The Least Ones
The people were coming into church as they did from Sunday to Sunday. They were second and third generation confessing Christians. All of them were well-dressed in their Sunday going-to-church best. Only this Sunday, there was a man seated on the church steps that no one had ever seen before. There he was, right by the front entrance. He was dirty; his clothes were disheveled. It looked like he had really fallen on hard times. Maybe he was a homeless person looking for a hand-out.
The people of the church continued to pass by this raggedy specimen, and with the look on their faces it was more than obvious that they were thinking, “I hope that he doesn’t come in, and I hope that somebody doesn’t take it upon himself to invite him in.” No one even greeted him.
They all went in to worship, and when they were all seated and very still with the organ playing, that vagrant on the steps did in fact come into the church. Not only that, he walked right down the aisle as though he was trying to find a place. The church people just looked at him, with no one making a gesture to him or motioning to him to come and sit with them.
When this hobo of a man got to the front of church, to their astonishment he walked up on the platform and walked straight to the pulpit. The man looked at the congregation and the organist stopped playing. He pulled off his hat, laid his torn coat aside, and removed his thick disguise – there stood their pastor. He said to them, “I don’t need to tell you, my parishioners, what I am going to talk to you about today.”
…Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the
least of these, you did not do it to Me. Matthew 25:45
