“Wesleyan Rooted: Serve Impactfully”
Palm Sunday
April 13, 2025
Burnt Hills United Methodist Church
Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved this story from Matthew’s Gospel. It’s a story that I have distinct childhood memories of from Sunday school and Vacation Bible School Lessons—any story with animals like sheep and goats makes good fodder for children’s bible stories.
But I didn’t realize until years later just how radical this story really is. Because in Matthew 25, Jesus tells us plainly what a life of faith looks like: it looks like serving others. It looks like love made real. It looks like compassion in action.
As a youth, my associate pastor—Janet James—asked me for input on a sermon on this very passage. She had this wonderful way of drawing wisdom from all across our congregation as she prepared her sermons. And so I remember going into my church’s library, looking at a few commentaries—even back then, I was a bit of a bible dork—and discovering that this passage is the only place in all of Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus explicitly outlines what one must do to enter into God’s glory. That serving the least of these didn’t merely get you extra credit or superfluous brownie points but were rather the meat and substance of a life of faith. I remember sharing that nugget with Pastor Janet and then, to my own bewilderment and surprise, her actually using that insight in her sermon.
And then I remember going on to college and seminary and getting a new glance on this story. That Jesus wasn’t describing the day of judgement for individual persons or households but entire nations. That we were responsible, yes, as individuals to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick and imprisoned, and welcome the stranger. But that we would also be judged according to whether or not our nation clothed the naked, fed the hungry, welcomed the stranger, and visited the sick and imprisoned—that we are responsible not only for our own actions but also the actions of our country’s systems, institutions, and structures.
That Christ is explicitly found between us and the least of these in our midst and whatever we do to the least of these, we first do through Christ.
Jesus arrived in a world and culture where the biggest armies dictated who was right. Where honor and power and wealth were hoarded and shored up for one’s own aims. Where conquest and expansion were the ultimate goals. Where peace was confused with security that was enforced at the end of a sword or the tip of a spear. Jesus arrived in that world and told his disciples that, in the end, nations wouldn’t be judged for how big their territories were or how much gold was in their coffers. That they wouldn’t be judged for the strength of their armies or the glories of their conquests.
Instead, they would be judged according to their treatment of the least of these.
This is the work that Jesus is calling us to do, and it stands at the heart of our Wesleyan way of faith—faith working by love. Holiness that always shows up in acts of mercy and justice.
Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.
This is the final week of this Wesleyan Rooted series we’ve been following throughout Lent. Throughout this series, we’ve explored how our Wesleyan heritage calls us to Grow Deeply, Love Actively, Read Faithfully, Embrace Widely, and today—Serve Impactfully.
Grow Deeply. Love Actively. Read Faithfully. Embrace Widely. Serve Impactfully.
These are the marks of a United Methodist.
In some ways, its serendipitous that this series’ conclusion—our call to serve impactfully—coincides with Palm and Passion Sunday, when we turn our attention to the very model of what faithful and impactful service looks like.
Now, I want to pull back the curtain for a moment—because this series we’ve been walking through together didn't start out as a Lenten series.
It actually comes to us from our friends in the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. After a season where over 190 churches left, unwilling to remain in a denomination moving toward full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people, Bishop Tom Berlin and his team created this series last summer for the churches who remained, inviting them to spend five weeks—whenever it made sense for their congregation—remembering and reclaiming what it means to be United Methodist.
It was their way of saying: “Okay—in this new season, let’s remember who we are. Let’s remember what it means to be United Methodist.”
I found out about this series when I started working with Bishop Berlin and other clergy colleagues from the Florida Conference on projects for the broader UMC last year, and I knew I wanted to bring that spirit here to Burnt Hills. I’m grateful that Pastor Amy agreed—and that she suggested it would pair well with the Burnt Hills UMC 101 New Members class we were also offering throughout Lent.
Now, like I said, this wasn’t designed as a Lenten series.
And yet week after week, it has felt like exactly what Lent is for.
Self-examination. Returning to our roots. Remembering who and whose we are. Preparing to walk with Jesus all the way to the cross and beyond.
That’s where this series has been leading us all along—not just back to our roots as United Methodists, but back to the heart of the Gospel itself. Back to the story at the center of our faith.
And as the days of Lent wind down, the drama of the liturgical year is quickly reaching its climax. We’ve sung our Hosannas and waved our palms, and now we turn our attention to the events of the coming week.
Before long, Jesus will gather with his disciples, wash their feet, and share a final meal. He will go into the garden and plead with the Father for his life to be spared. He will be betrayed and deserted by his followers and arrested by the military police. He will be whipped and beaten and mocked and scourged. And he will be condemned to be tortured and die an excruciating death.
Because when the love that lies at the very foundation of existence itself put on flesh and became incarnate, the all-consuming powers and principalities of sin and death—the very death-dealing idols that fueled and continue to fuel the logic and politics of empire—could not abide the reality of life and life lived abundantly.
They could not tolerate a gospel that promised life not through death or power or control or wealth or false promises of security, but through self-giving love.
Not a love that is passive, but one that is active.
A love that sees the spiritual forces of wickedness and the evil powers of this world for what they really are. Nothing more than empty vanities that are, ultimately, fleeting.
A love that sees evil, injustice, and oppression run amuck across the world, taking life at every opportunity and is bold enough to say, “no mas; no more”. A love that sees the wheels of injustice crushing the life out of the world and drives a spoke straight through it, stopping it dead in its tracks.
A love that sees the hungry and gives them something to eat.
A love that sees the thirsty and gives them something to drink.
A love that sees the naked and gives them something to wear.
A love that sees the stranger and welcomes them into community.
A love that sees the sick and imprisoned and goes out of their way to show them that they are not alone.
That life is here and is meant to be lived and shared.
That’s the core of the Gospel, friends. That’s the promise of our faith.
Love. Leads. To. Life.
Four simple words that turned the very powers of sin and death on their heads and caused them to relinquish their grip on our life together.
Because we know how this story is going to end.
We know that in a world full of Good Fridays, Sunday is coming, and friends, we’ll have plenty of time together to celebrate that next week.
But that celebration is for next week.
Today, we keep our attention on that portrait of perfect, impactful service: Jesus entering the city on a donkey and surrounded by a crowd of co-conspirators waving their palm branches and shouting “Hosanna”, literally, “Save us! Save us oh Son of David! Save us!”
An organized street protest showcasing the utter ridiculousness of the heights of Roman military honor—the post-conquest Triumph parade.
A parade where Rome’s victorious generals showed off their conquests—gold, jewels, religious artifacts, and, yes, prisoners of war—ending in their ritual slaughter outside the temple.
A parade that was understood as the pinnacle of a Roman general’s political and military career.
Jesus and his crowd of co-conspirators took that same parade that proclaimed the might of the Imperial Roman military machine and made a mockery of it, showing all who had eyes to see it a new way of understanding reality.
And the week was just beginning.
This is the work of impactful service. This is the work Christ calls us to.
Not glory. Not conquest. But the everyday, humble, life-giving love of Christ, made real in the lives of the least of these.
And friends—when we serve with that kind of love, life breaks in. Resurrection is already on the move.
May the one who began a good work be faithful to complete it in us.
The work continues.
Amen.
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