'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty
or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison,
and not minister to your needs?’
We sometimes miss the King because we look for him in the wrong places. We exonerate ourselves of responsibility, believing that if we had seen him we would in fact have ministered to his needs. But the temptation to neglect and ignore challenging people and situations can make us miss opportunities to minister to the King. As Jesus tells it, we may not even realize that these encounters were such opportunities until after the fact.
Lord, when did we see you
Jesus calls us to seek him and to serve him in the least of his brothers and sisters. We tend to imagine a Kingdom of "the sleek and the strong", of beautifully polished exteriors, were everything is working perfectly. But that is not the present reality of the Kingdom. It is not, in fact, a place where everyone has it all together. It is a place where sheep are still disoriented for having been so recently scattered when it was cloudy and dark. It is a place of the lost, the strayed, the injured, and the sick, more than it is a place of the sleek and strong. Jesus himself said that he came to seek and to save the lost (see Luke 19:10). He reminded us that those who are well do not need a doctor but the sick (see Mark 2:17). The Church is never going to be a community of perfect people on earth. So instead we must not hide from the fact that we are a community seeking healing and wholeness together.
Lord, when did we see you
Those within the walls of the Church and those outside the falls of the Church need the Good Shepherd to shepherd them (see John 10:11-18). There are many sheep that still wander in the cloudy and dark world outside of the green pastures of the Church. Those who have been found will stray again without the care of the shepherd.
Lord, when did we see you
When we recognize that we ourselves are the lost in need of being found and the sick in need of a doctor we are able to let walls of defense down so that the Good Shepherd himself can look after and tend us. We ourselves are the least of these, with whom the Lord identifies. As we receive the blessing of his shepherding care, often through others among his followers, we see the way in which the Lord himself empowers others to join him in his mission to the lost sheep.
Lord, when did we see you
Without experiencing the Lord seeking us out and saving us we ourselves will not be in a position to care about and seek after others. For it is only the Lord's power in us that can do this. We must first know this power and then we will be free to let it work. It will drive and motivate us enter into situations that would otherwise seem hopeless, to make a difference where we would otherwise be tempted to despair.
Jesus is the King of kings. But how different he is from those who hold worldly power. He uses his authority not to dominate the sheep for his own sake, but to lead them home. He took on a human nature, defeating all the enemies to his claim of kingship, even death itself. He used this great authority to unite all things in himself in being subjected to the Father. But again, this was not to dominate, but "so that God may be all in all." Finally the sheep will be united so closely to the shepherd that they can no longer stray.
The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
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