Matthew chapter 24 records Jesus' teaching about his second advent, and Mathew 25 tells us three stories of how to behave while we’re waiting. Our text for today, the final part of the chapter, is retold beautifully by Leo Tolstoy in his story, "Where Love is, There is God Also" (retold again in Shoemaker Martin, a wonderful picture book for children by Bernadette Watts). As Tolstoy's title reminds us, when we show love to those around us, Jesus' family, we are not only bringing God's love into the life of the world, but we are also bringing in God himself who is love—and we are loving God.
And who is this family? It is the hungry, the sick, the homeless. An African minister asks us to read Matthew 25 over and over and then go the extra mile to discover just who some of Jesus' brothers and sisters are ("Experiencing Life at the Margins," Christianity Today, July, 2006). He urges us: "Experience the situation of those on the margins. 'God so loved the world'—how dare we identify with him in that love if we don't go there, if we don't choose the margins?"
May our eyes be opened this Advent to the members of Jesus' family on the "margins." And may we learn how to love them. For each act of love becomes at once a reenactment of God's "having come," a celebration of God-with-us, and an anticipation of the final coming—"His kingdom spread from shore to shore."
"Love that gives, gives evermore, gives with zeal, with eager hands, spares not, keeps not, all outpours, ventures all, its all expends."
(W. H. Vanstone)
