certain people in power and others away from power.  But, most of all, systems replicate themselves.  Unless we address the system that is at work creating disparities, the disparities between people will only grow.
 
In the parable of the sheep and the goats, we often want to focus on what people did in order to earn the King’s favor: they fed the hungry, gave water to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger in, clothed the needy, and visited those that were sick and in prison - but the King’s disfavor is equally important: the King instructs that the goats be thrown into the burning trash heap where they will perish.  What did the goats do?  The king answers that they are responsible for what they didn’t do: they didn’t feed the hungry, nor did they give a drink to the thirsty.  They didn’t welcome the stranger and they didn’t visit the sick and imprisoned.  No qualifications are given.  Jesus doesn’t talk about the hungry needing to be working in order to be fed.  Jesus doesn’t clarify if the imprisoned are justly or unjustly imprisoned.  Jesus doesn’t ask that the sick pay for their care.  The stranger (xenos, as in the prefix for xenophobia) is welcomed in without hesitation or reserve.  The implication is that in Jesus’s kingdom, the righteous will make sure that EVERYONE is cared for and has what they need to live.
 
While we, as individuals  can give to food banks and charities, people in the past realized that the best way to feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the sick, and take care of the vulnerable was to do these things collectively as a nation.  Collectively, we pooled our resources (in the form of taxes) so that the elderly would not be destitute but would have income and healthcare.  We pooled our resources so that the unemployed would not starve.  We pooled our resources to ensure that children always had enough food in their bellies no matter if they had responsible or irresponsible parents.  The hope was that, if we pooled our resources together as a nation, if we ever personally found ourselves in a precarious position, we also would be taken care of.
 
However, last week, legislation passed that will worsen systemic poverty.  It removes access to food from the hungry.  It put barriers to getting care in front of the sick.  It gave money to increase the surveillance and policing of the stranger and money to build camps to imprison them without due process.  And it enshrined a system where wealth will be allowed to pool with those who already have wealth while financial security is stripped from the masses.
 
As a pastor of a congregation who is still committed to the Matthew 25 initiative, I can say that this bill is antithetical to the Jesus’ gospel message.  However, our mission as a congregation has not changed: the work may be harder and the systems may have strengthened, but we are still committed to eradicating the systems that create poverty.
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Blessings,
Pastor Chris