Sunday, September 7, 2025
Matthew 25:31-46
1.
There’s an assumption we’ve been living with—in mainline denominations at least—that good religion is stable religion; that true Christianity is balanced and balancing; that stability and balance are the desired outcomes of a steady Christian life. Christianity is an avenue to respectability.
And maybe, maybe, what the world needs most, what this fragile nation needs most is an unstable church, or maybe better yet, a de-stabilizing church! “I was starving and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a refugee and you welcomed me. I was naked and cold and you gave me clothes to wear. I was locked away in detention and you visited me, you emboldened me, you showed me love.” To stand in this tradition and take these words to heart is to be shaken by the unsettling intimacy of God’s love: for every human being, for every vulnerable one of us; and for the poor, for the crushed, for the wandering stranger most of all. And that love, my friends, is going to rock our worlds, and shake our hearts, and de-stabilize the church over and over and over again.
But you know this.
2.
It’s early June. And I’m sitting at lunch with my dear friends and beloved Palestinian colleagues at the Wi’am Center in Bethlehem, in the West Bank. And that staff of eight, they do lunch right; every day they prioritize that hour as relational time, as conversational time, even as communion time. Noone rushes through it. Rarely does any one of them miss it. It is sacred and dear to them. As important as anything else they do.
It struck me after a couple of weeks that this is one of the ways these dear advocates, teachers, social workers survive apartheid, occupation, daily violence and now (just an hour away) genocide. Eating together. Risking intimacy together. Breaking bread for one another.
On this particular June day, I’m asked about all of you, about the church I’ve left behind for a few months to visit Bethlehem and work by their side. What makes my home church tick? And as so often happens, I find myself talking about Antony, and our Immigration Ministry, and the many, many, many of you who step up to advocate for Antony’s freedom; to create a sense of shelter and safety for him in a scary time; to love him and pray for him; and to build an even larger network of compassion and resistance around the seacoast and across the state. I talk about how Matthew 25 comes alive in this place, through you and your ministries.
And over warm pita and olives that tasted of the Palestinian soil, I weep a little myself as I tell them about you, about your extraordinary (and de-stabilizing) commitment to Antony; and my tears fall freely when Antony’s face flashes in my mind. You know…that face! There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do for him. And that, my friends, that’s the gospel that rocks our worlds, shakes us down to the bone, and destabilizes the calloused world around us. Fills you and me with a love that surpasses reason. And liberates us from anxiety and despair for service, for solidarity, and for faith. Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And that kind of love shakes us down. To the core. To what matters most.
And of course, I know that over the summer it has asked even more of all of you, even more of your hearts, even more of your time, even more of your steadfastness. And you have risen to the moment. For Antony. For faith. For one another. And for life.
3.
Well, that June day in Bethlehem, I’m overwhelmed by all of this as I look across the table and see a gentle soul, a gardener there at the center, with tears running down his own Palestinian cheeks. Big tears. And he’s feverishly wiping them away. And when he looks up at last, makes eye contact with me, he waves his hand around the room, at his colleagues there, and he says: “That’s what they do for me.” He doesn’t know a lot of English: so he says just this and then says it again. “That’s what they do for me.”
It turns out that Nasser—that’s the gardener’s name—Nasser fled Gaza just a few years ago, slipping out of the besieged Strip just before the conflagration of 2023, and seeking protection, companionship, wherever he could find it. Separated for years now from his brother, his wife and his children. Watching from afar as Gaza is razed to the ground and his people starved. And Nasser was taken in, welcomed, sheltered, kept safe by the eight colleagues right there at the table, noshing on pita and shawarma and watching him cry. “That’s what they do for me.” He has no idea when he’ll see his kids again, his wife. In mid-July, Israel bombed the church in Gaza City where his brother was sleeping, and his brother was killed, assassinated, by unimaginably sophisticated weapons designed to traumatize and demoralize a whole people. The staff at Wi’am held him close, all summer long, physically, spiritually; they grieved with him. And they gathered friends for a memorial service in his brother’s memory. “That’s what they do for me.”
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Zoughbi Zoughbi and Nasser at Wi'am in Bethlehem |
Every night now, before he goes to sleep, Nasser sends me a message—usually on his What’s App account—with some kind of prayer, some kind of blessing, some word of encouragement. And I can’t explain what this means to me—so tender is his care for me, for some reason I can hardly comprehend. The way that time zones work, it means I wake up most mornings to that message, to his blessing, to Nasser’s prayer. It’s the way my days begin now. A band of prayer connecting us in faith—over thousands and thousands of miles.
But maybe I do have an idea. Maybe what draws Nasser to me, and that wonderful community in Bethlehem to ours in Durham, is the faith we share in Jesus and our practice of solidarity and de-stabilizing hospitality. Like that community in Bethlehem, we see Christ’s face in the one who comes to us seeking love and shelter. Like that community, we risk stability and balance in order to embody in this place and moment compassion and mercy. Like Nasser’s hosts at Wi’am, we believe that faith is not a possession to be guarded, but a gift to be shared, a feast to be cherished together, a vocation of courage in a season of fear. It’s not a walk in the park; no doubt about that. But it is God’s grace. In every sense. It is God’s grace.
This past Thursday, with some of you, I spent some time at U-Day, that thrilling campus ritual that marks the beginning of another academic year. We visit with curious students, and we share a bit of our spirit, a sampling of our ministry alongside hundreds of other organizations. And inevitably, each year, there are earnest and devout friends (at least a few) who stop by to challenge our legitimacy, to question our faith, even to suggest (and this gets me all stirred up) that the Community Church of Durham isn’t Christian enough. Maybe it’s the rainbow flag, maybe it’s the preaching, who really knows? We’ve got a reputation.
This year I chatted with three serious young men, from more conservative churches nearby. And I did my thing: talking about the Sermon on the Mount, celebrating our vision of inclusion and Jesus’ creativity and courage in overcoming division. And they listened. A little uncomfortably, but they listened. And then I asked: How about you? What’s it all about for you?
And one explained his church’s theological view in this way: God, he said, has declared through the Word His wrath (always His wrath) on a fallen humanity; and therefore God has determined that we’re all destined for Hell. Only through confession and surrender to the Saving Blood and Word of Jesus can we overcome that sentence; and if and when we do surrender, we find perfect peace. It’s a formula we’ve all heard before. And it’s not—to be honest—uncommon in the church today. The fancy way of naming it: substitutionary atonement. Only through confession and surrender to the Saving Blood of Jesus can we overcome the sentence.
Now I really do hope those three young men come to worship with us here someday soon. They seemed quite puzzled by me, even exasperated actually, and maybe they’ll come to set me straight. And If they do, I want to say this to them, in all love and compassion. Our Jesus comes into the world—again and again and again—to liberate all of us from the very fears your preachers are sowing in their churches. Our Jesus comes to liberate us from the fears your preachers are peddling. You may say: God is about wrath and vengeance, and faith can only be driven by fear and despair. But Jesus says: No, no, no. Perfect love frees us from fear, frees us to love one another fully and bravely and even sacrificially. Frees us to love God! Agape! You may say: God is threatening all humankind with Hell’s destruction. But Jesus says: No, no, no. I am with you in hungry; feed me. I am with you in the refugee; shelter me. I am with you in the lonely; visit me. Don’t be distracted by rumors of destruction. Feed me. Shelter me. Visit me.
And then—when they stay after worship to question me some more—I’ll take my three friends by the hand and I’ll take them downstairs to meet Antony. And Antony will tell them what he always tells students: that his life, even his life, especially his life, is a miracle. And we’ll talk about how it is that God’s love breaks every cycle of fear and vengeance, breaks every devastating cycle of violence and despair. And how instead we find freedom in God’s love to show up for one another, to stand up for one another, to delight in one another, to pray for one another, to live boldly together in peace and for peace. It has nothing to do with our capitulation to an angry God; it has everything to do with Jesus’ love and God’s grace. No wrath. No hell. Just love and grace. And liberation.
5.
And how this all ties in with Creationtide is very, very important.
In our wonderful tradition, rooted in the poetry and prophetic word of the Hebrews, embodied in the life and generosity of Jesus, we learn that we are to be stewards of earth’s wonder and creation’s abundance. We learn that human communities have a vocation around tending the planet’s wild spaces and farming for the good of the many and praising God from whom all blessings, and all creatures, flow.
That vocation begins—as Jesus insists in today’s parable—in our commitment to hospitality and compassion. If we center compassion in our ministries, in our homes, in our institutions and communities, we will inevitably do right by creation. If we center compassion in our ministries, homes and institutions, we will do right by creation. If instead we center consumption and fear, violence and war, we will destroy, pillage and degrade it. There is a direct correlation between our Immigration Ministry and our commitment to Creation. There is a direct line from our passion for accompaniment and our vocation as earth-lovers and creation-protectors. Don’t miss it. Don’t miss it.
The human vocation in this moment is to love the earth as we create human economies, local economies, networked communities that shelter the vulnerable, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and cherish the lonely. It’s always been a biblical theme: that the earth thrives when human compassion rises. And, this Creationtide, as ever, we give ourselves and our church to this holy task.
Amen and Ashe.
