This Sunday we saw two unlikely guests at our brunch table.
Yes, that's right. We welcomed Jack, a round headed odd ball famous for his Jack in the Box burger franchise and Jesus the Christ, beloved son of God and savior of mankind.
My oldest daughter is sweating out life at a high altitude running camp this week. She and I usually enjoy cooking our Sunday brunch together. Without her sweet presence, I found myself too listless to cook. So, we drove to Jack in the Box instead.
There's something sadly comforting about a Jumbo Jack (plus cheese and bacon), onion rings and a vanilla shake. This is the kind of meal which sits heavy in the stomach. Even though it is notoriously bad for one's cardiovascular system, it has the power to fill those gnawing, growling emotional voids that sometimes come upon us when the people we love are absent. So just for today, in honor of our oldest daughter's absence, we ate our Jumbo Jacks with relish, groaning with every bite of greasy goodness.
After eating our meal we read from Matthew 25.
As some of you may recall, this is the chapter where Jesus tells us that on the day of judgement, God's people will be identified as those who fed the hungry/thirsty, clothed the naked, sheltered the homeless, cared for the sick and visited the imprisoned. It is here that Christ reaffirms Hebrew scripture (Ezek 18:7; PS 112:1-10 and Job. 31:13-23) and defines righteousness as those things we do on behalf of the needy.
We are righteous when we care for and heal the sick. We are righteous when we feed, clothe, house and love those who hunger, who are naked, who are homeless and unloved. We are righteous when we visit those who are imprisoned.
When Christ speaks of righteousness, he doesn't seem to represent righteousness as some passive work that's done in us; but rather, when Christ speaks of righteousness it's as if the word becomes a love soaked action verb.
God's word is so clear. We are to love one another. We are to care for one another. We are to have a special concern for the imprisoned, the homeless, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and all of the poor ones.
In this chapter, Christ tells us that we are to self identify with the poor ect. because Christ himself self identified with the poor. When we serve them, we serve Him.
My family spent a fair amount of time digesting these passages. We talked about the myriad ways we could love not just one another, but others as well. It was a sweet, sometimes bittersweet conversation. It was a conversation where we reflected upon the pain and the loss, the brokenness, we often see reflected in the lives of others and sometimes feel even within ourselves.
It would have been a horribly sad conversation, had we not determined that there is a solution to that brokenness...that sorrow, that empty space in our souls.
That solution is Jesus.
Yes, I know it sounds ridiculously simple, moronic even. How can Jesus be the solution?
Well, that answer is in Matthew 25. When I see you, hurting and alone, I am to see Christ in you and I am to be Christ for you. Through Christ, our lives become intertwined, and through Christ, we become the healing presence of the living God for one another.
Sometimes we need Jumbo Jacks to fill that void gnawing in our guts...but if the truth be told, the only real bread, the only genuine appeasement of our hunger can ultimately be found in the person of Jesus, the Christ.
I feel doubly blessed this Sunday to have welcomed both Jack and Jesus at our table today. I only wish you could have joined us.
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