Third Saturday in Advent (O Clavis David)

O Key of David, and Scepter of the house of Israel, you open and no one can close, and you close and no one can open: come and bring the prisoners out of the prison, those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

Zech. 8:9-17; Rev. 6:1-17; Matthew 25:31-46

Our final parable.  Isn’t it interesting that Matthew chose this one for last?  I’ve never liked it.  I am always shown to be wanting.  I don’t do enough of these “corporal works of mercy.”  I don’t give enough, visit enough, welcome enough.  For at least thirty years I’ve struggled with this.

I’m a writer and a pray-er.  For years I was a professor of political theory, and I wrote about what should be done, but I wasn’t out there doing it.  Now I’m a Companion, and I’m still writing about what should be done, but I’m not out there.  I’m not in the soup kitchen, the prison, the shelter, the sickroom.  And I’ve felt guilt, but no deeper call to be in those places.

Finally a wise spiritual director worked with me on this.  She reminded me that the body of Christ needs the exhorters and teachers and apostles and prophets as much as the feeders and rescue workers and healers and visitors.  So over time I’ve come to an uneasy peace with where my gifts fit into God’s dream of wholeness.  I’m writing this because it’s what I’m supposed to do.  When I have gone to God in prayer and agonized, I hear: “Write!”  “Teach!”  Fine.

The line I think Jesus (or Matthew) is drawing here is not between corporal works of mercy and other, less worthy activities.  It’s between a life lived for ourselves alone and a life lived for and with others, to an end greater than ourselves.  It’s between compassion and apathy.  And when we do cooperate, when we enter into those larger spaces in our hearts, we can tell: we can sense the inheritance already at work in us.

The parable suggests that we don’t have to be aiming at Christ to serve Christ.  The “sheep” are surprised, and wonder when they served the “king.”  They did what their hearts told them to do, and they received the reward that is intrinsic to that.  So don’t waste time like I did, agonizing about your worthiness: just open your heart and do what seems right, what you can.

A great slogan I learned from the ELCA is “Be: See: Do.”  Be who you are.  See what you have.  Do what matters to God.  And “there shall be a sowing of peace,” as God promised through Zechariah.

As we turn the corner into the final week, you might spend some time with the parables from these last weeks and ask yourself what you need to carry into Christmas, and what you need to lay down.  If you be, and see, and do, what is in front of you?