Recently, a news story ran about a free lunch program that has been going on at St. Augustine by the Sea Catholic Church in Waikiki for the last 50 years. The lunch generally serves houseless individuals.

According to the story, the mayor and several police majors (dressed in blue), met with the priest of St. Augustine’s and asked him to discontinue the lunch. Apparently, the priest agreed.

I’m sure the mayor and the majors and the priest were motivated by only the highest principles.

Quite likely the mayor has been pressured by the hotel and tourist industries because St. Augustine’s is right in the middle of our tourist mecca of Waikiki.

The police majors, already struggling with decades of being understaffed, are now faced with an explosion of the chronically houseless, many addicted to drugs while others struggle with mental illness. I’m sure the majors were just looking out for their officers.

And the priest also probably felt that he was simply obeying government officials, as Saint Paul commands in Romans chapter 13.

And yet.

Were those actions by the mayor, the majors and the priest consistent with the Christian faith that so many in our community profess?

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells a parable of the weeds and the wheat.

A parable that makes the piercingly difficult point that when it comes to knowing who is good and what is evil, we very often get it wrong. Especially when our choices are grounded in preserving our own self-interest.

When we put economic well-being ahead of human need, we almost always get it wrong.

For many, the cornerstone of how we are to live our faith is spelled out when Jesus tells the parable of the last judgment.

In that parable all people are gathered before the king and separated, like sheep from the goats.

And the questions asked are not about your doctrine or creed, but about how you cared for (or didn’t care for) the hungry, the naked, the outcast.

The point of the parable is that if you want to meet Jesus, you shall find him in the face of the hungry, the naked and the prisoner. You’ll find him within and among the despised.

And if you treat the hungry and the naked and the despised with contempt, then you are actually treating Jesus with contempt.

And here’s the thing.

I am sure that most folks who read that news article about the mayor and the majors and the priest nodded their heads in agreement with what the mayor and the majors and the priest ended up doing.

I am sure that most good church-going Christians nodded their heads with approval, all for the same or similar reasons that motivated the mayor and the majors and the priest.

But then, here comes that pesky Jesus.

And wouldn’t you know it, but almost every time we say that we know what is good and what is bad, Jesus comes along and says: “You’ve got it exactly backwards.”

Perhaps we only need to ask ourselves, with whom would Jesus be standing that day when the mayor and the majors and the priest met to talk at the church?

Would Jesus have been in that meeting with the mayor and the majors and the priest, insisting that the lunch be closed down?

Or would Jesus have been standing in line — waiting for that sandwich, waiting for that cold drink?

The question, it seems to me, answers itself.

The Rev. David J. Gierlach is rector at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church.