How Much A Dollar Cost?: Thoughts on Jesus' Call to Serve the Least of These (In the wake of events in Baltimore concerning Freddie Gray and Countless others)

Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46

Song: How Much a Dollar Cost?

If I had to choose a protest song for the current times, this would be it.

While listening to the album, when I heard this track, this was the one that had me stuck, that forced me to hit the repeat button.

In these lyrics, as Kendrick wrestles with trying to avoid the gaze of the man experiencing homelessness who has the nerve to stare into his eyes and demand his attention, I hear a conversation about how we treat the “least of these” or the marginalized in our society and who we think deserves or needs our help.

In 4 min 21 secs this track for me carried the conviction of a sermon on justice. And in the final lines:

I looked at him and said, "every nickel is mines to keep"

He looked at me and said, "Know the truth it'll set you free

You're lookin' at the Messiah, the Son of Jehovah, the Higher Power

The choir that spoke the word, The Holy Spirit

The nerve of Nazareth, and I'll tell you just how much a dollar cost

The price of having a spot in heaven embrace your loss

I am God"

I couldn’t help but to think  of Matthew 25:31-46. I remember the first time that I read this passage; I found myself really challenged by Jesus but also remember that this was part of what made me fall in love with Him in the first place.

Jesus, from his teachings, sayings, and miracles from crucifixion and through to His resurrection believed and proved Himself to be God. 

So what does it mean that God would align Himself with “the least of these” in our society?

Well, if we are faithful to view the arc of the Biblical narrative, this actually shouldn’t take us by surprise. Jesus’ declaration here in Matthew 25 is consistent with who God always revealed Himself to amongst the Israelites—Biblically speaking. Innumerable times in the Old Testament, God identifies Himself as He who cares for the widows, orphans, and the oppressed.

In Deuteronomy 24:19, The Israelites are commanded “When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.” They are commanded the same in Leviticus 19:9; Leviticus 23:22, and countless other iterations of the same command are repeated throughout scripture. 

In the Psalms, one of the characteristics consistently attributed to God by David and other Psalmists is that “righteousness and justice are the foundations of [His] throne; love and faithfulness go before you. (Psalm 89:14)” And there are far too many other iterations of this verse to name as well. As a matter of fact, if you cut out all of the passages in the Bible having to do with justice, you wouldn’t have much of a Bible left, there’d be holes everywhere. (Hence the Book—The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? The Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World by Richard Stearns).

The prophets, both major and minor, decried the injustice running rampant in Israel. In the opening of Isaiah (the first major prophet), God, through the prophet Isaiah rebukes His people for their idolatry and meaningless worship but a key aspect of His denouncement is that they have failed to live justly. He says,

 Wash and make yourselves clean.
    Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
    stop doing wrong.
¹⁷ Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:16-17).

The call continues time and time again to and through Amos who cries out to
 "let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" Amos 5:24

And when Israel was first established as a people and the law was given to them through Moses, a year of Jubilee was to be enacted every 49/50 years (depending on how you count the years) where all land, property, and property rights would be “reset” in a sense such that the long term consequences would be that no one could horde wealth. (This included the freeing of slaves. sidenote: Biblical slavery was drastically different from American slavery, which based on the teachings of the Bible would have actually been condemned from the outset because people were not allowed to steal other people, but this is another conversation and another much longer email). And I mention the year of Jubilee because I believe with all of my heart that structural injustice is structural sin—that systems of oppression started and are maintained by greedy, selfish, prideful, in other words sinful people.

The point being, God is a God of justice. And, still, God’s existence as a God of justice co-exists with the reality of a broken and sinful world where suffering is perpetuated. And God’s call for His people in the middle of an unjust world is not to turn a blind eye to injustice, but to see Him in “the least of these.” God’s people are called to honor the humanity of the marginalized and to serve them as if we were serving Him.

The brilliance of Kendrick’s thought process in the lyrics of “How much a Dollar Cost” for me is this call: to know that what we do to the least of these, we do to Him. 

At the same time, Kendrick’s inner dialogue about his interactions with this homeless man can also be used as an interpretive lens with which to view society at large and how marginalized persons have been treated in this country since before its founding, speaking of the oppression of Native Americans, but also speaking about black oppression from slavery to concentrated poverty to police brutality, native American oppression, and the list goes on.

Jesus’ final and most powerful alignment with the “least of these” and those who suffer is on the cross, where though He is without sin, He chooses to take on the sins of the world to both make man right with God and to free us from the bondage of sin and its corruption of our humanity. But the crucifixion is also a humble reminder that sin is in all of us, that it begins in the human heart, and that we all need to be redeemed.

But this isn’t the end of the story, in the Resurrection, Jesus shows Himself to be He who “holds the keys to death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18) as He defeats one of the worst evils, death and pronounces judgment on Satan, in the grave. Death has lost its sting because it doesn’t get the final say. The Resurrection is a sign of what is to come: God’s power and faithfulness to overcome all evil and defeat Satan once and for all. In this time, a new heavens and a new Earth where God Himself will be in the midst of His people will reign. And  “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (John 21:1-4).

So what does this mean for the here and the now? I circle back to How Much a Dollar Cost and Jesus’ call in Matthew 25 to serve the least of these. I also read this as a call to fight injustice.

In God of the Oppressed, James Cone writes:

“The weight of the biblical view of suffering is not on the origin of evil but on what God in Christ has done about evil. According to the New Testament, God became human in Jesus Christ, and defeated decisively the power of sin, death, and Satan, thereby bestowing upon us the freedom to struggle against suffering which destroys humanity. This is the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. During Jesus’ life, God became the Suffering Servant in Israel’s place, and thus took upon the divine-self human pain.”

And while I would argue that the Bible acknowledges that sin enters the world with sin which leads to the corruption of humanity, I agree wholeheartedly with Cone’s statement that the crucifixion in the cross is also a call to fight against injustice and suffering and to seek His healing and justice in our depraved world knowing that we serve a God who also suffered and overcame. Knowing that in Him, we too will do the same, by His grace.

This fight may look different for all of us, we will have to pick our battles, but regardless of how it looks, no one who aligns themselves with Christ can afford to turn a blind eye to any form of injustice be it in Baltimore, NY, Ferguson, Boston, on our campus, anywhere. We are called to know His redemption but to also call others to His redemption knowing that an intrinsic part of this call is seeing and serve the least of these. This is what it means to live like Christ in this broken world. And I pray that God would grant us the strength and wisdom to do so in prayer (because we wrestle not just against flesh and blood but spiritual principalities (Ephesians 6:12) and action. This world needs healers and His healing, badly.

And when we overlook this call because we are too busy doing church and other things, may God have mercy on us to see the error of our ways.

Praying hard that Freddie Gray's family and everyone suffering in Baltimore to know Christ's healing in the midst of the pain and suffering. Praying for us to know His Spirit of Comfort and that we would know Him as He who is near to the brokenhearted and  binds up their wounds (Psalm 34:18). 

And for us who profess Christ as Lord and Savior, and those who don’t, I’m praying for God’s wisdom to know what it looks like to be part of the solution—how to live as an informed and spirit filled/led healer. 

 May we know the truth, and may He set us free (John 8:36).