I was hungry ... thirsty ... a stranger ... naked ... sick ... in prison
The words are from the Gospel passage read at the funeral of Ted Kennedy was Matthew 25:31-45. It is one of the most important passages in the Christian Bible. In the Orthodox Church it is the Gospel read for the Sunday of the Last Judgment, commemorated during the lead-up to Great Lent. It is read on the Sunday upon which after Vespers that evening one give up meat - thus it is also known as Meatfare Sunday.
And it is considered by many the standard to be used to determine if one is truly living the Christian faith. It is the issue examined in James 14:26, which examines how we treat the one who is naked and without food,or dying of thirst, and concludes So also faith, if it does not have works, is dead being by itself.
We are not a Christian nation. For those that claim that we are, do not they acknowledge how badly we fail the test of Matthew 25?
This diary is written by one who does not consider himself a Christian, but acknowledges being shaped in part by Christian values. It is an examination of America through the lens of Matthew 25.
At the 1977 dedication of the Federal building named for him, Hubert Humphrey offered related words, which I have quoted on more than one occasion:
It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Those words are clearly connected to Matthew 25; here are the words you would hear were they read from the Revised Standard Bible:
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.
All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,
and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
Then the king will say to those at his right hand, "Come, you that are blessed by 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 something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'
Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?
And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?
And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?'
And the king will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'
Then he will say to those at his left hand, "You that are accursed, depart from me 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 nothing to drink,
I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'
Then they also will answer, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?'
Then he will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.'
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."
I was hungry There are still too many in this nation who go to bed hungry. Some who may be mentally ill dig through garbage cans. Others avoid starvation because we have some programs designed to ease the worst of their hunger pain. We have free and reduced school lunches; The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children - better known as the WIC Program; food stamps. . . Yet still too many are hungry, although on this test we do far better than on some of the others. Sometimes the food we offer is not the healthiest, and much of our emphasis on food production is too energy intensive, destructive of the soil, overuses our water resources.
I was thirsty We are drawing down and/or polluting our water resources. Too much of those resources is increasingly in private hands, or used to generated wealth at the expense of its availability to ordinary folk. Still, compared to some places in the world we do not have large numbers with no access to water, although in some places we are destroying the water upon which many have depended: wells and streams poisoned by mountain top removal are but one illustration of this. The drawing down and in some cases pollution of the great Ogallala Aquifer is another. And those who are homeless in our urban areas often lack ready access to water with which either to drink or to clean.
I was a stranger Consider our policies on immigration as shameful. Even as we debate health care, those advocating for national health care are assuring opponents that "illegal" immigrants will not be covered. If everyone, regardless of immigration status, is not covered, it represents a public health threat to all. Other countries recognize this,and one is not denied access to basic health care and more. Our treatment of those not born here,our hostility towards those who want to come here, these would fail the test of the Jewish scripture as well, as one can read in the King James version of Leviticus 19:33-34: And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. [But] the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I [am] the LORD your God. As the Jews were reminded that they were themselves once strangers, so should we all be reminded that we are all derived from those who came from elsewhere. Yes, some came before there was a nation, or European settlement. But few are still purely descended from those who crossed from Asia thousands of years ago. And those who bear such ancestry are ironically often treated as strangers in their own land, the land from which those of European descent have systematically excluded them, as we have treated them as less than fully human, attempted to exterminate them, restricted them only to those lands we thought valueless, except when they had the value of gold or of petroleum to cheat them of the value of those things and attempt once more to push them further away. Now those we mistreat as strangers may have a different religion - as did the Catholics of Southern Europe, the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe, the Jews from whom I am descended. We despise or fear those of different racial features, or who speak a different language. On this for all of our myths about melting pots and poetry about accepting the tired and poor,the wretched refuse of teeming shores, we are far from the generosity of spirit required by the Gospel.
I was naked There may be few in this nation who are truly naked. There are many practically so, with few clothes because they are homeless, with little access to the means to wash and maintain the clothing they have. Perhaps homelessness itself is our equivalent of the Gospel's nakedness. Yes, we have passed legislation such as the Stewart B. McKinney Act in 1977, but it remains more than two decades later the only major federal action to address homelessness. In 2007 a study done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty found that we had approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, who would likely experience homelessness during the course of a year. That is more than one percent of our population. The Vice President of the previous administration argued that a 1% chance of an attack against the United States warranted unleashing restraints on torture and restrictions that protected civil liberties and warranted unbridled expenditures on the military and our intelligence functions. Why does not a greater than 1% chance of homelessness - our equivalent of the biblical nakedness - warrant more than one federal statute 22 years ago, a response that has clearly proven insufficient? And what of all the communities that make it difficult for the homeless, banning them from parks, limiting the spaces in shelters, making it illegal to live in cars, providing no facilities in which the homeless outside of shelters can clean themselves and their clothing?
I was sick We now spend much time and many words attempting to address this. It shocks my conscience that there are some in high public office who claim to be Christian who still refuse to do all that is necessary to address this issue. It no longer surprises me but it still shocks me to hear people argue more on behalf of behalf of for-profit entities over the needs of human beings. After my volunteering at the Remote Area Medical mission in Wise in July, I am unwilling to accept anything that does not provide for all - including those some wish to belittle as "illegal" immigrants - and not merely because of the health threat represented when some remain outside access to health care, but because it is basic humanity, it is something to which all should be entitled as a natural right, as Locke included among those he listed in his Second Treatise.
I was in prison Over 1% of our population is incarcerated. Increasingly we place them in institutions remote from family and friends, so they are not visited. Increasingly we restrict those things that would allow them to maintain basic human dignity. Far too often we imprison those who need treatment or education more than they need punishment. It is not merely how much this costs our society financially, in the costs of incarceration and the loss of productivity from those incarcerated. It eats away at our own moral fiber as a society, as our solution is to shut away out of sight, and do so primarily with those who are poor, who are minorities. Senator Webb seeks to address this societal wrong, but the path he s treads remains one that is lonely, at times almost solitary as far as his Congressional colleagues.
Some would argue on the basis of political philosophy that the challenges should not be met by the government, because that would move us in the direction of socialism. Here I find myself with several responses. If all the needs were being met by non-governmental efforts - perhaps religious and communal and charitable - then it might not be necessary for the government to intervene. But too many interpret their religion in a fashion that means they look the other way, they seek reason to blame those in need for the conditions that mean they require assistance.
At that point I am reminded of other words by Hubert Humphrey:
Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.
According to Genesis, man is created in the image and likeness of God. Even if one does not take that expression literally, and even if one like me does not consider oneself a Christian, perhaps one can begin to understand the implications of that statement and its realization in Matthew 25 by looking at another famous statement from Christian scripture. The First Epistle of John is about love. In 1 John 4:20 we read
If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
Earlier in the same Epistle, 1 John 3:17 tells us bluntly that
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?
Let me put it in somewhat different terms. Love should never diminish us. It should not mean that we narrow whom we include in our heart, that we limit whom we love. After all, even as we may long for the intense love of a life's companion - a love that should never be denied another human, even if that companion be of the same sex - it is the rare person who would reject being loved by many. One of the glories of family is to bask in that broader love. It is one of the benefits of friendship. The best of both, families and friendships, open their collective hearts to others, expand the scope of their love.
We have this weekend been commemorating the life of a man who acknowledge his humanity, including the harm he had done, who nevertheless opened his heart to many he had never met, seeking as a public official to ensure that our society not be among the goats who would hear the words Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.
Our society. Our nation. All of us.
Done or not done, which will be the judgment we face, if not before a Christian God, in our own consciences, individually and collectively?
What will we be able to say has been our response - or lack of response - to the needs of so many, even to one of the least of these who are after all our brothers and sisters in our common humanity?
When our lives are complete, what will be said of us?
For myself, I hope at that moment my soul will know what I wish so often to others. We hear it in the greetings of Jews: Shalom; and of Muslims- Salaam. It is at the end of the plea to the Lamb of God, Agnus Dei, in the Roman Mass: Dona Nobis Pacem.
And it is what I wish to all.
Peace.