The Face We Refused to See
On Failing the Least of These—and Failing Christ
Some words of Jesus soothe.
These do not.
“Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these,
you did not do it to me.”
—Matthew 25:45
This isn’t a parable about belief.
It’s a judgment about neglect.
And it’s terrifying in its clarity.
Because Jesus doesn’t say we cursed him, or attacked him, or even denied him.
He says we ignored him.
We didn’t see him when he was hungry.
We didn’t visit him when he was locked away.
We didn’t welcome him when he was strange.
We didn’t clothe him when he was exposed.
We didn’t love him—because we didn’t recognize him.
That’s the haunting brilliance of Matthew 25.
Jesus hides himself, not in glory, but in need.
And when we walk past those in need, we are not merely failing to be charitable.
We are rejecting Christ.
It’s a judgment not of bad behavior, but of religious indifference.
These are people, we assume, who went to temple. Who prayed. Who maybe tithed.
But their liturgy never made it to the street.
They worshipped Christ in the sanctuary—
but walked right past him in the hallway.
And still today, Christ walks the streets in the clothes of the least:
The refugee child and the homeless veteran
The addict relapsing again and the single mom folding someone else’s laundry
The person in prison and the one trapped in medical debt
The one we roll our eyes at
The one we pretend not to see
This is what should stop us in our tracks: We don’t need to harm people to fail Christ. We just need to keep walking.
And the question comes, as quiet as it is damning:
What did you fail to see because you were trying to be religious?
I think of the times I’ve preached sermons but ignored emails from people in crisis.
I think of churches that install new projectors but lock their bathrooms during the week.
I think of how comfortable I am asking, “What would Jesus do?”—while rarely asking, “Where is Jesus right now, and why am I not with him?”
The shock of Matthew 25 is not just that Jesus identifies with the poor.
It’s that he refuses to be known apart from them.
We cannot get to Christ by bypassing the wounded.
We cannot worship him and withhold mercy.
We cannot pray and fail to show up.
So what now?
Jesus doesn’t give us a riddle. He gives us a roadmap:
Feed the hungry.
Clothe the naked.
Visit the imprisoned.
Welcome the stranger.
Tend to the sick.
Not as acts of charity.
But as acts of recognition.
Because the poor are not a project.
They are Christ in disguise.
And the haunting truth of this passage is also its hope:
It is still possible to find Jesus in the world—
not just in songs or scriptures, but in broken places and broken people.
We do not have to wonder where to begin.
We begin at the feet of the least.
And maybe, there, we will remember the face we were too busy to see. Either we see God in the least of these, or we do not see God.
In mercy and reckoning,
Hank