Sheep and Goats

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 [Matthew 25:31-33].

As we approach the difficult Gospel reading assigned for the final Sunday in the current church year, Matthew 25:31-46 [Christ the King Sunday, RCL, Year A], we find ourselves amidst an overall theme of judgment. To be sure, the theme of judgment is not saved for the final Sunday in the church’s calendar; throughout the Gospel texts, we are often made aware of the tension that exists between obedience and disobedience.

All too often, it seems that we find ourselves echoing the sentiments of the rich, young man, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” [Matthew 19:16]. The 20th century martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, warns that such a question often misses the point. The questioner often desires only to engage the Lord in an endless discussion of ethics: should we or should we not? Yet Jesus reminds us that if we search our hearts, we already know what must be done. “Love your enemies,” He has commanded. “Turn your cheek,” He has admonished. On the night he was betrayed, he added, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another just as I have loved you [John 13:34-35].

Rephrasing the question to align with this week’s lesson, we may state it somewhat differently— “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, what must we do to be sure that we’re on His right and not His left?”

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? (25:44).

Those on the Son of Man’s left seek to push off their idleness onto the Lord Himself, essentially saying, “Had you made yourself visible to us, we would have done a better job.” It never occurred to those on His left that Christ might be encountered among the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the abandoned.

And in this one important aspect, those on the right of the Son of Man are no different. For they also don’t assume that Christ will be found among the lowly. They ministered to those in lowly circumstances not because they were sure that in doing so they would encounter Christ and be rewarded, but rather because they had earlier entered into the Joy that comes from Oneness with Christ. The joy they experienced was mixed with pain, suffering, even danger. Yet, it was still Joy. As a friend of mine has said, “They lived their lives in ‘holy ignorance.’”

Turning back specifically to this week’s Gospel, there has been some debate in the past 200 years over the following question:

Is this week’s lesson an eschatological teaching? Is it a pronouncement regarding the Day of Judgment, the End Time? Or, alternatively, is this week’s passage a parable?

I’m inclined to answer, “Yes.”

It is certainly eschatological talk. Notice that Matthew places this important pronouncement by Jesus near the end of His ministry, just prior to his betrayal and crucifixion. It speaks of His return and his eternal reign. It clearly speaks of a final Judgment, when all nations, i.e., all persons, will be judged by the One who is allowed and empowered to judge.

And yet, this week’s text serves as parable for the church as well. Recall how I’ve often repeated what I have been taught, that if you’ve heard or read the parable and you don’t feel uncomfortable, then you haven’t yet actually heard or read the parable. Most of us, if we examine ourselves, are quite uncomfortable with the distinction that Jesus appears to be intent upon drawing.

Within this parable, Jesus doesn’t draw a distinction based upon whether you had that conversion experience “on Friday, October 10, 1974” or whether you have always been a part of the Body of Christ. He draws no distinction based upon the fact that you’ve taught Sunday School for six consecutive years or sang in the choir. He doesn’t appear to care very much that you volunteer to be an usher and to take up collection once a quarter.

Nor does He draw a distinction between the ones who gave handsomely to the special project to preserve the stained glass windows as opposed to the ones who said, “No thank you.” He doesn’t favor the one responsible for the plaque on the beautiful breakfront in the church parlor that reminds us all that it was given by you “in loving memory of Mama.”

Jesus doesn’t draw a distinction based upon your education or lack thereof. He appears to give not a twit about the virtues that you signal with the sign in your front yard. He draws no distinction between communists and capitalists, between Democrats and Republicans, between Protestants, Palestinians, and Jews. In Jesus eschatological pronouncement—or is it His parable?—He draws a distinction based upon a sole criteria: “Did we love?” And, as I have written elsewhere, and as you know in your heart, “love” is a verb; it isn’t a noun.

The Son of Man sits on His throne and divides the sheep and the goats based upon one distinctive issue: Did we engage in loving acts for another’s good, particularly where doing so was at our own expense? Moreover, He teaches that those who do so—those who pour out their hearts and their lives for others—do not have to wait for heaven. As I noted above, in loving those in need, they/we experience Joy.

With a tip of the hat to Ms. Geraldine Johnston, devoted and beloved English teacher for many years at Huss High School (Gastonia, NC), who made many of us in the Class of ’69 read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (Ms. “J”, I’ve reread it twice since then), as old Father Zossima enlightens us, “Hell is the suffering of being unable to love” [Book VI]. How could we ever be unable to love?

Jesus tells another parable [Luke 16:19-31], this one about Lazarus, a beggar who sat at the gate of a rich man, longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. According to our Lord’s parable, Lazarus dies and is carried by angels “to Abraham’s side” [Luke 16:19]. The rich man—we never learn his name—also dies. He finds himself in Hades, where he can peer upwards and see Father Abraham seated next to Lazarus, far, far away. The dead rich man sees the former beggar. The man asks for water. He recognizes his plight, that once we pass through the portal of death, it is too late to love the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the lonely, the ones who wait to be born. He’s in Hades because he no longer has the means to offer love.

Jesus reminds us that just as we responded to the least of His brethren, we responded to Him. If we ignore them; we ignore our Lord. Just as Jesus appeared at his birth in a Bethlehem stable as a helpless infant that the world was free to care for or destroy, so now He appears in His resurrection as the stranger, the pauper, the sick one, the prisoner, and the one who awaits the midwife. In truth, He appears in every form of human need that the world is free to serve or to ignore.