blip : Beyond Lost Intellectual Ponderings :

The lectionary assigns the end of Matthew 25 for this Sunday. I’m still waiting for a sermon to happen in my head. Nothing yet. But here are some quotes that stay with me from my preparation:

Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (2006), p. 212:

A people shaped by the practice of the works of mercy will be a people capable of seeing through those who claim to need power to do good, but in fact just need power. Great injustice is perpetrated in the name of justice.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, p. 508:

They had helped the least of His brethren, they had helped the world in its misery for its own sake. They had no ulterior motive. As the true community of Jesus, they saw the need and did what they could without any further design or after-thoughts…. They had no spiritual strategy. They obeyed without explanations.

And Hauerwas again, p. 212:

[Dorothy] Day calls this understanding of the works of mercy a scandal because it challenges the assumptions that Christians are to do somethign for the poor by trying to create alternatives to capitalism or socialism. The problem with trying to create such alternatives is that we seduce ourselves into believing that we are working to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, care for the sick and those in prison without knowing anyone who is hungry, naked, thirsy, a stranger, sick, or in prison.