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by eric lange

Jesus’ words about ‘the least of these’ are often repeated among those who are more ‘service-oriented,’ and are interested in caring for the poor:

‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40)

It’s a pretty sentence, and it’s also a nice idea. No one’s against serving the poor as concept. The problem is when it stays at this idealistic level – when the poor begin to have names and faces, serving them can become far more difficult.

Sometimes, the ‘least of these’ are inarticulate. They can be slow to “get it.” They aren’t pretty. They can even smell really bad. Even worse, they’ll take advantage of your good nature. They don’t really want help – they just want to use you.

So how do we respond in that situation? Some might say that these weren’t the type of people Jesus mentioned, and that “you gotta be smart” to make sure that you’re dealing with the right people. It’s too easy to waste time, energy, and money on people that will never change.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?” (Matthew 9)

Certainly one thrust of this criticism is that Jesus has chosen to identify with a group of pariahs, social outcasts and marginalized peoples – and that Jesus is somehow dirtied or changed in the process.

But this question can also be read as a type of warning. Ask a typical Jew of the time who, of all the people in society, is the greatest cheater, he/she would undoubtedly say a tax collector, someone who cooks the books to increase personal profit by selling out their national heritage to collect money for Rome. The fact is, Jesus was associating with people who, in essence, made a living out of using people. Why would they treat Jesus any differently?

So what was different about Jesus? What makes him able to interact with tax collectors and not be cheated, to be around drunkards and suddenly they all magically sober up? I’m sure Jesus had a finely tuned sense of divine discernment – he could cut to the core of every person, see through their crap, and transform their lives.

“Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’

When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?’” (Luke 17:11-17)

So, even though Jesus ‘helped’ all ten people, only one person had the goodness to return to Jesus. Did Jesus’ healing simply not work?

Fact is, it’s much easier to only focus on ‘the good ones,’ giving up on those bad eggs that just don’t seem to get better. But that’s the major challenge – as we become more and more like Christ, I suppose we get better at seeing the beauty in every person, acknowledging they were made in God’s image and are deeply loved by their Creator. And it’s my own personal sinfulness that most often keeps me from seeing that.