Unless you have read about her in the November Reader’s Digest, like I did you would not know of her.  However, to the citizens in Tijuana, Mexico her name is synonymous to Jesus Christ.  Her name is synonymous with medical care. Since 1989 on the second Sunday of every month Sonia brings doctors, volunteers and medical supplies from California into the poorest areas of Tijuana.  They convert their automobiles into medical offices giving checking ups, dispensing medicines and vitamins, treating infections and other diseases.

Have you ever heard of Mr. Kachelmyer?

Unless you have read Odyssey of a Romanian Street Child chances are you haven’t.  To Catalin Dobrisan and hundreds of Bucharest children his name is synonymous with Jesus Christ.  Kachlemyer’s name is synonymous with new life for abused and neglected children.  The streets of Bucharest are market places for drugs, prostitution, and crime.  Thousands of children are left to fend for themselves, begging, performing for food, and sleeping in bushes. Seeing such horror American Christian Kachelmyer opened Creation House. Creation House cares for the physical and spiritual well being of each child. Feeding them with food for the body, mind and soul.  Showing them through Word and deed the love of God.

Catatin Dobrisan said. “I began to know God…I could feel His love for me…I could understand the Bible…that…Jesus living in me could effect the changes that I had to take to erase the atrocity of the past and sent me on the path to productivity.

As you reflect on the gospel this morning, a message that describes the final judgment of humanity, what is going through you mind?  Do you wonder if you will be on the side of the sheep or on the side of the goats?  Do you wonder if Jesus will say to you,

“Come, you are blessed by my Father,
take your inheritance.”

Or will Jesus say,

“Depart from me, you are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

If you are wondering, let me say you don’t have to.  You can stop wondering today.  How?  First, believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.  Second, decide how you are going to live.  How you live demonstrates what you believe about Jesus and Jesus’ words.

What do you do when a person approaches you on the street?  Do you see a stranger begging or do you see the face of Christ in a stranger?  Do you see this encounter as an intrusion or an opportunity to serve Christ?  When you see a person you don’t know sitting in the pew in front of you or next do you, do you welcome that person only because you are told to greet your neighbor, or because you desire to welcome that person as you would welcome Jesus Christ? Each Sunday, through our prayer concerns you hear of people who are sick what do you for them?  Pray?  Send a note?  Make a phone call?  Do you do for them as you would do if that person were Jesus himself?

What have you done for the least of these brothers and sisters of Christ?

Sadly, all too often we pick and choose whom we are going to bring God’s mercy to.  I tend to believe this is due to the fact that we separate people into classes and groups.  We define people by political preference, by income, by social standards.

When we look at the planet and we see many nations, God looks at the planet and He sees one world.  We look at the church and we see many denominations, many beliefs and many families.  God looks at the church and He sees His children.  We need to realize that the opportunity for mission is on our front door steps as much as it is across the ocean and in third world countries.

I am convinced that how we treat our brothers and sisters, how we treat our neighbors, how we raise our children, is directly related to how we view God.

If you belief God is a merciful God whose goodness outdistances your imagination, whose ways and gifts cannot adequately be put into words, then I believe you will have no other desire but to share that goodness with the world. You see feeding the hungry, satisfying the thirsty, welcoming strangers, visiting the sick not as a burden or an inconvenience but a privilege.

If you have a passion for Christ, then you will have a passion for the mission that He has entrusted us with His will and Spirit to reform and transform the life of the church, the life of the family. He calls us to be the His voice of hope in the world to those wounded by warfare be it domestic, or gang related, or nation against nation threatens the world.  He calls us to open our lives to worthy possibilities for justice and peace.  This gospel story is not just about judgment it is about the mercy of God.  It is about the mercy of God you and I are called to extend to everyone, because everyone is a child of God.