Tag: Matthew 25:35-40

Everyone Singing from the Same Song Sheet

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2025Leave a comment

Dear Will:

A couple of weeks ago we attended the annual Holiday Wassail Concert at Chapman University. The event, showcasing the Chapman University Orchestra and various choral groups from around campus, featured an array of songs from across the spectrum: from popular, just-for-fun secular numbers like “Sleigh Ride” to sacred and sublime traditional favorites like the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah.”

It’s hard to say exactly why, but the night kind of snuck up on us. Something about the spirit of the season, perhaps, made us vulnerable, and Dana and I found ourselves feeling emotional from the very first note. The choir and orchestra opened the evening with “O, Come All Ye Faithful,” the much-loved Christmas hymn. All at once the house lights came on and the conductor turned toward the audience, inviting us to sing along.

We tried. We really did. But soon we were fighting tears and choking out, “Sing, choirs of angels; sing in exaltation!” And so they sang . . . but we could not.

Perhaps our favorite song of the night was a magnificent Jewish hymn with which we were unfamiliar: “Hine Ma Tov,” with Hebrew lyrics taken from Psalm 133. The King James translation renders its message like this: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

Indeed, that is the message of the season, and we were feeling it to our very core. Those choirs of angels had sung something similar on that first Christmas night: “Peace on earth, good will toward men and women everywhere!” That invitation to love and unite transcends both time and religion. It beckons each of us to stop fighting with one another, to break down barriers, to come together as brothers and sisters, fellowcitizens, children of God.

Jesus himself was a Jew, one well familiar with scripture—including, no doubt, Psalm 133. He might very well have preached that same message of unity while sitting on a hillside or standing in the synagogue. His most famous sermon, given on a mount in Galilee, included these words of counsel that still echo across the generations: “Blessed are the peacemakers. . . . Be reconciled to thy brother. . . . Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” He called on us to judge reluctantly and generously, to treat others as we would wish to be treated. He taught that love is the ultimate mark of discipleship. He commended those who fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, visited the sick and the imprisoned.

His empathy knew no bounds.

To some he was a great philosopher, to others a prophet among many, and to others, like us, the very Messiah himself. At this time of year especially, Dana and I celebrate his life and teachings full-throatedly (if we can choke out the words). And to his teachings, we add this prayer of our own: May the feelings we share in December pool within each of us, providing a well of living water from which we can draw throughout the year ahead.

Hine ma tov.

PW

Photo by David Beale on Unsplash

What Will They Call Our Generation?

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20243 Comments

Dear Will:

With all due respect to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” when it comes to patriotic anthems I’m all about “America the Beautiful.” I can sing either one with full-throated enthusiasm, but when they cue up “America the Beautiful” I have to brace myself, knowing that if the music director decides to go for all four verses, chances are very high that I won’t get through it all without my full-throat catching and my eyes misting over. 

Perhaps Katharine Lee Bates’ wonderful lyrics have had the same effect on you. Her tribute to pilgrims and patriots and soldiers are fitting evocations of the love of country and countrymen that lies at the heart of what has made my beloved nation remarkable—in spite of its various flaws. The third verse, in particular, always speaks to my soul: 

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!

I thought of these words again in recent days while watching the 2024 Summer Olympics broadcast from Paris. NBC ran a segment focused on some of the few remaining veterans of the D-Day invasion who had returned to France to be honored while also paying honor to their many fallen friends and comrades. I felt humbled by these centenarians, now feeble and wheelchair-bound, men and women who embody a selflessness that I could never hope to match. As these aged vets looked out over the cemetery there on the cliffs of Normandy, it was plain to see why these Americans, both living and dead, have been rightly called the Greatest Generation. 

I can’t witness such a scene without feeling a deep sense of inferiority and inspiration. I find myself pondering: “What have I done? What sort of sacrifices have I ever made on behalf of others?” It leaves me with a determination to try to be better, do better, make some sort of positive difference in whatever small way I can to make my community, my country, this world a better place for others. I’ve learned to pay attention to such urges when they come because they seem to me a signal of truth, a solemn prompting to pay attention to what I’m seeing and feeling. These are more than mere nudges, I believe; they are God’s way of helping me see the gap between who I am and who I could be.

Occasionally I’m subjected to different kinds of promptings altogether, and I pay attention to them in a whole different way. From time to time I read or hear someone urging me to give in to that other side of myself that puts my selfish interests ahead of others. They will encourage me to take offense where I had not previously, to feel a sense of grievance that had not existed before. Such people would have me vilify those around me who are different, blame them for my misfortunes, call them names and treat them with disrespect and contempt. They even seem to reject the nobility of the cause that brought young men ashore on Omaha Beach and would gladly leave underdogs to fend for themselves against much larger oppressors. What I notice as I hear or read their screeds is that they would have me become a worse version of myself and, in the process, make the world around me worse than it already is. And I wonder: If this is the sort of person we choose to follow, what do you suppose the historians might call our generation?

I’m a church-going fellow, as you know, a guy who has chosen throughout my life to follow the Greatest Leader of them all, one who taught His followers to put others first: to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the lonely and imprisoned. To bear the burdens of others. To answer offense and grievance with lovingkindness. I believe that the best leaders are those who similarly inspire others to strive to become better versions of themselves, who motivate their followers to pull together and achieve something they might not be capable of otherwise. Could I ever justify concurrently supporting someone who actively encourages me and others to do the opposite? It’s unthinkable. 

I acknowledge that some may see in their options ambiguity that I do not. If that includes you, may I suggest the following: As you listen to the speeches and consider both the message and the messenger, pay attention to what they are inviting you to do or to become. Then heed the advice of one prophet who taught a simple way to judge: That which invites you to do good comes from God, and that which does not, does not. 

Then choose good.

I pray along with Katharine Lee Bates that God will indeed shed His grace on America as we work together to crown our good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea. What will they call our generation? We are about to find out. 

PW

Photo: Best Defense Foundation

By This Shall Everyone Know

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2023Leave a comment

Dear Will:

There once was a man traveling the 15-mile stretch from Jerusalem to Jericho, heading to some other destination beyond. He brought along his donkey, perhaps because it was too far to walk, perhaps because he had too much to carry. Probably both. At some point, he came upon a stranger who had been beaten and bloodied by robbers—mercilessly left for dead on the side of the road. Filled with compassion, the traveler rushed to this stranger’s aid, taking oil and wine from his personal provisions to tend to his open wounds. Who knows which item of his own clothing the traveler was forced to tear up to fashion makeshift bandages?

Having slowed the bleeding and done the best he could with whatever other injuries he found, the traveler was forced to make a decision: What should he do with the suffering stranger? Surely he couldn’t leave him at the roadside. So he did the hard thing, lifting the bloodied man onto the back of the donkey and continuing his journey on foot—perhaps even carrying whatever supplies he had removed from the back of the beast in order to make room for the injured victim.

No doubt hours behind schedule, the traveler eventually stopped for the night at a roadside inn, where he paid for the stranger’s accommodations as well. The next morning, before continuing on his journey, he left additional money with the innkeeper along with these instructions: Please nurse this man back to health, and if your expenses exceed what I have paid you, I will reimburse you when I come back through this way.

Jesus taught this parable about the kindly Samaritan and the unfortunate Jew to help us understand what love looks like. If he told it today, it might be about a Muslim and an Evangelical Christian, a Democrat and a Republican, a Palestinian and an Israeli. It is a story about compassion, about bearing the burdens of others, about inconvenience, interruption, generosity. It illustrates what we mean by “the pure love of Christ.”

Elsewhere in scripture we find other detailed descriptions of what love looks like. On another occasion, Jesus said that love is feeding the hungry, giving shelter to strangers, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, reaching out to those who are in prison. It’s treating the poor, the homeless, refugees and other victims of misfortune as you would treat Him—as if He and they were essentially the same person.

In Paul’s well-known letter to the Corinthians, he said love is patience, kindness, and celebrating the success of others. It’s humility and respect. It’s looking out for those around you and always giving them the benefit of the doubt. It’s celebrating truth. It’s tolerating, believing, and hoping, enduring whatever might come your way.

I’ve known many people who have shown me what this sort of love looks like. Through their selfless generosity of spirit, they have come to embody for me a real-life ideal of what I’m striving to become. I return to their stories again and again, perhaps as an antidote to the hate and unkindness that seems to dominate public discourse. Their examples lift and inspire me, urge me to try to be better myself.

In all of this I hear again an essential message and mandate directed to all of us who say that we are “trying to be like Jesus.” Because of love, you should be able to spot His true followers anywhere people gather: at the park, in the grocery store, at a school board meeting, at a football game—even on social media. In fact, you should not have to look very hard. Jesus gave us a simple way to spot the true believers: “By this shall all men know ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).

Go, and do thou likewise.

PW

Image: Ferdinand Hodler, The Good Samaritan (1875)