The Least

on Matt 25:31-46

Each of us has someone that we love the least. Maybe this is an enemy who has done us harm. Someone who abused us in various ways or humiliated us. On the other hand, maybe it's just someone God has put into our lives that we simply ignore.

We may not even know who it is that we love the least. In fact, it's likely that we don't – because it's precisely someone that we're ignoring when we ought to be loving them.

Someone we ought to care for as a friend or a brother or a sister, but we neglect them because they distract us from our personal goals. Someone lying outside our gates like Lazarus, who we step over as we go about our daily life. We think we're minding our own business maybe – but, really, we're failing to recognize in this other person the image of God.

On the other hand, it might be your wife for your husband or your mother or your father or your son or your daughter or your brother or sister that you love the least. Whoever it is, we all have someone we love the least.

This is who Jesus means, I think, when he says, whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, that you do unto me (Matt 25:40). The least of Jesus's brethren are those of his children we love the least. And we are all God's children. Let us commit ourselves to welcoming and caring for all of God's children. This would a good plan for us, because it is on our caring for one another, above all, that we will be judged.

There will come an end of all things – the second coming of Jesus Christ – and the final judgment of each and every one of us, as we hear in today's holy gospel.

Russian c. 1660 in Yaroslavl

Let’s let fear of this judgement spur us to begin to love one another – especially those we love the least. When our love is perfected, it will cast out of us any need of fear (cf. 1 John 4:18). Until then, let us have a little fear.

Let us embrace whatever is necessary to motivate us to forgive those who have wronged us and try to do what good we can for them. Sometimes this means only that we pray for them and for all blessings upon them because we ourselves are powerless to intervene in any direct or material way. Many times, however, there is direct good that we can do – food, and clothing, and shelter that we can provide – and we neglect to do so at our peril.

Today, Jesus describes that peril as fire and punishment (Matt 25:41, 46). Elsewhere, he describes it as weeping and gnashing of teeth where the worm never dies and the fire is not quenched and as the outer darkness.

We have many ways avoiding the fulfillment of God's command to give to him by giving to the least of his brethren – to those we love the least. Sometimes, we are cleverer than the rich man who stepped right over Lazarus in brazen indifference to that brightly shining image of God lying at his own doorstep. That is, sometimes we pack up and move.

Americans are especially good at this. Rather than loving the neighbors we find ourselves surrounded by and working to provide for them whatever they may need, we can just move to another city, another town, or another neighborhood where the neighbors leave us alone because they just want to be left alone too. Where we share an unspoken mutual agreement to ignore each other in exchange for not being bothered by the inconveniences of others' needs. Pretty as neighborhoods like this may be, they are in some cases a thin disguise, the façade of an edifice of hell, a whitewashed tomb, you might say. Such may be a neighborhood built out of the desire to escape people we find uncouth or undesirable – people elsewhere known as the least.

Wherever we find ourselves, however, it is not too late. God always puts people in our lives with needs so that we will have an opportunity to give. The needs and even the begging of others is not the nuisance to us it may seem to be, but a gift and an opportunity from our Lord himself to show our Lord himself that we welcome him and care for him and love him.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Heb 13:2).

It takes only a fraction of a moment to repent, to begin to love, to work for and seek the good of the ones we love the least.

We know that our Lord is the Lover of mankind. We know that he is merciful and kind and that he forgives all who repent. Yet, woe to those of us who take this knowledge of his merciful loving kindness – his ḥesed – and let it become an excuse for us to be unloving, thinking, “Oh, God will forgive me. I need not care for others.”

We must not forget that our God is awesome, mighty, and powerful beyond all measure. True paternal love, such as his, is not a spoiling and overindulgent love. God our father is not afraid to discipline us. In his love for us, he wants to make us into great men and women by his grace – by any means necessary. And greatness consists above all and becoming like God, who is love.  

Are you love? Am I love? If we are not yet love, we are not yet God. If we are not yet love, then let us have a little fear. If we do not love and also have no fear of God, we are damned. There is indeed something to fear. We damn ourselves by our failure to love and our failure to fear God.

Today's reminder of the coming Last Judgement exists to call us to repentance. Repent, forgive, and be forgiven. Today is Judgement Sunday. In one week is Forgiveness Sunday. God is both just and merciful – the end and the beginning.

We will be judged and we will be given every opportunity to repent. We are even now being given the opportunity to repent. Today. Let us not waste this one as we may have wasted many that have come before. There will be a final opportunity – we know not when – and it may be this.