Advent Devotional

Matthew 25:31-46

Happy New Year!

What? This isn’t that what you want say when you read this text?

What a troubling text for this first day of a new year. It seems to bully us into discipleship, and speaks of excluding some from the promise of the gospel while imposing the terms of God’s empire on the world. It is easy to reject it when it seems at odds with the rest of the good news of Jesus Christ, a message that stands against imperial strategies and exclusion. But it is one of the paradoxes of our Christian faith with which we struggle, year in and year out.

But there is an important message that should get our attention in this text. Jesus is the messenger who enfleshed God’s mercy and God’s justice for us. His message of love and justice for all – the poor, the hungry, those who are easy to pass by or pass off – and of our role in continuing to flesh this message out, comes through loud and clear. This IS the good news of God’s covenant faithfulness. If we put meat on the bones of this proclamation of God’s love, we can make a difference this new year for those we meet along the way.

For today’s prayer, please read or sing one or more verses of #407 in the PRESBYTERIAN HYMNAL, “Cuando el Pobre (When a Poor One).” The fourth verse is printed here for our prayer: “When our homes are filled with goodness in abundance, when we learn how to make peace instead of war, when each stranger that we meet is called a neighbor, then we know that God still goes that road with us, then we know that God still goes that road with us.”
Amen.

Sarah Erickson