November 26, 2023
Christ the King Sunday
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Matthew 25:31-46
A Parable for Recalcitrant Goats
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Perhaps the most central call to prayer in Judaism is the Shema. “Shema: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
This love of God forms the nucleus of all Judaic worship. Everything else is built around it. Love God. And the next ring around it is the call to love your neighbor as yourself.
When we look at the commandments, we see exactly these two rings. The first commandments deal with our relationship with God, and the following commandments direct us in how to treat our neighbors.
When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment is, he quoted the Shema. He said we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Then he added, “And the second is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
All of the laws, all of the teachings of Moses and the prophets, all of the teachings of Jesus, rest on these two commandments.
Jesus tells a parable today which fuses these two commands together. He shows that it’s impossible to love God without also loving our neighbor. The two loves are completely integrated. You can’t pull out the one strand without completely unravelling the entire fabric. All of love is knit together into one seamless garment.
Today we hear the bracing parable of the sheep and the goats, the judgment of the nations. This is the last segment of Jesus’ public teaching. In the very next verse, the plot to kill him begins to unfold. This parable is Jesus’ last opportunity to teach his followers. It’s his final lesson, his parting admonition. He’s going to tell us the most important thing.
Like the parable we heard last week, this one is also a parable of judgment. It’s told for its shock effect. Jesus wants to shake us up. He wants to jolt us from our numbing routine and listen to his final message.
The parable begins with a pastoral scene, something that would have been very familiar to his listeners. He pictures a shepherd who has a mixed flock of sheep and goats. It was a very common sight. The two animals foraged together freely during the daytime. But at night, they needed to be separated. The goats, with their shorter fur, had a more difficult time keeping warm. They needed to be corralled together so they could bunch up for heat. Because sheep were more self-contained with their thick fleece, they kept a distance from one another at night. So as evening fell, a shepherd separated the sheep and the goats in his flock.
But then Jesus’ story takes an ominous turn. The shepherd rewards the sheep for their compassionate actions while he condemns the goats for their lack thereof. “I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, I was naked, I was sick, I was in prison!” One group came to his rescue, the other did not.
Neither group has any recollection of having this encounter with the Son of Man. They ask the identical question, “Lord, when did this happen?” The two groups are equally in the dark. They don’t remember meeting the Divine One.
And then comes the reveal: Our actions – or lack of actions – towards our neighbor are actually directed towards the divine Son of Man.
In the parable, the mark of a sheep isn’t performing typical religious actions. It’s not based on faithful church attendance or on proper orthodoxy of belief. Their sheepy quality is determined by the compassion they show to people in need. They’re judged by their love in action.
Jesus’ parable shows that love of God is inextricably woven into our love of others. Love of God cannot be separated from love of the neighbor. And this thought is loud and clear throughout all of scriptures.
The prophet Amos says, “I hate, I despise your festivals…Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them…But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
St. Paul’s famous passage on love states, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and knowledge – if my faith will move mountains, but I don’t have love, I am nothing.”
The first and second greatest commandments, to love God and love our neighbor, are indivisible. This is the resounding message of the holy scriptures, and this is the final message Jesus wants to leave with his followers.
Too often, when we hear this parable we become fixated on the image of the final judgment. It sucks up all the oxygen in the room. We end up reducing the parable into a lesson on how we get to heaven or condemned to hell.
But Jesus doesn’t tell this parable as a threat. He tells it as an invitation. This story is an invitation to repentance, to turn our life in the direction of God’s reign and intention for our lives. This life is meant to be all about love. We love God, we love our neighbor, we love ourselves. There is no distinction. You can’t separate out the one love from the other. That’s because all love comes from God and to God all love returns. And when we do that, we live within the reign of God.
And here’s the thing: Jesus isn’t telling this parable to an audience of sheep. He’s telling it to goats! Who do you identify with in this story? We know exactly which camp we fall in! We are goats! For we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
No, at the final judgment, when all is sorted out, there will be an enormous flock of goats. And there will be only one sheep, one single sheep, the Lamb of God. The only sheep will be Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Salvation isn’t something you earn. It’s always about the love and mercy of God through Christ Jesus our Lord. It’s about rescuing those who are hopelessly lost, the ones who have fallen ridiculously short.
Because we’re self-obsessed, it’s easy for us to reduce this parable to the threat of hell. But the point of the parable is to draw our eyes to the primacy of love. Jesus invites us to love the “least of these.” Where there is a need, let us be instruments of love. And in our neighbor we may just glimpse the face of God.
