The measure of judgement

How do we react when the most significant person in our life isn’t around? Teenagers sometimes throw a party and trash the house when their parents are away. Workers might put their feet up and relax when their boss has gone away to a conference or training course. In the parables of Jesus that we have heard read over the past few weeks, one servant got drunk and beat his fellow servants when his master was away while another buried the money he’d been given in the ground and did nothing with it for fear of what the master would do to him if he lost it.

Jesus told today’s parable (Matthew 25. 31 - end), and those that we have heard read over the past three weeks, to prepare his disciples for his death, resurrection and ascension. He was going to leave them but he was entrusting them with the responsibility of continuing his mission and ministry in his physical absence.

He wanted them to be like the servant that kept the household running efficiently and well while the master was away. To be like the young women who prepared well for the bridegroom’s absence so that they had enough supplies to welcome him when he did return. And to be like the servants who used the resources their master gave them before he left to increase and develop his property. Through these stories Jesus was telling his disciples at the time and his disciples through the ages to be prepared and ready to continue and to develop his work after his ascension.

So what was and is the work that they are to be prepared to continue and develop? Well, the answer comes in today’s story which is the last in the sequence.

Each story has included a moment of crisis or judgement in which the most significant person in the story – the master or the bridegroom – returns and it becomes clear whether those who were left behind have responded well or badly to his absence. This story is no different only this time the central figure who returns is Jesus. Previous judgements were on whether the master’s work had been continued, whether the women had been prepared, and whether the master’s resources had been used or developed. But what is the master’s work, what are we to be prepared to do, what is that we are to use our resources to develop? The answer comes loud and clear in this parable because Jesus’ judgement is on our compassion.

The measure of judgement is how we have responded to those who are hungry or thirsty or strangers or naked or sick or in prison. Have we fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, welcomed strangers, clothed the naked and visited the sick or those in prison? When we do, we do these things to Jesus, when we refuse, we are refusing Jesus.

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Curtis Mayfield - Keep On Keeping On.