"Whatsoever you have done for the least of these..."

One of the amazing things about the scriptures is the degree to which they speak with any kind of unified voice about anything. I mean, just think about it for a minute: even if we take the most conservative view of biblical authorship, we're still looking at sixty-six different books, composed by at least forty different authors -- perhaps quite a bit more, depending on how many different voices we think are behind the Psalms and Proverbs -- from very different regions of the Middle East, Asia Minor, and even Europe, over a period of thirteen hundred years.

Yet, each piece of scripture fits within the larger whole, like wildly unique instruments joining together in a symphony -- here a kettle drum, there a flute -- resonating within the musical architecture of the piece, becoming somehow greater than the sum of each individual part.

Without any perceptible, individual prompting, these authors (some of them writing during the same period of time and, thus, without any reference to each other's work) all speak in a harmony that defies explanation.

One piece of that music, one part of the harmony of the scriptures as a whole, is the way those authors speak to those the world values and those it does not.

If you pay attention to the rhythm of the Old Testament, it's easy to see this music emerge. It's there in the life of Abram, a man from Ur, who had moved with his family to another prosperous city in the sprawling Babylonian empire and, apparently, struck it rich. He was living the dream -- wealth, influence, a home in the city where he was assured of food and protection, while those outside the walls were left to fend for themselves -- and, in the midst of it all, he hears this call, this lingering, unavoidable call, to leave.

Not to some other city, mind you.

No, Abram gets the inescapable sense that he is to move from the center of his known world out to Canaan, the most rural, most backwoods place you could find. Just listen to how a Canaanite was described by the Babylonian city-folk:

A tent dweller buffeted by wind and rain, 

he knows not prayers,

With the weapon he makes the mountain his habitation,

Contentious to the excess, he turns against the land, 

knows not to bend the knee,

Eats uncooked meat,

Has no house in his lifetime,

Is not brought to burial when he dies.

Basically, they were considered to be little more than animals.

Yet, it was there -- out in the wilderness, out where there was none of the wealth or influence he had come to know, out where the rest of the civilized world was completely unaware of his existence -- it was there that Abram met God.

Or think about Moses, a prince of Egypt, at the height of its power -- the most dominant empire in the world at the time. Yet, in a lapse of control, he murders a man and is driven out of one of the most illustrious palaces the world has ever known into the desert. He takes refuge among a poor, nomadic tribe out in the middle of a vast and expansive nothingness. Laying down the staff of his royal authority, he takes up the staff of a shepherd, sleeping out in the open with his flocks, no roof over his head. He hides -- as far away from the horrors of his past as he can possibly get.

Then, one day, he wanders even further.

The Bible describes Mt. Sinai as being out beyond the wilderness, as if Moses arrived at the very end of the world and somehow managed to keep walking -- beyond the edge of the map, out where no foot had ever trod.

The location of Mt. Sinai is so far out of the way, so alien to the domain of men, that -- even though it was there that Israel actually became the people of God -- beyond one solitary trip from Elijah, it disappears from the lives of the Israelites, completely. 

Yet, it was there, in a place so remote we've actually forgotten how to get there, that Moses, the vagabond Egyptian outcast turned homeless fugitive, was found by God.

We might also think of Saul, the first Israelite king. It might sound shocking to say this, but he was actually a pretty great king, by contemporary standards. When the Israelites were more focused on their tribal, rather than their national identity, when the people of God threatened to dissolve into their own in-fighting as the armies of their enemies threatened to devour them, it was Saul who unified them. It was Saul who led his army, out numbered and terrified, against the mighty Philistines and emerged victorious. It was Saul who shrewdly captured the Amalekite king, knowing he'd be of more use alive -- for treaties or ransom -- than dead.

Yet, it was not a Saul that God ultimately wanted for his people, but a David.

We take for granted what an unlikely choice this David was. However, take a moment and let it sink in that, when faced with the prospect that a member of his own house might become king, with all the elevation of wealth and status that would bring -- even after all his other sons had failed the test -- Jesse found the idea that David could be king to be such a joke that he chose to lie and pretend David didn't even exist rather than present him to Samuel for consideration.

Yet, it was this weak and helpless boy -- who knew nothing of leadership or what it meant to be a king, whose own family hid him away in the fields -- it was this boy who captured God's heart.

Over and over and over, throughout the scriptures, God shows how deeply he identifies with what the rest of the world considers to be "the least of these." To us, on this side of history, they are men of great stature, heroes of the faith, but we really need to remember how ridiculous it was, for example, that the Sovereign Lord of all Creation would choose, as the Patriarch of the people who would represent him to all people, some dusty nomad in a small corner of the world, who (for the overwhelming majority of humanity) may as well have never even existed.

We need to remember how absurd it is that the God who intended to declare his glory to the nations would bypass the wealthiest and most powerful empire in the world -- in favor of its slaves.

And let's not forget: Abraham was a liar who traded his wife away to protect his own skin; Moses was a murderer and a coward; and David stole a man's wife and had him murdered on the battlefield.  The same Israelites who watched Pharaoh's men held at bay by a pillar of fire, who watched the waters part for them and swallow the entire Egyptian army, those very same Israelites yearned to return to their slavery before they ever reached the foot of Sinai.

When we fail to be shocked by the sheer worthlessness of the people God continually calls to fulfill his purposes, we cease to be able to understand passages, like the one in Matthew 25, where Jesus identifies so deeply with the "least of these" that he regards anything done for them as done equally for him.

In fact, we cease to be able to identify "the least of these" at all.

Instead, we trade the needy for the deserving. We exchange the dependent for the worthy.  In place of Jesus' plea that all who are burdened should come to him we hold that God helps those who help themselves. 
 
We excuse ourselves from our call to care -- for the hungry, the alienated, the naked, the homeless, the sick, the imprisoned -- by questioning how they arrived in their state of need (by their own poor choices?) or whether they'd even really benefit from the care we might provide.

We only fight for justice for those who we think are just. We only feed those who we think could eventually feed themselves. We only care for the sick (especially those who suffer from mental illness) who might eventually be healed. 

Of course, the question we have to ask ourselves is, "What if God treated us like that?" What if he only loved the lovely?



 

 What if he only saved those who were worth saving?