Thomas J Parlette
“Come Listen to a Story ‘bout a Man Named Henry”
Matthew 25: 31-46
11/26/23
Each year, I visit my doctor for no particular reason. I get my blood drawn, they run all sorts of tests and I go in for a wellness check-up. My blood pressure gets checked, my lungs, my oxygen rate, my weight – all that stuff. If my cholesterol comes back high, I know I’ve got to make some adjustments – eat more salads, more chicken, a few less “fun-size” candy bars, add a few more walks around the block or around the church hallways every hour or so. Same thing with those HDL and LDL numbers – bring the good one up and the bad one down.
My wellness check is not something I enjoy, I often try to avoid it or put it off for awhile, but I know it’s necessary, and it might save my life – so I do it.
In many ways, you could think of this passage from Matthew today as a wellness check.(1) This description of the final judgement often comes across as a threat, it has been used over the years to incite fear in those who hear about the judgement of the sheep and the goats. But there is also great comfort and assurance to be found here too.
In many ways, Jesus is re-telling the passage we heard from Ezekiel. There we heard straight from God –“ I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out… I will rescue them… I will bring them out…I will feed them… I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed, I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice…”
And, yes, there will be judgment…
“I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David…”
Jesus tells much the same story, but instead, frames the judgment as coming from the Son of Man, when all nations will be gathered for a great “Sorting.”
There are two basic schools of thought about what that phrase “all the nations” means. Is it referring to a judgment of all non-Jews or does it include literally all the nations – Jews and Gentiles alike? Most scholars today lean toward this as a judgment of everyone – Jews, Gentiles, Christians, Muslims – everyone, of all nations, as it says.
Either way, it seems clear that what we do matters. How we treat others matters more than how we view various doctrines and religions. This passage seems to be saying that we are saved by how we treat others. Which seems to be in direct conflict with what Paul tells us about being saved by grace alone. In the book of James, James leans very heavily into the idea of good works – he would probably like Jesus story here today much more than Paul.
We are saved by grace alone, as a gift that God gives us, not ne anything we do. But Jesus wants to make sure that we know that that doesn’t get us off the hook entirely. Yes – we are saved by grace. But, what we do matters. How we treat others, especially the least of these, is important.
So, I invite you to “Come listen to a story ‘bout a man named Henry” – Henry James to be exact. Henry was only 20 years old in 1981 when, after helping a neighbor repair his car, he was misidentified as the man who had attacked that neighbor’s wife. Although the woman initially stated that she didn’t know her attacker, she later picked Henry – a neighbor with whom she was acquainted – from a photo line-up. The evidence that would have exonerated him – the results of serological that excluded him as the attacker – was not presented to the judge or jury by Henry’s court-appointed lawyer.
Henry was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison without parole for a crime he did not commit.
For the next 30 years, Henry persevered through the harsh conditions of the Louisiana State prison at Angola. For about 10 of those years he labored in the prison fields, from sunup to sundown, picking cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, okra, cabbage, greens and other crops, earning a maximum of 4 cents an hour. (Because the 13th Amendment abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” Angola’s is believed to be legal.) He tried to avoid any infraction that could land him in solitary confinement. For 30 years, he missed out on his children’s lives and on finding a vocation for himself.
Unable to read or write well, Henry worked to teach himself those skills so that he could one day write to innocence teams to ask for help. Along the way he learned that he was a pretty good woodworker, able to craft a variety of furnishings. Word spread about woodworking abilities, and he was able to earn a few dollars to help his family.
Henry was willing to toe the line and do whatever it took to prove his innocence, once and for all.
By 2005 he’d heard of the Innocence Project and wrote to ask for help. The national organization, together with Innocence Project New Orleans, began the search for evidence in his case but were told that it had been lost. Neither Henry nor the Innocence Project gave up hope. By 2010, the Innocence Project filed a motion to compel a search for the missing evidence from Henry’s case. A Louisiana crime lab official named Milton Dureau searched for the evidence but turned up nothing.
A year later, while searching for an evidence file for another case, Dureau stumbled upon Henry’s file and the evidence. The long-awaited DNA testing confirmed that Henry was not the attacker. On October 21st, 2011 – he was freed.
With no money or even photo identification, and with only the few pieces of clothing he’d been given by the lawyer’s representing him, Henry found a home at a nonprofit called Resurrection after Exoneration, which provides transitional housing and supportive resources for 6 months to a year for newly released inmates. Resurrection specializes in the personal touch – it’s capacity is limited to 3 people at a time. Henry was the 15th person to reside there.
Henry is, to date, the longest-serving prisoner to be exonerated in Louisiana. He had been inside a prison cell longer than he had been alive before he was imprisoned.(2)
“Truly I tell you, as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me… Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”
Jesus leaves us with some stinging words that should function as a wellness check. How we treat others matter. Jesus challenges us to see him in the faces of our neighbors who may look different, speak a different language, or suffered in ways we cannot comprehend.
Do we see all of our neighbors as family, interconnected with us to our Creator?
Do we understand how our actions may shape the fate of a neighbor?
Do we believe that the ways in which we respond to the needs of the suffering around us reflect the ways in which we respond to God.(3)
Our actions matter. How we treat others matters.
Henry James was freed because no one gave up – not Henry, not the Innocence Project, not that crime lab official who recognized evidence from Henry’s case when he stumbled upon the long lost file.
Henry was freed because he was visited in prison. Henry was freed because lawyers listened and preserved in the search for evidence that could exonerate him. Henry was clothed because his legal team recognized he couldn’t get out of prison with just a couple of t-shirts and a pair of jeans. Henry was sheltered because a non-profit provided a true home for him – and time for him to be introduced to a society that he never got a chance to know.
Henry moved on to freedom because someone was able, at last, to look beyond accusations and see the face of Jesus in this neighbor, and refused to give up on him.(4)
When we read these hard words from Jesus today with trust in the faithful God that Ezekiel speaks about, the focus shifts from a prospect of damnation to the possibility of participation in the coming kingdom of heaven and eternal life. Ultimately, the lesson of the sheep and the goats is good news, because it asks us each to share precisely what we can in bringing justice and mercy to this world. That is the true center of this passage. Whether it is food and water, a compassionate ear or an open heart – everyone has something to share. Parishioners of all tenures – longtime members and visitors alike – should be enlivened by this passage – not threatened – for it calls us to serve in ways that are firmly within our grasp. (5)
We may not like warnings and wellness check, because, let’s be honest, they often mean we have to change some of our habits and recalibrate our lives. But they do help provide a critical overview of wellness – both physically and spiritually. We would be wise to listen.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Lindsay P. Armstrong, Feasting On the Word, John Knox Press, 2011, p. 333.
2. Dorothy Sanders Wells, The Christian Century, November 2023, p. 27.
3. Ibid… p. 27.
4. Ibid… p.27.
5. Robert M. McClellan, Feasting On the Gospels, Westminster John Knox Press, 2013, p. 268.
