Matthew 25:31-46 2025/02/23 Osaka Church
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The word “little ones” appears several times in the Gospels. The smallest of human beings are newborn babies. Not only are they small, but they are also completely helpless. They cannot survive even for a moment without the support of their mother’s love. “Little ones” are “people who cannot live without the support of love” like these baby.
Most icons of the Theotokos depict her holding the infant Jesus in her arms. Jesus came to this world as a helpless baby who could not live without the support of His mother’s love. He came to this world as a “little one.”
In the end, this man was stripped of his clothes, cruelly crucified, insulted and mocked by the people, and then His disciples fled from Him. Finally, He ended his life on earth as a “little man” who had lost all support of love, even abandoned by God, crying out, “God, why have you forsaken me?” This “little man” who came as a “little man” and left as a “little man” is the Lord of us Christians.
This man rose from the dead. On the morning of the third day, Sunday, the tomb where he was buried was empty. An angel told the disciples, “Why do you look for the living in the tombs? The Lord has risen and is not here.” Soon the Lord appeared to the disciples. The yoke of death, which has trapped us all without exception, was broken, and “life” was restored to us. This “little man” called Jesus was a “gift of life” to us. The Lord was embraced by Mary as a “gift received.” Mary is us.
We encounter the “little ones.” As crying babies, as people lying in bed, as those who have been cast away by society, as the sick and lonely, as the elderly who cannot do anything for themselves, as those facing death in despair. They too “cannot live without the support of love,” and so they are “little ones,” just like Jesus, who was a gift to us.
If this is so, then is it not through our relationships with these people that we are given the gift of life? Just as the Theotokos received Jesus, it is only when we receive these people as a gift of life that we can live in the “Life” of Christ, who was once cast away but was resurrected on the third day as the foundation stone of “life.”
Christ taught this. This is today’s Gospel. The Son of Man that is Christ will come again to this world accompanied by angels, and as King, he will separate all people to the right and left like a shepherd separating his sheep from his goats, and will give a proclamation to those on his right: “You blessed ones, inherit the kingdom. I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
To those who ask in amazement, “When did I do this?” the King will answer:
“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”
The “little ones” are a gift to us. They are a holy gift from God to inherit the kingdom just as Jesus did, that is, to the path to the joy of living in the resurrected Life of Christ.
So who are the “little ones,” the little ones closest to us? They are our “neighbors.” Of course, these are people we meet every day, including our families. Some of them we dislike. But among the people living all over the world today, among the enormous number of people who have lived, are living, and will live in the future over tens of thousands of years of human history, these are people we meet face to face. Isn’t that a miracle? Isn’t it truly a gift from God? When we know our neighbors as “little ones” given to us by God, as people who cannot survive even for a moment without the support of love, and when we live by giving to each other, isn’t that where the “Kingdom of God” begins to grow?