Neither Sheep Nor Goat

Matthew 25:31-46 (NRSV)
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.

“Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'

“Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?'

“And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'

“Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'

“Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?'

“Then he will answer them, '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.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Ora Holland sent me a card recently. Ora is one of our members who has just recently moved out to Kansas to live near her son and his family there. She says that she misses us, just as we miss her, but she seems to be doing well in her new home and I know she was very happy that the place she is living accepted not only her but also her cat.

In her note Ora sent along this story that someone had sent her via the Internet: A Sunday school teacher wrote about getting to heaven. He said, “I asked the children in my class, ‘If I sold my house and my car, would that get me to heaven?’ ‘No!’ the children all answered.

“’If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard and kept it all neat and tidy, would that get me to heaven?’ Again the children answered ‘No!’

“’Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave candy to all the children and loved my wife, would that get me into heaven?’ I asked them again. Again they answered ‘No.’

“’Well, how can I get to heaven?’ A five year old boy shouted out, ‘You gotta be dead!’”

Actually I think that story is wrong. If there is one thing that Jesus taught us it is that heaven can and does invade earth and that we are not just waiting on the kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is at hand and among us already.

But having said that there is also something very right about this story. The truth of the matter is that to know the kingdom in its fullness, our work must be done…at an end. But it doesn’t relieve our anxiety…it doesn’t quench our desire to know, “What is it that I must do?” We are like the young man who comes to Jesus, the lawyer who comes to Jesus, and the ruler who comes to Jesus and ask, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Yes, we know that it is belief in Christ, a personal relationship with Christ that overcomes our separation from God. Yes, we know that we are saved by grace. Yes, we know that there is nothing we can do to earn the love of God - that’s the point of unmerited love, you can’t merit it. But still we want to know. Still we must know, as people who are growing in holiness: What are we supposed to be doing in this time before the end of time? How do we live a life that is pleasing to God? Tell me, Jesus, because I just want to know, what do I have to do to be found worthy on the day of the Last Judgment? What do I have to do to get to heaven?

At first glance it would seem that we have an answer in the parable that Matthew gives us today. But I have to tell you something about Matthew. As we have been looking at the parables in this gospel for the last few months I have become more and more disturbed by them. They are not easy. I know that’s the point. Jesus says that’s the point. But they are more than difficult, they are…disturbing and more than a little dark.

You remember a few months ago when we heard the parable about forgiveness and it ended with the unforgiving slave being handed over to the extractors until his debt could be paid. That was disturbing. Or a few weeks ago when we talked about the parable of the wedding feast which ends up with someone arriving at the banquet improperly dressed and he gets thrown into the outer darkness with the wailing and gnashing of teeth business. That was distressing.

And today we have the parable of the sheep and the goats, which, on the face of it, seems to be the answer to our question: What do I have to do to get to heaven? Jesus tells us a story about what it will be like when he returns with the angels to judge all humanity at the end of history. Jesus will be seated on the throne and all the people of the world will be gathered before him and he will separate them just as a shepherd sorts out the sheep and the goats who have been mingled together in the herd.

Those on Jesus’ right hand will be the sheep and they are destined for glory. Why are they destined for glory? Because they saw Jesus when he was hungry and thirsty and a stranger and naked and sick and in prison and they responded to his need. They fed him, gave him drink, welcomed him, clothed him, healed him and visited him. They did what they were supposed to do and Jesus rewards them by welcoming them into the kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world. The sheep didn’t know they were doing this for Jesus. They don’t even seem to have recognized him and they didn’t know that was what they were supposed to be doing. But Jesus says, “Whenever you did these things for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did them for me.” Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. Jesus lives among the poor and needy. Jesus is the poor and needy. Do you see where this is headed?

As if to prove the negative, the parable goes on to talk about the goats. They didn’t respond to Jesus in his need and they are just as mystified as the sheep. They didn’t know they were not responding to Jesus. They didn’t know they were not doing these things for Jesus. But Jesus says, “Whenever you neglected any of the least of these, you neglected me.” And for this the result is exile from the kingdom and eternal punishment. This is where the dark and distressing side of the parable comes back in, but hearing it we think we get the point now. The standard for judgment is how well the people responded to the needs of the poor, the imprisoned, and the stranger. We think we know what it is that Jesus wants us to do now to get a good report on the day of judgment.

I have to say that this text has had quite a workout in the church in the last couple of centuries. The parable of the sheep and the goats was one of the prime texts of the social gospel movement which was very popular, especially among Methodists, in the early part of the twentieth century. The social gospel movement grew out of the spirit of optimism following the Civil War. Methodists and other Christians looked around at the world around them and they saw deep needs, but they also believed they could overcome them. For the followers of the Social Gospel movement the can-do spirit that built this country could be harnessed to meet the challenges of industrialization and the resulting urban poverty. God was calling us to help build the kingdom and this was America where every day and every way we’re getting better and better. Some of that optimism wore off when the First World War came around and it was obvious that progress didn’t mean the end of war and other evils, but the spirit of that movement survived.

This parable was a great text for the Social Gospel. It called Christians to action to address the needs of the disadvantaged. Many Methodists had become middle class and this text pushed them to remember where they had come from and to work for reforms to the economic and political structures of the day. Lots of good has been done in the name of this parable. Schools, colleges, hospitals, missions, prison ministries, the Society of St. Andrew, Habitat for Humanity, food banks…many of these have found their inspiration in this story. Though we know that we are saved by faith in Jesus…saved through grace…we have tried to live that out by being sheep in the way this story describes it.

But…you knew there was going to be a ‘but’ didn’t you?…but what if this story is not about our judgment at all? We’ve been listening to this story, desperately hoping that it will tell us what we need to do...desperately hoping to have some clue about how to judge this life we live…hoping, hoping, hoping that we can be a sheep and not a goat.

But what if where we are is someplace different? What if we are the poor, the sick, the naked, the hungry, the prisoner, the stranger…the people to whom the sheep and the goats were supposed to be related?

I know, I know. It’s ridiculous. As twenty-first century Christians living in the wealthiest nation in the history of the earth and established in this fine facility with a wonderful missions program and a great heart for this community it only seems right that we should relate to the people in this story who look most like us - the people with the opportunity and the means to help those who were down on their luck and separated from the rest of the community. Hey, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a good message for us to hear if we relate to the sheep and the goats. Preachers love texts that can motivate people to action and anxiety over your eternal fate because of how you treat the poor? There are worse things for people to hear. Good, faithful, loving things will happen when we hear the text this way.

But let me tell you why we may need to hear it a different way. I believe that Jesus did want for his followers to be attentive to the way they lived in the time after he was gone. He did want them to live in expectation, knowing that the kingdom was already at hand and yet ‘not yet.’ His parables about being watchful and awake were meant for a community that was always living on the edge - never comfortable with the way things are and always looking for the consummation of all things when everything would be made new. That’s why he talked about bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom’s return and servants given talents to used wisely during the time when the master was away.

But he starts this parable by talking of a judgment that would come to all the nations. All the nations - ta ethne. It sounds pretty universal to us as if to say that, of course, all people would be judged - no one excluded. But Jesus’ audience of Jews would have heard a distinction in the use of that word - ta ethne. The nations were those who were not a part of God’s realm, those who had not lived as God’s people. The nations - the goyim, in Hebrew - were those who had to be grafted on to Israel’s covenant. The nations were those waiting to be brought in. The first thing Jesus’ hearers would have thought when Jesus started to tell a story about the judgment of the nations was, “Oh, this will tell us how God will judge the rest of the world. This tells us the standards by which they become sheep or goats.”

Suddenly it’s a very different story that doesn’t answer the question we wanted answered. Now this parable is a story of how the nations were to treat the followers of Jesus. Would they be able to see Jesus in the poor, destitute, homeless bands that gathered together in Jesus’ name? Would they be able to know Christ in the faces of his family? Or would they continue to reject the Christians as they had rejected Jesus? Would they still find themselves separated from God and exiled to their despair? What was it going to be for these nations among whom the Christians would now live?

Jesus warned his disciples about what was about to happen. Even as he was sending them out two by two to proclaim the news of the kingdom he told them, “Look, I am sending you out like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of those you meet because they won’t understand and they will hand you over to the Gentiles, the ethne, and will have you beaten, flogged and persecuted.” [Mt. 10:16-18] Jesus knew the church, when it was being the church, would always run into opposition. Those new Christians did not have pews and stained glass. They didn’t have the security of knowing they could speak and worship freely. They didn’t have much of anything really. But what they did have was Christ and that was all they needed.

No, this passage is not much help in asking the question we started with this morning. If we want to know what it is that we must do, we might do better to go back to those instructions Jesus gave to the disciples as he sent them out. What was it that the pairs of disciples were supposed to do? They were to go from town to town with a simple message - “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” They were to cure the sick, raise the dead(!), cleanse the lepers and cast out demons. They were to take no money and accept no payment. They were to speak blessing and peace to the places they went and to accept the hospitality that was offered them. And if their message was not accepted, they were to move on.

They were a restless lot, these early Christians. But they loved each other and they loved the nations, the people they were to meet. And when Jesus left the disciples to ascend to heaven after his resurrection, he sent them back to the nations. “Go, make disciples of all nations,” Jesus said, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” [Mt. 28:19].

That’s what Christians are supposed to be doing - not just doing good but being good. Not saving the world, because that’s what God’s doing. Not solely giving themselves to great social works, but recognizing that they give themselves to these works for a purpose, which is: to say to a dying world that the kingdom of heaven has come near and nothing is ever the same again because of that.

If the nations are to be judged on the basis of whether or not they responded to the presence of Christ in the world, then that implies that there are a people who intentionally seek to be Christ in the world. It does not imply that these people who seek to be Christ are better than the rest of the world, because clearly they are just as needy of salvation as any other person. It does not imply that these people who seek to be Christ are more privileged than the rest of the world, because clearly the situation of people who try to live out the gospel message can be rather desperate. But this story does imply that there are such people in this world which tilts so often to hopelessness and despair.

And here we are. Is this what we bargained for? Are we seeking to be Christ in the world? That’s a little bit more than W.W.J.D. We’re not just trying to ask what Jesus would do but to be Christ’s representatives in the world…to be people in whom others can see a story that will lift them out of bondage to sin and death. When you think of it this way, we don’t have to have anxiety over the exile to eternal punishment - the goat’s option is not a real option for the people who have come into a saving knowledge of Christ. The larger, scarier, tremendous question is: Is Christ seen in me in such a way that others can find their way out of goat-hood? Can I be open enough to the world around me that others can find a way to Christ?

So it all comes down to this. You don’t have to worry about being a sheep when you feel like a goat. It’s not about being a sheep or a goat. What it’s about is being Jesus. And here we are.

Here we are and I have nothing more powerful to say to you than that Christ is present with us now - ready to make us holy, ready to make us disciples so that we can make disciples of the nations. Can you believe it? We’ve got an awesome job. It’s the greatest job in the universe. Thanks be to God, who loves us enough to call us children of God and brothers of Christ. Thanks be to God.