Giving to Others
Text: Matthew 25:31-40
Title: Giving to Others
Thesis: Faith is both believing the right things and doing the right things.
Time: Funeral –Hollis Evans, Sue
There is some confusion in Matthew 25. Sheep running around, thinking they may be goats and goats running around baaing like sheep, but that doesn’t make them any less a goat. Occasionally on the news, we’ll catch a story of a mother dog that takes in a litter of kittens. I saw last week on the news a strange relationship of a mouse and a snake that were best friends at a zoo in the orient.
It was common in Jesus’ day for shepherds to graze their sheep and goats in the same pasture side by side. But the shepherds had to be careful to herd the sheep on one side and the goats on the other because the male goats had a tendency to charge at the sheep. The point Jesus is making in this story is that until he returns, people are mixed in together –people of faith and people who are not faithful are mixed in together, living side-by-side. And what can happen is there can be some confusion –those of us who are faithful may question our faith, and those who don’t have any faith at all, may think they are living righteous lives.
And so, Jesus gives us the qualifications of what makes us a sheep, or what makes us a goat. So that there is no doubt about it, Jesus says that people of faith, his sheep, behave in one way, and those lacking in faith, the goats, behave in another.
To get a well rounded understanding of that word faith, according to Matthew, faith is two things. Faith is first knowing and believing the right things. Faith is knowing that Jesus is the good shepherd. Faith is knowing that that way of salvation is through Jesus Christ. Faith is knowing that what makes us holy and righteous people is not because we may look like a sheep, or talk like a sheep, or hang around sheep –faith is knowing that the gift of salvation is freely given to us. In Jesus’ pasture, none of us deserve to be there, it is only through the invitation of Christ that we are invited to enter into his fold.
And according to Matthew 25, faith is even more than this. A well rounded, full faith is one in which we both believe the right things, not confused on our identity, and we also do the right things, living out what we believe.
If I were to describe the life of Sue Evans Hollis it would be that Sue was a great evangelist. That may sound strange, especially considering Sue that was a quiet woman. The times I talked with Sue, she didn’t mind talking, but I had to keep the conversation going, prompting her into conversation. I imagine in most of our minds when we think of the word evangelist we think of someone with the natural gift of gab, someone who is an extrovert, the person who goes up to everyone else and initiates the conversation, someone who has the ability to vocally communicate their faith in a way that makes crystal clear the message of salvation. Yes, there are many evangelists like that. But there are also those who are evangelists who make clear the message of the Gospel in other ways. Think of the apostle Paul, in one of his letters he admits he’s not that great of a preacher, so he tends to write down his messages and other preachers are sent to preach. Back in the Old Testament, Jesus even selected someone who was not a great orator to lead his people out of slavery, Moses, who assigns off to his brother the role of making clear the message of God to the people.
Here is what Jesus says makes someone a good evangelist, even someone who is living out their faith, putting their faith into action. Matthew 25:35, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” The stories I hear repeated over and over about Sue is that she lived out her faith through her generosity of giving to those who were hungry. Whenever someone came into her store be it a family member, or a friend, or someone who lived in the community, or even a total stranger –if that person said, “Ms. Sue, I don’t have any money but my family is hungry,” she would fix them up with a bag of groceries. Nobody went away from Ms. Sue’s store hungry. There was no confusion in Sue’s mind. In my conversations with her, she knew her faith. She knew Jesus as the one who freely gave her the gift of eternal life. And she lived her faith, as she freely gave to others in need. I believe Sue will have an extra blessing in heaven. Imagine all the people she’ll run into who will say, “Ms. Sue, you may not remember me, or Ms. Sue you may not know me I was just a child, but you provided my mom with some groceries when we were hungry.” Sue was a good evangelist, she made clear the love and compassion of Jesus Christ, in the way she gave to others.
Sue not only gave out food. She gave out plenty of love to her son Ricky, her daughter-in-law Karen, her brothers and sisters, spouse, grandkids and great-grandkids. She gave out plenty of love to her friends and caregiver. Sue was a person who enjoyed being around people, and made people feel good when they were around her. Ricky, God gave you the blessing of a wonderful mother. For all of us, God gave us the blessing of being in the presence of a great evangelist, who showed through her actions the love and compassion of Jesus Christ. And we are all challenged like her to live out our faith in the way we feed the hungry, visit the sick, clothe the needy, and visit those in prison.
I like to believe that we will eat in heaven. It does say in John’s Gospel that after Jesus was raised from the dead he ate a catch of fish with his disciples. And I imagine that if in heaven there is some kind of a grocery store, we’ll know where we’ll find Sue, behind the counter talking to her friends as they come in.
Brothers and sisters, may we have the faith to believe the right things –that through Jesus Christ we are given salvation freely as the gift of eternal life, and may we have the faith to do the right things –to freely give as we have been freely given unto.