SEEK JUSTICE | Matthew 25:31–40 | Pastor John Anderson | 8.02.26

Hello, this is Pastor Ryan Gerlock and Pastor John Anderson.

Welcome to the Resurrection Church Podcast.

Each week we bring you Sunday's message from Resurrection Church right here in Racing, Wisconsin.

So whether you're listening on a walk, driving to work, or just folding some laundry, or avoiding folding laundry, we hope this encourages your faith, challenges your perspective, and reminds you that resurrection isn't just something that happened.

It's something God is still doing.

Enjoy this week's message.

Morning, church.

Today we have a reading from the Gospel of Matthew.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another, as shepherds separate the sheep from the goats.

And he will be put and he will put the sheep at the his right hand and the goats at the left.

And then the king will say to those at his right hand, Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food.

I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

I was naked and you gave me clothing.

I was sick and you took care of me.

I was in prison and you visited me.

Then the righteous will answer him.

Lord, when it was that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink, and then and then when it was we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing, and when it was we saw you sick or in prison and visited you.

And the king will answer them, Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters, you did it to me.

The gospel of our Lord.

Good morning, church.

My name is John.

I'm one of the pastors here at Resurrection.

And uh a couple quick things as we enter into Scripture.

If you got your Bible with you, we're gonna be in Matthew 25.

Um, and so you feel free to turn there.

Um it's the first gospel uh in the New Testament.

Uh but I want to name a couple things that many of you are thinking.

Yes, Pastor Ryan and I are dressed uh similarly, and uh that is because our wives dress us.

And and and so every now and then uh we find out that this is kind of their way of messing with us.

Um and so this is what we have.

Uh and so at the end of worship, it'll be a who wore it best uh vote.

And so, and I also want to acknowledge uh Leanne's sister is visiting today, and so please uh if you get a chance, come introduce yourself to Pastor Ryan's uh uh sister-in-law.

Uh but but Pastor Ryan and all the leaders, he mentioned this at the beginning, and we all kind of chuckled.

I tell you, I've I've been watching Pastor Ryan and leaders he's worked with for decades in youth ministry, and and when my call committee met with me, some of you are in here, I said there was a couple non-negotiables.

Uh uh one was I would never do a lock-in under any circumstances.

And so they they said okay, and then they and then they called the pastor that would.

Uh and you would think of the two of us, the younger pastor would do the lock-in, but no, the older pastor did.

And in and in the words of my youngest son, it was one of the greatest nights ever, dad.

And so, but it's it's a great, it's a great way to to let kids be comfortable and safe in this space, to be a little goofy, but to also build some trust with each other and leaders.

And so, one more time, I want to thank all the leaders who gave up an entire night of sleep.

Not only did I sleep, I had my wife pick the kids up so I could sleep even longer.

Uh, so thank you, Pastor, and thank you, leaders.

You guys are a gift to us.

Thank you.

Um, we are in a sermon series back to the basics.

And if you're visiting with us, it is it is exactly as it states.

We're just trying to remind the church, trying to remind each other that the basic things, the main things, are really all we need to follow Christ.

And we sometimes complicate it.

Last week we talked about trusting God, which I think many of us can give lip service to.

Well, of course I trust God, but trusting God in every single moment of our lives, trusting God when words fail, trusting God when tragedy happens, when prayers aren't answered.

And we talked a lot about what it looks like to trust God.

This week we're talking about seeking justice.

And I told the first service this, I'm so frustrated that in the culture we live in today, that the word justice is a lightning rod, that it's attached to something other than what Christ calls us to in kingdom justice.

So, not justice policies or justice legislation or social justice, all of those things which might have a place.

That's not what we're talking about today.

We're talking about justice as Christ sees it.

And he outlines it here for us in Matthew 25.

Has anybody heard of the uh invisible uh gorilla experiment?

It's also known as the selective attention test.

Is anybody this is back in the 90s?

So they had a number of people come into a room and they were locked into these little screens and they had to pay attention uh to every person wearing a white shirt that passed the ball.

Okay, so they had to do this, and if you counted correctly, you would win a small prize.

And so they had to watch and they had to watch.

But the problem was as they were watching, something else entered the scene.

And you're gonna see it in just a moment here.

This is Pastor Ryan in a gorilla suit.

Um it's not really uh, but uh just so you're curious on how old we are in 1999, we were in high school together.

Uh but anyway, so the the experiment ends, and they asked the kids, they asked the people watching, how many did you count?

Did anybody count by the way?

No, 15.

And then they said, Did you see the gorilla?

And what's fascinating is that 50% of the group did not see the gorilla.

They would repeat this test over and over again, and the and the numbers were almost always the same.

Psychologists call this inattentional blindness, inattentional blindness.

When we're focused on one thing, we often become blind to everything else.

And I will tell you, as someone who's been in church work for a long time, that this is something that happens to our spiritual lives too often.

We become so busy doing life, working, raising kids, paying bills, even coming to church that we miss the people right in front of us.

We don't actually see them.

It's as if we're looking at everyone, but we're not seeing anyone.

And that's what Jesus, I think, is trying to teach us, trying to challenge us, trying to caution us against today in this scripture.

So as we enter into it, will you pray with me?

God help us to see with your eyes.

Help us to recognize you, O Christ, in neighbor, in stranger.

Help us to respond to the call you placed on all of our lives.

That we would live and love radically different than the world lives and loves.

That we would stand out not by our accomplishments, but by the way we serve.

As always, I pray the meditations of my heart and the words that pass through my lips are yours, O Christ.

In whose name we pray.

Amen.

So thank you, Brett, for reading our scriptures today.

Just show of hands, real quick.

Has anybody heard that story before?

The sheep and the goats.

Yeah?

It's one of the most famous pieces of scripture.

It comes in a section of scripture right before Jesus and the gospel of Matthew is eventually betrayed, handed over to be beaten, and then executed, and then hung on a cross, put in a tomb, only to rise again three days later.

Praise God, hallelujah.

But in these last few moments with his disciples, he's telling them everything he possibly can.

It's if if you've been with us in the Gospel of John, it's it's much like John 13 through chapter 17.

Jesus is last night with his closest people, and he's telling them everything, every little thing that he wants them to remember.

Imagine if you were with the ones you loved the most, parents, with your kids or grandkids, friends, with those who are in your circle, your partners.

And you know this might be the last time you see them, and you just want them to remember these things.

And this is what Jesus leaves them with.

They were asking all these questions about glory and what it'll be like when Christ comes back and who's in and who's out.

And this is the answer Jesus gives them.

Here's some advice from your pastor.

When you read scripture, look for things that surprise you.

That's a good thing.

Be searching for things that you haven't seen or maybe experienced in reading before.

Surprises are good in Scripture.

I want to be surprised when I enter Scripture.

I want God to show me something new.

And there's a lot of surprise going on in this story.

The sheep are surprised, the goats are surprised, they're all shocked.

And the biggest surprise, I think, is where Jesus says he had been all along.

The sheep say, Well, God, when when did we see you hungry?

When when did we see you thirsty?

When did we see you as a stranger?

When were you sick?

When were you in prison?

And Jesus says this famous line a line that you should memorize, a line that you should wear on your heart.

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

I've read that scripture so many times, but it still catches me off guard.

Jesus doesn't say people matter.

That's not the whole point.

He says, No, people are where you're gonna find me.

And think about that for the uh original listeners of this.

Jesus is saying, Look, you want to find me?

Look to your neighbor.

And it doesn't compute.

They're like, well, no, we go to the temple to see you, God.

We we go to the crowds to hear you teach, we go to see you perform miracles.

And then instead, Jesus says, What does Jesus say?

He says, No, I'm I'm actually with the hungry.

I'm the one who's thirsty, I'm the one who's lonely and sick and imprisoned.

The place we least expect to find God is exactly where Jesus says he has chosen to be found.

And that's why when we talk about God's justice, I think it's about seeing, like really seeing people.

For a number of years, I was part of this team that would lead these nights of worship.

I've talked about them before.

The uh ELCA outreach center in Kenosha was trying to raise funds.

And so we would we would lead these big nights where we'd have music and we'd we'd have food and we'd raise money and awareness, we'd hear testimony.

Well, the first one we ever did, um, I planned it, and so it was kind of, you know, and uh and I got to the parking lot of of St.

Mary's where I was at, and I was the first one there.

This is December, it's already dark out, and all of a sudden, this old Oldsmobile pulls up next to me, music rocking, and this guy gets out of his car, takes one more drag and a cigarette, puts it out, stomps it out, and goes, Are you John?

And I go, No.

I don't know where he is.

No, I said, uh, I said, absolutely.

I said, Yeah, I'm I'm John.

I said, uh, who are you?

He said, I'm James.

And then he said, nothing.

I said, All right, man.

He said, uh, this is the night of worship thing.

I'm like, yeah.

He said, yeah, it's actually not gonna start for a little bit, but you're welcome to hang out inside.

He's like, no, I'm here to help.

I'm like, oh, great, man.

He's like, yeah, he's like, uh, Carl Erickson, the director at the center, said you were doing this for the center, and I'm one of the clients there.

I uh I actually use their resources quite a bit, and I figured, why not go help?

James didn't miss a night of worship.

He was the first one there almost every time and the last one to leave for about five years.

I learned later his story.

He had just gotten out of prison.

He was trying to turn his life around.

He built community in this place.

And in that moment, as I reflect on that, I kind of saw him as a distraction.

Pastor Ryan, a few weeks ago, preached what I think was one of his best sermons, and he challenged us to think about the way that we talk about God.

And he said that the Hebrew people, when they would say the word for God, Yahweh, they would they would say it as if they were breathing.

That our very breath would be an acknowledgement of God's provision in our life.

Pastor Ryan and I were talking because I told that story to him, and and he mentioned that I have my own type of breathing sometimes when people perhaps interrupt me on my way somewhere, and I go.

And I think the lesson in that is we need more in those moments when we think we're being interrupted.

And a recognition of the one in front of us might very well be Christ.

Christ doesn't make this hard.

I think we we see the word justice and we think of politics, policies, debates, and arguments, but that's not what Jesus does.

No, Jesus talks about one hungry person who was hungry, one lonely person, one frightened person, one sick person.

Justice for Christ just begins with seeing people as worthy of being loved, not fixing everything.

Spoiler alert, you can't.

It's not solving every problem, and it's definitely not changing the entire world overnight.

We can't do that.

It's seeing someone because I believe, I've experienced it.

When you take the time to see somebody, to receive them and accept all of them, all the things that they are, it's almost impossible to walk away from that experience unchanged.

And that's what Jesus wants the disciples to understand, to believe.

And this wasn't a new idea.

This was something that the church had struggled with forever.

You've heard of the prophet Isaiah.

700 years before Christ, Isaiah is prophesying about the Messiah, but he's also challenging the church.

A church who, by the way, according to scripture, was doing all the things right.

They would go to temple and they would make a loud noise and they were doing fasting as long as people could see them fasting, and they were giving money so that people could see them give money.

They were doing all the things.

But God gives Isaiah a word.

Here's the word that God gives to Isaiah.

He says, Isaiah, tell them that they are doing all the religious things right, but they are missing my heart, and they are not following me.

He says to them, Is not this kind of fasting the one I have chosen?

To loosen the chains of injustice, to share your food with the hungry, to provide the poor wanderer with shelter.

God wasn't rejecting their worship, he was challenging them to redefine it.

And I think that work is still in front of us.

True worship doesn't end when the music stops.

It can't.

It follows us into our neighborhoods.

Our very lives should be an embodied expression of Christ's love so that we can break out in forms of worship and celebration when appropriate.

Or that we can bring worship and praise into hospital rooms and prisons, into homeless shelters, and into the lives of people who are too often forgotten.

So many of you already do that work here.

You understand that the vertical life with God must be lived out in the horizontal.

We can't, they can't be separate.

You cannot say, God, I love you, but not them.

Christ calls us as something radical and it's not easy.

Jesus would summarize this later: love God, love your neighbor.

But then he would also spend most of his life in ministry telling him loving each other is super hard.

Really hard.

In fact, let's talk a lot about forgiveness and judgment.

Things that he knew we'd struggle with.

But you can't separate loving God and your neighbor.

And justice begins with seeing.

But I wonder who in this room has stopped seeing.

Who's struggling with really accepting that God can love that person?

And maybe they don't fall in this list.

Maybe they're on a different list.

You've made up in your head.

Their theology is wrong, their politic is wrong.

I refuse to look into their eyes and hear their story.

There's such power in story.

We lost our puppy this past Monday.

I'm not gonna look at my wife because she's gonna get a little.

And I know there's other members in this room who have lost pets recently.

I've never I've never experienced loss of a pet before.

I've never experienced that before.

And it was it was um it was heavy and it was sad, 16 and a half years with this dude.

His name was Wrigley.

Cubs.

Um our puppy now is cubby.

Uh, but it was it was heavy and it was sad, and and I was thinking about I was thinking about how we talk about pets passing, and then I was this is how my mind were.

This is a Pastor Ryan moment, and then my mind started thinking about the things we say about dogs and how when you'll sometimes meet a skittish dog or an aggressive dog, we'll talk about the home they came from, and it wasn't a good home.

Or they were in a shelter for a long time.

And what I've observed is that we give those dogs a whole lot of grace, but we don't do the same for humans sometimes.

Grace is hard for us.

We can sing it, right?

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I am found.

Was blind, but now I see.

The more I experience grace and give grace, grace changes what I notice.

I love observing kids.

Camp is great because kids are still curious enough to pause and look at things.

I remember my boys were younger.

We go to a restaurant, and one of them would loudly say, Why are they sitting alone?

Am I sorry?

They're her kids.

I'm just I don't know.

But I think kids are great at noticing things that we've trained ourselves to overlook.

How quick we are to miss the person in our midst who so desperately just needs to be seen, to be known, and above all else, to be loved.

Don't we all desire that?

Isn't that kind of it?

Maybe you came in here with no faith.

I think you would still agree we want those things to be seen, to be known wholly, and to be accepted and to be loved.

I think that's spiritual maturity, learning to see again.

And that's what grace does.

It doesn't change where we're going after we die.

Grace changes how we live while we're here, what we notice, how our hearts are shaped, the grace that we give to one another and receive in kind.

It changes our eyes.

I don't want to miss the one glaring question that I think many of you might have.

Theologians have debated it for years.

You read these words from Christ, and you're like, okay, the judgment seat, is it gonna be about the prayer that I prayed, or is it gonna be about, well, I gave a lot of money to church.

So is it gonna be about that?

I sang really loud, I was in, I was in ministry, I was a pastor.

No, in the judgment, Christ says, I was hungry.

Where were you?

I was lonely and you missed me sitting right next to you.

And that's hard because then all of a sudden your brain goes to works.

If you know anything about the reformation of the Lutheran church, we we said, no, no, no, not works.

No, we we we echo the words of Paul who says, For it is by grace you have been saved through what?

Faith.

This is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one may boast.

And you go, okay, see Jesus.

But then Jesus' brother James writes a little letter.

And James says, Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.

If one of you says, I'm sorry to hear that, go in peace, keep warm, and be well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good are your words?

Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

How do we carry those intention?

Here's something I want you to hear.

It's a truth that I believe was vital to my understanding this.

James is not arguing with Paul.

In fact, if you can picture them, they're standing back to back, ready to defend the gospel together.

Paul is defending the gospel from people who think that they can earn their salvation.

He's saying, No, you're not God.

Don't claim to have that power.

God loves you, God has died for you, God is the one who saves.

But then James comes alongside him and defends the gospel from people who think that grace never changes anything.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great theologian and martyr, called that cheap grace, receiving the good news of Jesus Christ, but refusing to share it with others.

False piety on a Sunday morning and wayward living during the week.

So, which is it?

Is it grace or works?

And the answer is obvious, yes.

Paul tells us how we're saved, and Jesus shows us what a saved life begins to look like.

James reminds us that there is this beauty in following Christ that will be evident in the fruit of our lives.

James 25 reminds us that all of us someday will stand before God and God will give an account of the things that we've done.

And this this warrants long conversations, but I will say that when Christ says to the disciples, you will be the kingdom builders, you will inherit the kingdom and then create the kingdom, this is the work he's talking about.

I think of our ladies that go to long, I'm looking right at Chris Hansen, it's your fault.

You made eye contact with me.

I think a Chris Hansen, who is never gonna come up on stage, and this is not a stage, who's never gonna come up on whatever this part's called, because that's the altar, who's never gonna come up here and say, look what I did.

But tirelessly, every Tuesday morning, is part of a team that for years and years has fed hundreds of people.

That's holier than anything I'm doing right now.

Or Lynette and others in laundry love, there's so many that simply sit with people who can't afford to do laundry and hear their story instead of seeing them as a charity case.

That's what Christ is talking about.

Not going to conferences, those are good things, not knowing all the songs and all the scriptures and reading all the books and hearing all the sermons, that's all good.

But what Christ wants us to do with all of that is to live this way.

That's what real justice looks like.

Nobody keeping score.

And that's the other part of the story that's crazy.

They said, Lord, when did we see you?

They were incapable of counting in their heads all the times they were really generous, all the times they served in that mission trip.

No, they they were just living it.

They had become compassionate people because of the grace bestowed upon them.

Mercy had become instinct for them.

It was their knee-jerk reaction.

Oh, that I would live like that.

And there are seasons where I feel like I've got it figured out.

For them, it was almost like breathing.

And I think that's one of the clearest pictures of spiritual maturity in the entire New Testament.

Not that we become impressive, not that we become famous or even extraordinarily gifted, but that love would become our first response.

I'm gonna invite the worship team up.

We're gonna sing a song here in a minute.

You know, when Jesus is talking to this church, he doesn't ask how many people knew your name.

He says, How many names did you learn?

He doesn't say how many people served you.

He says, Who did you serve?

He doesn't say how much did you accomplish.

He said, Who did you love?

Christ's scorecard is so different than ours.

It's something we would do well to listen to.

We think about the prophet Micah who tells us to do justice, love mercy, to walk humbly.

And notice the order, by the way.

Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.

Because listen, church, justice without mercy will become harsh.

And mercy without justice will just become some sentimental idea.

Both require humility because humility reminds us that every single one of us stands in need of God's grace.

None of us on our own have it figured out.

All of us, apart from Christ, are beggars asking for a piece of bread.

There was this rabbi, and he was with his students, his disciples.

And he said to them, How do you know when day becomes night?

How do you know when day becomes night?

And they answered, as I think many of us would, observing the physical world.

They said, Well, I know when day becomes night because I can distinguish a sheep between a dog.

And the rabbi said, No.

One said, Well, I know when night becomes day, when I can differentiate my yard from my neighbors.

And the rabbi said, No.

And one said, I got it, Rabbi.

I know when night has become day, when I can differentiate the colors of a flower.

And the rabbi with sadness in his eyes said, No.

No, that's not the right answer.

And so frustrated, they say to the rabbi, Well, Rabbi, then tell us what is the what is the way?

What how do we know when night becomes day?

And the rabbi says, day begins when you look into the face of another human being and recognize your brother or your sister.

Until then, church, it's still night.

And I think Jesus says something very similar to us today.

Perhaps the kingdom begins when we look into another person's face and we recognize Christ.

And that's my prayer.

That tomorrow morning, before your feet hit the floor, before you rise from your bed, that you will pray, oh God, help me to see you in neighbor.

Help me to see you in stranger.

Because that's the real work of the church.

And it's the work that Christ calls us to, so that this can be a world where Christ justice reigns supreme.

Amen.

Let us pray.

God, you are our firm foundation.

You are the one who points us to the way.

Help us to see you in stranger, to see you in prison or to see you in those who need the simple, basic comforts of life that we too often take for granted.

God, I give you thanks and praise for the hundreds of leaders in this church who serve and live so selflessly in ways that will never be recognized because they choose to answer the call that you've placed on our heart.

Whatever we do to the least of these, we do to you, oh God.

Help us to remember that and help us to live with that knowledge.

Your kingdom is made supreme.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.