“Sheep and Goats”
Ezekiel 34:1113, 16, 20
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Today is Reign of Christ Sunday, also known as Christ the King Sunday. That means it is the final Sunday of the church year.
Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Avent, and thus the start of a new church year. Next week we will begin the Advent journey in which we anticipate the birth of Christ once again, and a new cycle of scriptures will begin.
For today, however, as we wrap up the current church year, we are given the opportunity to pause and reflect on the life and message of Christ, and on what Christ as King means in our lives.
You just heard Rev Tussing read today’s Gospel passage from Matthew which is a narrative account of the final judgement.
Jesus tells this story near the end of his earthly life and allow me to recap the story that Jesus tells because I believe there are some vitally important take-aways for us.
In the story, the “Son of Man,” meaning Jesus, returns in glory, is surrounded by angels, and is sitting on a throne where the people of all the nations gather before him.
This King Jesus then begins to separate the people before him into two groups, as a shepherd might separate his sheep from his goats.
To the sheep on his right, the king tells them that they are blessed and will inherit the kingdom. Then he says to them:
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.
The people, however, are perplexed by this, and ask when was it that they did these things, to which the king replies,
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 the king looks to those on his left, calling them accursed and says to them,
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.
But just like the first group of people, the people to the king’s left are confused and ask when was it that they failed to do these things. The king answers,
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.
So, recently our Women of Religious Diversity groups finished reading the book, Holy Envy, by Barbara Brown Taylor. Taylor talks about this particular story from Matthew in her book, and she brings up a point I had never really considered regarding this story.
Taylor talks about the fact that both groups of people in the story are confused – neither knows for sure to which group they belong. Are they the sheep who have shown mercy to the hungry and welcome to the stranger, or are they the goats, who have failed to honor the sacred humanity in all people?
And then Barbara Brown Taylor goes on to suggest that perhaps that same quandary describes all of us. Perhaps all of us are part sheep and part goat.
Sometimes we are successful in showing the proper mercy to all. Sometimes we fall short. People in general are usually not all good or all bad, all the time. It’s seldom that clear cut.
So, what then, are we to take from this passage? I think it is the perfect passage for Reign of Christ Sunday as we wrap up the church year because it summarizes, in a very straightforward way, what Jesus sought to teach.
The passage gives us pretty clear guidelines as to what we are called to do as followers of Christ. Feed the hungry, care for the sick, welcome the stranger. And whenever we do these things, we are doing them for Jesus himself.
Allow me to end with a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Holy Envy.
She says that in the end, the criteria for telling the sheep and the goats apart “will have nothing to do with their beliefs or their allegiances and everything to do with how they treated the least important people in their lives.”
AMEN, and AMEN.