The story of the Last Judgment, the final instruction Jesus gives His disciples before we begin to read about His passion, death and resurrection, always sends shivers down my spine, because it is so real and so harsh. It is harsh because Jesus couldn't be clearer in saying that what we do here on earth matters, and that there will be a final judgment and the possibility of eternal separation from God. We sure don't like to think about that, but when Jesus says that the King will say: "Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels," we get the point. How we live our life counts, big time. The reality that we as human beings, and as a Church, don't like to think about and talk about is the reality that God is so identified with the poor, homeless, sick, hungry, thirsty, imprisioned that Jesus names that God is somehow "in" them. The King in Jesus' story over and over again uses the first person-- I, me-- to talk about the people who were, or weren't, helped when they were in need. You didn't help me, God says over and over. God doesn't say I have a special concern for the poor, and so by not helping "them" in some indirect sense you didn't help "me." No, God says that when you don't help the people identified (not just poor, but in prision, sick, hungry, thirsty, and such), you are not helping "Me". So I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that if we don't want to be with the people who are in some way the person of God in this life, we should be separated from God in the next. This reality-- the reality that our eternal salvation depends on our connection with the sick, lonely, poor, hungry, imprisoned and such-- brings into focus many of the fault lines in the Church today. Think of who does all the hands-on work that "the King" identifies as essential to salvation. Almost always the work of caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, welcoming strangers, and even visiting prisioners is done primarily by women. Historically, that was women's work, and it largely still is. But the power in the Church is exercised almost-completely by men, largely ordained, celebate men. So there is a disconnect-- those with the power aren't the ones who are doing, or even thinking about doing, what it is that God says we need to do. Beyond the gender issues, of course, is the reality that the folks who are in some way God's presence on earth are most-often not the people in ther pews, and usually don't look like the people in thre pews. In a time when tribalism is on the rise, when we are all prompted to care only about people like us, the reality is that Jesus is telling us that our salvation depends on caring for the people who are very different from us. So the Church-- and I mean all of us-- struggles with how to mesh these competing realities. We're tempted just to throw some money in the collection plate and call it a day. Nothing wrong with increasing contributions, and we should do that if we can. But that's isn't the hand's on, personal relationship Jesus is talking about today. Perhaps for Lent we might think about ways we can actually care for folks in the way Jesus describes today. After all, even the good Samaritan, Jesus' model of how to love our neighbor, started first with hands-on care. Only after that did he give money to provide for the stranger.