I want to start my sermon today with a story. It is a story about a priest named Marc Nikkel. Marc was one of my dad’s priests in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, although he was not serving in the geographic boundaries of the Diocese because he was a missionary in Sudan. Marc spent the better part of the last twenty years of his life in Sudan, going there initially in 1981 to teach at the Bishop Gwynne College, an Anglican Episcopal school. Along the way he felt a call to the priesthood and so returned stateside for some coursework and to get ordained. Then he returned to Sudan as a priest. If you know much about Sudan, you know it is an area that has had much conflict that ended in a civil war and resulted in two countries, Sudan and South Sudan. Marc was in the southern part of Sudan that is now South Sudan. Marc said that when he first got there in 1981 and the first few years he was there, it was a relatively peaceful experience for him. But when he returned after his ordination, he said that things had changed. There was much more violence, and he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing there. But he continued on. In 1987, in the middle of the civil war, the people were warned that things were dangerous and that they should leave, but they did not go. One night, in the middle of the night, the College was attacked, and the people there were captured. Marc and his colleagues were forced to march 150 miles in 13 days. It was a very strenuous and dangerous journey. It was dangerous going that far in that climate, but there was the added dangerous situation of being in the midst of a war. They did eventually make it safely to the end of their journey. They were exiled and had to spend several years away from the country before they returned in the early 1990s.
During that march, one of the commanders asked Marc why he had not fled the country. He had been warned that it was dangerous, so why did he stay? Marc came up with an answer in the moment that was designed to keep himself safe. He said a soldier does not easily leave his post, and so I could not easily leave mine. That was a good answer in that moment to that military commander, and he seemed satisfied with that answer.
But it was not an answer that satisfied Marc. It did not really explain why he had continued staying in Sudan. He struggled with the question. He wasn’t sure, and he worked that question out in some of his writings. I want to share with you part of his answer that he eventually came up with. He said:
Though I might be awkwardly labeled a missionary, as if I was taking something to Sudan, or doing something to or for its people, I knew that in reality my primary purpose was going to be in encountering facets of the spiritual, the divine hitherto very rare in my experience. While there is no question that some refraction of the Christ is to be met in every human community, every society, every culture, it seemed as if these small incarnations were an almost daily occurrence during my years in Sudan. There was no encounter, no event which did not possess its spiritual dimension, revealing something of the presence and nature of God.
Why do I share this story of Marc with you? I share this story because in the question of Marc’s experience and his answer, we find an illumination, a refraction of this Gospel that we hear today. Our Gospel today is the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. In it, Jesus says I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was injured and you bound me up. I was naked and you clothed me. I was a prisoner and you visited me.
Christ is in other people. We often talk about ourselves as the Body of Christ. We are Christ. We are Christ’s hands in the world. All that is good and true, but this Gospel flips that idea on its head and says we encounter Christ in the other. That is the same idea that Marc is getting at in his work. He might be seen by some people, as missionaries often are, of bringing something or doing something good for someone else. But Marc says that the real thing is that he was there to encounter Christ in them, flipping the idea on its head in a Christ like way of what he was meant to be doing.
It is the same for us. We have the chance to encounter Christ every day, to have these small incarnations. We do that primarily through service, through feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, giving clothes to those who are naked, binding up the sick, welcoming the stranger, and visiting the prisoner. Christ is there in other people. Our job is to try and see that Christ and to serve that Christ.
When we do ministries like the Saturday Breakfast, we are doing good and helping feed people who are hungry. We are following Jesus’s command to love our neighbor. We are being Christ’s body, feeding just as Jesus fed. All that is true. But it goes deeper than that. In every single one of the guests that we serve, we are encountering Christ. This is much harder now with the physical distancing, and yet it is no less true. In the acts that we are doing to try and protect our neighbor by wearing our masks and keeping our physical distance, we are serving the Christ in them.
So, my friends in Christ, I encourage you to start looking for Christ. Look for the Christ out there in the world. It is not about trying to do something for somebody else as if you have everything and they have nothing. It is to see that they are a gift, and they have a gift to offer you. That gift is Christ’s very presence, the Divine, the Spiritual. Maybe for some of you it is very rare, just as Marc said. And yet it is there. Jesus, the Christ, is there in this world waiting for you to but see Him.
AMEN
