A New Beginning?

 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. ~ James 1:27

Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. ~ Isaiah 1:17

Sunday Thoughts: The Bishop’s Candlesticks

The Bishop’s Candlesticks

But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you. 

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ~ Luke 6. 27-34 (NRSV)

I still do a lot of blogging these days. Since my movement is restricted by a need for oxygen and a bum leg, much of my awake time is spent writing blogs. I suppose one could say that blogging has become my media of ministry. For example, a while back a blogger posted about an incident that had him questioning whether he had done a good deed or been scammed and made a fool of. That reminded me of a decision I made many years ago not to be concerned about being conned, and so I wrote an article about it.

I have been scammed and conned by many folks, often when I knew what they were up to. I made decision to give unconditionally to these folks after I read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (I have yet to see the newly produced film) and thus gained a new understanding of the 6th Chapter of Luke. The story in Les Misérables  that so enlightened me I have labeled “The Bishop’s Candlesticks.” Here is that story as I remember it:

The protagonist, Jean Valjean, after being imprisoned for about 20 years for stealing bread to feed his family, is released but, as an ex-convict, can find no work and is himself on the verge of starvation when he comes upon the residence of a bishop and seeks food from the Bishop’s servants. The Bishop himself invites Valjean into his home and provides him the hospitality of dinner at his own table and a bed for the night. When it comes time to retire, the bishop sends Valjean up to his room with one of the two very expensive silver candlesticks that grace the bishop’s dining table to light his away.

The following morning the servants of the Bishop awaken him with the revelation that not only has their guest departed before breakfast, but he has taken the costly candlestick with him. Later the same morning the police arrive at the Bishops residence with Valjean in custody and inform the bishop that they found the ex-con in possession of the candlestick that was recognized as belonging to the bishop. They asked the bishop to identify the candlestick so that they may charge Valjean with the theft.

The Bishop speaks directly to Valjean rather than the police. He says that he is sorry that Valjean, his guest, departed before sharing a fine breakfast with the him. The Bishop then hands Valjean the mate to the candlestick he had stolen, saying, “You forgot this, my friend. I gave you both candlesticks. What good is one without the other?”

The police release Valjean, who at that moment is changed by forever by the Bishop’s benevolence. He leaves with both candlesticks, walks to a nearby town, sells them, and using the proceeds, becomes a wealthy factory owner, known for his honesty, generosity, and just dealings who eventually becomes mayor of the town.

Of course, there is much more to the book, but this story that I have told many times. I usually use it as a story that I tell without commenting upon it, thus allowing those who hear it glean whatever they need.

Blessed  are those who have ears to hear and faith to act. Amen.

A Fundamentalist Danger to Modernity

I first published a version of this post almost eight years under the title A Fundamentalist is a Fundamentalist. It's time to share it again.

Karen Armstrong

If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. ~ Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness 

Several years ago I received an email that included a photograph of a sign that was, I believe, in front of a church. The sign made some rather nasty comments about The Qur’ān (Quran, Quraan, Koran, Koraan, Qoraan, Qoran or however you want to transliterate the Arabic), the Holy Book of Islam. I can only assume that whoever put that sign up had never read The Qur’ān—or if they had, they read those selected excerpts that I have seen distributed to “prove” something negative about Islam.

I also suspect that the one who created that sign was a Christian fundamentalist. Only a religious fundamentalist could feel so threatened by a faith different from their own. Of course, where fundamentalists are concerned, they feel most threatened by those followers of their own faith who are not threatened by the present age.

Click to Enlarge

When it comes to religious fundamentalism, I firmly believe that a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist! It doesn’t matter whether the fundamentalist is a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, or a Christian. The basic driving consideration of all fundamentalist is a fear of modernity—a fear that their beliefs are threatened, that their lifestyle may be obliterated.

a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist

I first came to this understanding when I read Karen Armstrong’s insightful book, The Battle for God. I think I have probably recommended Armstrong’s book to more people than any other book I have read, except for certain books of the Bible, such as the Gospel According to St. John. I’ve recommended The Battle for God to so many people because in it Armstrong discusses one of the most powerful and potentially destructive forces in our world today: religious fundamentalism.

She points out that fundamentalism has risen in every faith movement for the same reason: a fear of modernity. These fundamentalists perceive their way of life as being threatened—and often for compelling, historic reasons. Their “enemies” are not usually the practitioners of other faiths, but their co-religionists who they perceive as having been co-opted into the ways of the modern world. Like most conservatives, they long to return to what they believe was a simpler and less complicated time, that probably never existed outside their fantasy. As June Reizner’s song, Barry’s Boys, proclaimed:

Back to when the poor were poor and rich were rich, And you felt so damn secure just knowing which were which.

In an interview published on Powells.com, Karen Armstrong discusses how all fundamentalists are alarmed by their perception that their way of life is being annihilated:

Dave: But in regards to fundamentalism, as differently as it may have manifested in each religion, something all fundamentalists share is the fear of annihilation, the fear that their way of life will not survive. And it's a legitimate fear.

Armstrong: It's true. In the Muslim countries, that has been immensely true. In Judaism, fundamentalism took major leaps forward, first just after the Holocaust, then again after the 1973 war when Israel suddenly felt vulnerable again and felt its isolation in the Middle East. Then look at Muslims whose modernizers were aggressive and mowed you down in a mosque if you didn't wear modern dress; or took women's veils off in the street and ripped them to pieces in front of them with a bayonet; tortured mullahs; abolished Sufi orders and forced them underground This is experienced by the ordinary Muslim in the street as an assault against religion, and yet what are these modernizers supposed to do? They've got to modernize fast. They've got to secularize. Somehow we've got to see that this has been counterproductive.

What we know from the past is that when fundamentalists are attacked, whether they're Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, they become more extreme. Certainly that happened in this country at the time of the Scopes trial. The ridicule they faced at the hands of the secular press led fundamentalists to go from the left of the political spectrum to the right, where they've remained.

And so I feel comfortable in saying that a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist! And to deal with the fundamentalist forces behind what is being called “the War of Terrorism,” we had better be aware of the dynamics of fundamentalism or we shall certainly pay a very heavy price! And I commend to you The Battle for God; it is well worth the time you will spend reading it.

For further reading, I suggest:

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Sharing v. Greed

This morning I awakened to view this film on Facebook:

I love the work of Shel Silverstein. I dore this little film and the book from which it was made, The Giving Tree.

I have thought about the message of this book (altruistic giving) for many years. I think I have tried to live an altruistic life. Sharing what I have has always been important to me. At risk of making an unfair judgment, I believe that those who do not share are the greatest danger we face today.

The opposite of giving/sharing is greed.

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. ~  Erich Fromm 

In our daily life, we encounter people who are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley 

It is so simple and so obvious to me that the major quandary—the driving problem—facing our world today is greed. The problem is not new: greed has been with us ever since humans came together to form cities. And it has been a major force, not in building societies, but in destroying them. It was a primary cause of the fall of the Roman Republic and, then, just less than a thousand years afterward, the fall of the Roman Empire.

As I comprehend it, greed and the unwillingness to share can—and are—destroying us. Plato, in The Republic, recognized this:

"Do we then still doubt," I said, "that the stingy, money-making man, in virtue of his likeness, corresponds to the oligarchic city?"

"Not at all," he said.

"Then, democracy, must, as it seems, be considered next—in what way it comes into being and, once come into being, what it is like— so that when we know the character of such a man in his turn, we can bring him forward for judgment." ~ Plato, The Republic

The salvation of our nation—democracy and our way of life—is dependent upon our willingness to share our resources with one another. That this sharing is exactly what the contemporary Republican Party opposes is what is destroying our nation and the world. But that’s another story.

In my next related post, I shall reference the Hebrew Scriptures and  the Year of Jubilee.   

We look to the day when sharing by all will mean scarcity for none.

For further reading, I recommend:

... with a whimper

Many years ago I saw cartoon that picture two men with long hair and beards standing together, each carrying a sign that read TOMORROW THE WORLD ENDS.  One man was saying to the other, "Same time, same place tomorrow – if there is a tomorrow."


There a lot of people who have gotten it into their heads that something catastrophic will happen tomorrow. I do not know what they know that I don't know: I do know that if one believes the New Testament no one knows when the world will end.

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among* you.’ ~ Luke 17.20-21

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Messiah!”* and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines* and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs. ~ Matt. 23.3-8

‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son,* but only the Father. 3For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 3For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 3and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. ~ Matt. 24.36-39

If those Scriptures do not convince you that the world will not again tomorrow, that no one – not even Jesus – knows when the world will in, may I suggest that you click over to this article for further confirmation: A Guarantee: The World Will Not End On Friday.

Many many years ago I was in high school each student in my senior English class was required to read a poem allowed. I selected The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot:

May I suggest that, if the world does end on 21 December, 2012, (which I doubt) it will do so in the manner T.S.Eliot suggested: not with a bang, but a whimper.

This is the way the world ends?

I generally ignore that ramblings of fundamentalist preachers, especially if the rambling is on radio or TV. I would probably ignore this latest doomsday proclamation, except that for the past couple of months, in my daily telephone conversations with her, my 87-year-old mother has been talking about the end times.


Mom began by asking if I knew when the world will end. I responded from Mainline Christian theology: no one knows. Although my mother doesn't suffer from dementia, she either forgot my answer or didn't want to accept it because she would ask the same or similar questions each time we spoke to each other.


That routine began to change about three weeks ago. Mom still asks if I know when the world will end, but now she also shares with me third party answers: this TV preacher said or that minister said. The obsession that Mom has developed  about apocalyptic theology has me wondering about her mental well-being.


I fear that there may be many more folks other than my mother who are concerned about tomorrow. CNN reports people have been leaving their jobs and homes and families, happily expecting to be raptured into heaven. (Sigh)


I wonder if these folks have been told that this announcement of doomsday has has been made over and over  for the past 2,000 years. Even Harold Egbert Camping, who made the prophecy that the world will end tomorrow, made similar forecasts before:

...he (Camping) predicted that Jesus’ second coming was to take place between September 15^th and 27^th in the year 1994. Camping pushed his book frequently on the radio, teaching from it on his program, “Open Forum” and other Bible teaching sessions. When September 1994 rolled around and Jesus did not return, Harold worked like a showman who is caught and said that he had not understood the message from God, but predicted a new date which was good. The date was afterward changed eight times until he settled for the year 2008. Look at the following dates:1.   September 6, 1994?  (Subsequently extended a few days, given the slight variations in the ancient calendars). 2.    September 15, 1994, the Jewish Day of Atonement? 3.    September 25, 1994, the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles? 4.    October 4, 1994, the actual birthday of Jesus as calculated by Camping? 5.   December 25, 1994, our traditional celebration of Christmas and Christ’s incarnation and birth, based on the statement in Revelation 11:10 that the enemies of God’s people would ‘send gifts one to another?’6.     February 25, 1995, the Jewish feast of Purim?7.   May 3, 1996, when he was so sure of this date that he devoted several Open Forumprograms to explain how the ‘four watches’ (alluded to in Mark 13:35) extended the date until September 6, 1994. 8.    His current teaching, that September 6, 1994 was the right date after all, but it was for the beginning of the Great Tribulation, not Judgment Day.  Simple arithmetic would put the return of the Lord no later than 2008.” ~ John S. Torell

OK, as you may have suspected, I give 0% credence to Camping's "prophecy."  When I consider the end of the world, I perceive that T.S. Eliot is more on target that all of the apocalyptic prophets:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
~ The Hollow Men 

As others are doing this evening, I am enjoying the humor in all of this uproar, especially the suggestion that the end of the world will be a great media event, beginning at the International Dateline at 6:00 PM and moving west through each time zone, hitting each at exactly 6:00 PM. As I await thje doomsday hour, I may as well spend my time laughing at the whole absurd thing:

Well, we don't have much longer to wait: as I publish this post, it is 12:50 PM, 21 May 2011, at the International Date Line  Less than six hours before "it" begins. 


I'll see you with my T.B.I.M post on Monday -- if there is a Monday!

Light in the Darkness

 Christ of St. John of the Cross

Salvador Dali (1951)

Mark 15 (NRSV):

As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. 2 Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" He answered him, "You say so." 3 Then the chief priests accused him of many things. 4 Pilate asked him again, "Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you." 5 But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed. 6 Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. 7 Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection. 8 So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. 9 Then he answered them, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" 10 For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. 12 Pilate spoke to them again, "Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?" 13 They shouted back, "Crucify him!" 14 Pilate asked them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him!" 15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. 16 Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters ); and they called together the whole cohort. 17 And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. 18 And they began saluting him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" 19 They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. 20 After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. 21 They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. 22 Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). 23 And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take. 25 It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. 26 The inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews." 27 And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. 28 29 Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!" 31 In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe." Those who were crucified with him also taunted him. 33 When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 34 At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 35 When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, "Listen, he is calling for Elijah." 36 And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down." 37 Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was God's Son!" 40 There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem. 42 When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 44 Then Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been dead for some time. 45 When he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. 46 Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid.

"This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." ~ John 3. 19

God Is...

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Liz, the author of the blog Finding Life Hard published a post today that was inspired by a blog post written by someone else regarding the nature of God.

You really must read Liz's post, Follow me and be persecuted, to understand the context in which I am writing because my words are based on a comment that I posted to Liz's post. (Ain't this blog overlapping weird?)

The blog post that began this chain reaction is a story (Life Cut Sort) of the unfortunate death of a young woman following cosmetic surgery in the blog in the blog, nickhereandnow. The post ended with the words:

This dreadful saga of incompetence and misfortune certainly undermines belief in some benign creator watching over us and keeping us from harm.

Liz's post is a response those closing words. Her theology is excellent as she examines the love and support of God through the good times and bad times, centering on the words that Jesus spoke to his disciples:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross. (Matthew 16:24)

The following is an edited version of the comment I made on Liz's blog.

You've probably heard the saying/joke that "in the beginning God created us and we have been repaying the compliment ever since."

I think that Albert Schweitzer rather confirmed that in his theological work, The Quest of the Historical Jesus . We humans tend to picture God/Jesus/Moses/Mohammad in the light of our own lives and cultures and expectations.

Personally, I believe that another name for God is "Love". I see God as just and compassionate and unconditionally loving. I find in the suffering of Christ at least a wee understanding of my own pain as a human being.

I am very aware that not everyone believes the way I do; through years of pastoring and several thousand sermons I have also come to realize that it requires experience and spiritual growth for one to change his/her view of God and, yes, life.

There was a woman who I pastored for over 11 years who had grown up in a very fundamentalist cult whose teachings were that God is angry, judgmental, and vindictive. After 10 of the 11 years I was her pastor, she said to me as she left a worship service,

"Rev. Nick, there is something about the services here that I don't understand. I am supposed leave church feeling convicted of my sins and I leaving here feeling forgiven and even good about myself."

I understood her frame of reference. And I appreciated her compliment.

P.S. ~ Since I have quoted Albert Schweitzer, Alex would not forgive me if I didn't share one of Schweitzer's most important words:

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Awakening Thoughts

Be a sinner and sin strongly... ~ Martin Luther, Protestant Reformer (1483-1546)

 

Last week I awakened from a nap with the words of a (rather well-know, I think) fundamentalist radio evangelist rocketing against my ear drums. I really don’t know how my radio became tuned to that station; when I fell asleep I was listening to classical music on one of Louisville’s public radio stations. Perhaps Alex, in his stalking an imaginary wildebeest (Alex has been watching a TV program about lions on the Serengeti), stepped on the radio remote and changed the station.

As my head began to clear from my uncouth awakening, I heard the gravel-voiced fundamentalist radio evangelist  pronounce the words sin and sinner at least a dozen times in perhaps sixty seconds. I didn’t catch the full context of his jeremiad, except maybe that the world and everyone in it was caught in sin and condemned to eternal damnation. Since he was near the conclusion of his discourse, I choked down my desires to scream Idiot! at the moron and to gag.

I listened to the end of the so-called evangelist’s diatribe against humanity and was amazed that he ended in the same way as I first heard him: the world and everyone in it was caught in sin and condemned to eternal damnation. He spoke no words of hope or grace or forgiveness. From his viewpoint there was nothing anyone could do except await and accept damnation. This dude made me feel sick!

Sick, not condemned! To utter such, uh, shit, has no place in my sense of Christianity. I would love to meet this fundamentalist radio evangelist and debate with him his theology, especially his Christology (if he has one).

Where sin is concerned, I much prefer the words of Mainline theologians, such as Martin Luther, who one wrote: Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ. Being who we are, we cannot not sin. (Sin comes from the sport of archery and means that one has missed the bull's eye, missed the goal). I know few of us who can claim never to have missed the bull's eye(s) of life. 

At least the gravel-voiced evangelist got that right: everone sins! However, sin in my view does not lead to automatic eternal damnation. Sure, we must accept the karma resulting from our actions, but even that is not automatic.

It is the nature of the God that I know and serve to be just, gracious, faithful, forgiving, and most of all, loving. That’s what I want to say to this fundamentalist radio evangelist. I fear that he would not understand what I am talking about, so perhaps I would tell him this story:

 

It is the moment of the Final Judgment (see below) and all of the souls who have ever existed are standing before the throne of God. Forward steps the archangel Gabriel, who reads to the gathering the Decalogue:

 “’I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;  you shall have no other gods before me.’ 

"All who have worshiped other gods depart this place for eternal damnation.”

And 99.8% of the souls gathered disappeared.

Gabriel continues reading the other commandments. When the archangel has finished, where billions of souls had once gathered was standing only one little man, smiling. The silence was overwhelming.

At this point, Jesus leans over toward God and says, “You know, Dad, it’s going to be terribly lonely up here with just that one dude around.”

And, God commands, “All right! Everybody back!" 

And again all of the souls who have ever existed are standing before the throne of God, laughing and singing.

Except the one little man who had moments before been standing alone before the throne of God, who frowned and asked, "Why didn't someone tell me that this was going to happen?"

 

I wonder if that evangelist preacher dude would have any idea what that parable is saying? 

Matthew 25.31-46 (Revised Standard translation)

 "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.  Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.

Then the King will say to those at his right hand, `Come, O blessed of 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 drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, `Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?'

And the King will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'

Then he will say to those at his left hand, `Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'

Then they also will answer, `Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?'

Then he will answer them, `Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.'

And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

 

Peace, my friends.