You don't have to do what they want you to do. You just have to listen to them, Ben.

My grandmother, who had grown up in the church, had served in the church for decades, and had been one of those little old ladies who snuck into the pastor's office when they were not happy about something in the church to have a conversation, took me out to lunch about a week before I was moving to Texas to start seminary.

She had gone out with me, done a little shopping, and then we went and sat down to eat.

And she looked me in the eye and she said, "Ben, I want to just give you one word of advice.

When the little old ladies come to your office, just listen to them.

You don't have to do what they tell you to do. You don't have to do what they want you to do. But you do have to listen so that they know that they are heard."

Seven years later, I received my first call as a pastor. And after having accepted it, the regional minister called me and said, "Ben, I'm happy for you, but I've got to give you a warning.

There's a member at your church that's a troublemaker.

She has caused trouble for every pastor that has ever been her pastor in dozens of churches.

And you just need to know what's coming."

And she ended up being one of my favorite people because of my grandma. Because I understood when she came into my office, she was raising concern because she had concern, not because she was a troublemaker, but because of the way she saw the world. And I was able to listen to Hazel, to hear her. I didn't do what she wanted a lot, and she reminded me of that a lot.

But she knew when she came to me that she was going to be heard, that I would engage with her, and that sometimes I might even change my mind because I too can be wrong. Don't tell too many people.

But she was going to get my attention.

I don't know without my grandmother whether or not I would have had that kind of wisdom at 29 years old.

Actually, I can pretty much guarantee I wouldn't have.

But when Hazel walked into my office, I knew who she was.

I knew that she was somebody's grandmother.

That somebody got taken out to lunch by her.

And I was able to see Hazel not as a combatant, not as an enemy, not as someone who was just causing me so much trouble, but instead with compassion and as a beloved daughter of God.

Hazel and I developed a strong relationship where we could disagree, where we occasionally may even have crossed a line and we could say to each other, "No, we don't do that," where we could learn and grow together and remind each other of who we were.

Compassion changes so much.

Taking the time to view people not as enemies, not as combatants, not as someone who is just trying to cause us trouble changes so much.

And that is what Jesus is trying to do in today's gospel lesson. He is telling his disciples, who had known him, who had loved him, who had followed him, whenever you see somebody in need of help, see me.

Who holds that place for you in your life?

Who loved you so much that if you can just see a piece of them in somebody else, it might change the way you view those people?

Jesus says, "When you see someone in need, see me." Because he knew if the disciples saw him, they would want to serve him. They would want to care for him. They would see him with compassion because they had known him and seen his love for them first.

This scripture, even as I was reading it this morning, it's like gosh, Jesus gets really harsh there in the second part, right?

You accursed who are going to the never-ending fires, Jesus says.

It really makes this teaching seem like, gosh, we better get it right. Right?

When's the last time you passed somebody who was hungry and didn't help them?

Thirsty on the side of the road.

We do it all the time.

We don't always do what we're supposed to do. Sometimes we can't do what we think we're supposed to do. And again, we return to the fact of who Jesus is.

That Jesus is not teaching this so that we know what is right or wrong and we all, with our own power, go and do the right thing. Instead, Jesus is opening our hearts and our minds little by little to be more compassionate, to be more aware of the world around us.

Because we've all helped somebody, right? Raise your hand if you've helped somebody.

Keep it up if you've helped somebody in the last month.

Okay? If you don't have your hand up, put it up anyway because you're wrong.

So many times we help people without knowing it. At the same time, raise your hand if you didn't help somebody you knew needed help in the last month.

Not as many hands.

Maybe we're all a mixed bag.

I don't think Jesus is up there keeping a tally mark score of, okay, well, 51% of the time Ben helped people and 49% of the time Ben didn't help people, so he's going to sneak in the door to heaven. Instead, Jesus is showing us what it looks like to step into heaven right now. It looks like recognizing with compassion the people around us and saying, I can help here. I can do this now.

Because we can.

We can say, "I have it in my heart to help this person. To recognize this person is just like somebody else I know who once had need, and so I'm going to do what I can."

We're talking this month and next month about imagining a world with more. I want to take a moment today, because I think this is such a world-changing thing, to stop and think.

What would a world with more compassion look like?

What would a world that lived by Jesus's teaching here look like? It doesn't even have to be the whole world living by Jesus's teachings.

If just those who say they follow Jesus followed this teaching, what would the world look like?

Would we have hunger?

Would we have thirst?

Would we have those who are alone in sickness or in prison? Would we have those who didn't have clothing? Would we have any of those problems if just the people who say they follow Jesus believed what Jesus said here and lived?

Can we imagine?

Jesus at one point in the gospel says, "The poor you will always have with you." And I wonder sometimes if we took that as a commandment rather than as a statement of the way humanity has treated itself.

We here are not all the followers of Jesus. So we here are not going to fix all of the things. But when we imagine that world with more compassion, we are called to do what we can to approach the world and say, "If I do my part, someone else might be inspired to do their part."

My grandmother saw me with compassion.

I'll be honest, I'm not sure she always saw some of her pastors with that same compassion, and she played a part in their opinions of her probably.

But she shared with me an opportunity to learn and to grow, an opportunity to recognize the humanity in whoever it is that happens to be across from me in that moment. Because she gave me that opportunity rather than seeing someone who was going to be a pastor and saying, "Yep, he's going to stop listening to people." She said, "Hey, remember this.

Remember to listen, to hear, to respond to whoever it is that is right there with grace."

What would it look like if we assumed the best of each other rather than the worst?

If we assumed that somebody who is hungry just needs some food and some love and some care and that that actually will do far more to help them be transformed than our own opinions of them.

Is this not the world we want?

Is this world of our imagining where we imagine a world with more compassion not the world that we desire?

And if it is, let us be compassionate.

Let us be the people who see someone in need and simply says, "Here's what I can do."

You don't have to fix everything.

We can't.

We trust that we can do our little bit, and that with God's help, it will be more than enough.

We all need help.

At some point in time, we have all needed help. I know it because we were all babies and we couldn't feed ourselves, y'all. If you think you've never needed help, then you came into this world formed and I'd like to have a conversation.

Jesus does something revolutionary in this text.

The king will be sitting on his throne and he will say to them, "Not whatever you did to me, the king, you did. Instead, whatever you did to the least of these."

Whoever it is that you see who is in need is the king. And you treat them like that. Even Jesus, he says, needed help. Needed people to care for him, to serve him. It's why he was born as a baby so that we couldn't believe that any of us, even Jesus himself, didn't need something at some point.

And he tells his disciples to look to the needy if they're going to look for it.

I don't know if Angela picked this morning's song, Jesus is Coming Soon, on purpose, but let me tell y'all, Jesus is coming soon. He told us he's coming soon and that he's going to come as whoever is hungry, whoever is thirsty, whoever is sick or in prison or naked or afraid or in need of help. And if we do not look upon them and see Jesus himself, we aren't following him.

We can't fix it all. There may be times where you pass somebody on the side of the street with a sign saying, "I'm hungry," and you really don't have any cash on you.

You can give them a smile, a wave, a nod, some kind of acknowledgement of their humanity.

This is the key.

Jesus says when he comes back and sits on his throne, this is going to be the thing that we are judged by. I don't know what that judgment looks like. And the good news is I don't have to because I'm not the judge.

All I know is Jesus told us to look for those in need and to help them, to respond with compassion. And he didn't mean to create an exclusive list.

That grouchy person that just is always in a bad mood, they might just need a hug.

I'd ask first because they might be prickly too, or maybe they need a little bit of time, or somebody who will listen.

The person that you've had a hard time with, you can still respond to them with compassion and seek to make things right. Not right in my mind or your mind or their mind, but right in that we care for each other, that we want the best for each other, and we can learn.

And y'all, this is the beauty of doing church together, of doing community together, is we're gonna get on each other's nerves.

We're gonna step on each other's toes.

And we learn that we can love each other anyway.

When things get hard, when there is conflict, when there is division, we have to remember that we all need help to treat each other with compassion.

This is our practice field.

If you've played sports, you know you get better on the practice field.

It's why we can't just do church sitting in pews. We've got to have meals together and we've got to serve together and we've got to talk to each other and we've got to disagree with each other.

And it's okay that all of those things happen because this is where we learn how to be compassionate anyway, how to love anyway, and how to imagine a world with more compassion.

I guarantee you if you look around this room and you've been coming here for more than a couple of months, you'll find somebody you've had a hard time with.

Am I right?

Some people are looking at each other in the pews.

That's good because it is where we learn what love really is. Love is not everything going smoothly and going easily and going where we all agree and hold hands and skip through a meadow singing kumbaya with rainbows coming down out of unicorns.

It is here.

It is in the present where we learn how to do this. We're not going to get it right all the time, but we also can look around this room and know the people who are in need of help because it's all of us. But also, we can learn what those specific kinds of help are.

It may be to sit and talk. It may be somebody who is hungry. It may be somebody who's going through a hard time. It may be some advice.

For those of you who have been here for decades and decades and decades and feel like, I don't know what I have left to give, there are some younger folks in here who would love your wisdom and your care.

For the younger folks who have the energy, the older folks don't expect you to get it right all the time. Do y'all?

Thank you. You knew the right answer whether you agree with me or not.

We get to be the image of the kingdom of God week after week, month after month, and then we get to take what we practice here and go out into the world.

And we get to participate to help God in building that world that we imagine with more compassion, building that world that actually, when it comes to full fruition, will be far beyond even our best imaginings.

Compassion holds the door open.

Some of y'all remember Tom Bodett promising to leave that light on for you.

That's what compassion does. It keeps us open so that we can continue to learn to love.

And in that love and in that compassion, we can transform first ourselves and our community and then the world.

Amen.