"Not Least" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | November 26, 2023

“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.” May I speak in the name of God who is to us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Over the past week or so I’ve been reading the book Come Be My Light, a collection of the private writings of Mother Teresa. The book was suggested as part of a reading group I participate in with other clergy. Upon starting the book, the first thing I realized was just how little I knew about Mother Teresa in the first place. I had a general sense that she was a saint, a good person, a monastic who had lived in India. But I didn’t know much more than that, for better or for worse. Acknowledging my own ignorance, I’d like to begin today’s sermon with a bit of background.

Mother Teresa was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, in Eastern Europe. She pursued religious orders at a young age, first moving to Ireland and then to India, where her ministry was focused for the rest of her life. As a young nun, Teresa experienced a series of profound visions in which Jesus came to her, asking her to quench his thirst by living close to those living in poverty in India. Teresa followed this calling and became the founder of the Missionaries of Charity, a monastic order that embraced traditional Indian dress, taking on the local conditions of poverty, and sought to serve those who were outcast from the care of families, hospitals, and other institutions. One of the scripture passages that Teresa frequently returned to, throughout her life, were the words of the Gospel that we read today, when Jesus praises those at his right hand with these words: “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.” When did we do these things? The gathered company asks. And Jesus replies, “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.”

Everything I have described so far is the inspirational side of Mother Teresa. However, her legacy is also surrounded by a good deal of controversy. Mother Teresa suffered from doubt and a sense of disconnectedness from God for almost all of her life, following those early visions of Jesus. Doubt is, in my belief, a natural and healthy part of faith—and yet Teresa guarded hers so closely that people have criticized her for hypocrisy as a religious leader. Other controversies surrounding Mother Teresa include: the poor standards of medical care in Missionaries of Charity Facilities; her stringent views on abortion; and her culpability in bigger systemic issues such as racism and colonialism, to name just a few. Nevertheless, Teresa was canonized as a saint in 2016 - a reminder that all of the saints revered in our religious tradition are liable to be far from perfect.

I debated whether to explore Mother Teresa in my sermon today because my feelings about her are just so complicated—as complicated as the public impressions that range from humble saint to grave sinner. And yet whenever I turned to our Gospel passage for today, particularly the words “the least of these,” I kept thinking about Mother Teresa.

I realized that I was not only stuck on Mother Teresa, and my complicated feelings as far as her sainthood was concerned. I was also stuck on one particular line from the scripture itself: “just as you did to the least of these, you did it to me.” Who are the least of these? I wondered. And why on earth is Jesus giving people rankings? The text seems fairly clear that Jesus is talking about those who are hungry and thirsty; those who are sick or in prison or unhoused. That is a common interpretation of this passage, and the interpretation that inspired Mother Teresa to leave her first boarding school convent and head out into the slums of Calcutta. My frustration is not so much with this interpretation - with the idea that God identifies deeply with those who are sick or lonely or outcast - but rather with the idea that Jesus would assign a value to these people. The least of these. Why would Jesus use these words - words that our ears so easily hear as assigning value?

For me, this Gospel passage brings up a tension that I often feel in so much of the work of love and service that we are each called to do, as Christians. As Christians we are called to care deeply for our neighbors, especially those who are hurting and marginalized. And yet we can run into a harmful trap of thinking of those people as the least. And if they are the least, then what are we—the greatest? Or something in-between? It is all too easy to feel powerful when in the position of helping others. It is all too easy to want to help only when it is somewhat easy, and straightforward, and makes us feel better about ourselves. This encapsulates some of my most cynical concerns in situations like the missionary ministry of Mother Teresa, and some of my most cynical concerns about the work of outreach and justice in my own life.

And yet—it’s important to note that Jesus makes no distinction between “the greatest” and “the least” in this passage. It’s only our human ears that jump to those kinds of conclusions. Instead Jesus, throughout his ministry, is constantly trying to level out the playing field - pushing back on his disciples when they ask “who is the greatest?” (Matt. 18:1), and preaching things like “the last shall be first and the first shall be last” (Matt. 20:16). Furthermore, the only distinction that Jesus makes in our Gospel passage today (that whole business with the sheep and the goats) is about how people act—how they treat one another. It isn’t about a person’s innate value.

We human beings so easily fall into a chess-board mindset. We tend to see the world in hierarchical terms: there are pawns, and then there are the more valuable pieces, knights, rooks, bishops, and ultimately the King. We are endlessly comparing ourselves to one another as if we are pieces on a chess board; as if we have different values. And yet the kind of kingship that Jesus embodies isn’t like a chess board. If anything it’s a lot more like checkers: like a level playing field where all the pieces have an equal value.

So why does Jesus say least, in this passage? I think it’s possible to read this passage in a different way. 

When Jesus says, “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”—he is not saying that some people are less than others. He is simply saying that every person, and every interaction with every person, down to the smallest action, matters. There is no one direction in which the love of God flows. The love of God does not trickle down from the top to the bottom; from the greatest to the least. Instead, the love of God moves in all directions. The love of God invites us into a practice of giving and receiving love. And even the smallest, most significant, or “least” action carries weight as we try to magnify God’s love in the world.

Now I think it’s important to affirm that Jesus absolutely shows a particular care and concern for those who are sick, poor, or marginalized, throughout the Gospels. Of course God’s love would focus especially on those who are hurting and in crisis. Nevertheless, I think it’s a mistake to only identify the least of these only with those who are poor, or those who are sick - or those who meet some kind of external stereotype of what poverty looks like - particularly because of the danger of believing that some people are less than others. The least of these are not a fixed category of people. Instead, the least of these is a dynamic call upon our lives. The least of these is whoever God is calling us to show love and support to in the present moment. 

This is a season of thanksgiving - and it is also a season of giving. Thanksgiving and Christmas are seasons marked by extraordinary acts of giving and generosity, both to those we know and to others who are in need. As we seek to embody the love of Christ in the world, I hope we can remember that the least of these is not a value judgment on anyone. The least of these is, instead, a calling—a calling to be attentive to the big and small ways that God invites each one of us to give and receive love.

I’d like to conclude with the words of Mother Teresa—a woman who was neither the greatest nor the least, but a member of a complicated family of saints, like all of us. Towards the end of her life, Mother Teresa wrote:

Recently, a man met me on the street. He said: “Are you Mother Teresa?” I said, “yes.” He said: “Please send somebody to my house. My wife is half mental and I am half blind. But we are longing to hear the loving sound of a human voice.” They were well-to-do people. They had everything in their home. Yet they were dying of loneliness, dying to hear a loving voice.

How do we know some one like that is not next to our house? Do we know who they are, where they are? Let us find them and, when we find them, love them. Then when we love them we will serve them.

Today God loves the world so much that He gives you, He gives me, to love the world, to be His love, His compassion. It is such a beautiful thought for us– and a conviction—that you and I can be that love and compassion.

Do we know who our own poor are? Do we know our neighbor, the poor of our own area? It is so easy for us to talk and talk about the poor of other places. Very often we have the suffering, we have the lonely, we have the people—old, unwanted, feeling miserable—and they are near us and we don’t even know them. We have no time even to smile at them.

Tuberculosis and cancer [are] not the great diseases. I think a much greater disease is to be unwanted, unloved. The pain that these people suffer is very difficult to understand, to penetrate. I think this is what our people all over the world are going through, in every family, in every home.

This suffering is being repeated in every man, woman and child. I think Christ is undergoing his Passion again. And it is for you and for me to help them—to be Veronica, to be Simon to them.

Our poor are a great people, a very lovable people. They don’t need our pity and sympathy. They need our understanding love and they need our respect. We need to tell the poor that they are somebody to us, that they, too, have been created, by the same loving hand of God, to love and be loved.” [1]

Let us go forth to do that work that God has given us to do: to love and be loved. Amen.

[1] Kolodiejchuk, Brian M.C. Come Be My Light. Edited by Mother Teresa. New York: Doubleday, 2007.