Sunday Worship 22 March | The Sheep and the Goats

Matthew 25:31-46

“But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’

"Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’

“Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons. For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

“Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’ And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”

This passage comes right at the end of Jesus’ final discourse before the Passion begins. Well I say that, but in some senses the Passion has already begun, as Jesus has already made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. That’s right, we have jumped right over Palm Sunday, but we will roll back to it next week.

Now I said a couple of weeks ago that every time I hear the phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” my heart sinks, and while that phrase may not have made a reappearance here, we do have some “eternal fire” to contend with. It follows some pretty tough teaching too – the parables of the wedding banquet and the bridesmaids, both of which end with some being welcomed into the party and others outside the doors, excluded by their own failure to prepare or engage. It would be fair to say that these are not among my favourite passages, largely because I’m not sure what to do with them. I don’t know how to reconcile them with the rest of Jesus’ ministry, which seemed determined to beckon people in.

I’ve set myself up really, because I’ve been choosing the readings and I could have ignored this one, but as I’ve said before, I think we have to lean in to the bits of scripture that trouble us. We need to work out if it is something in us or in the way we have read them that is causing the trouble, so that we can work out which it is that needs to change. And ultimately we need to find the grace in Jesus’ words, because I promise it will be there. If we lean in to these passages, we see that a common thread is the idea that there are two kinds of people, and perhaps the grace is that we get to choose which we are.

I think this idea of choice is an important one. The section of teaching which includes these parables comes in response to Jesus’ disciples asking when the end will come. In warning that those who are unprepared or disengaged may well miss out, Jesus is clear that we can’t just hang around and wait for him to come back and fix things. We have to be alert and continuing the work that he has begun. At this point in the gospel, he knows he doesn’t have much longer with his disciples, so it’s almost like he is saying “I’ve laid it all out for you, now what are you going to do with it?”

Coming now to the reading we have heard this morning, it is headed ‘the parable of the last judgement’, but that’s a bit of a misnomer. It employs a simile, but it describes something that it seems to say will actually happen, so it’s not really a parable. And we may be primed to think about the end times by the disciples’ earlier question, but the text itself says nothing about finality. We suggested last week that the transfiguration may have been Jesus coming in his glory, or at least a foretaste of it, and we may say the same of the resurrection too, so perhaps there is a sense in which this judgement is already present tense.

Perhaps the most significant thing to notice is the terms of the judgement. The king doesn’t ask what the people believe, but instead focuses on what they did, leading theologian David Moser to suggest that “salvation belongs not to those who have faith, but rather to those who do faith”. We thought a little last week about the relationship between faith and works, and I find the idea of doing rather than simply having faith really helpful, because I think it holds that tension by recognising that it must be a living and lived out thing, revealed and realised by our works.

And what are those works? Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, showing hospitality to the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and visiting the prisoner. Some Christian traditions seem concerned only with caring people’s souls, but the truth is that we are called to care for people’s bodies too, because bodies are important. Way back in the depths of 2021, I preached and podcasted through Barbara Brown Taylor’s book An Altar in the World, and the chapter I found most meaningful looked at the practice of wearing skin, asking what it means to have a body and respond to other bodies. You’ll find it here and I encourage you to take a listen, because I do think it is something which is worth thinking deeply about.

It is clear what Jesus expects of us, but that does not mean it is simple. There are so many who are hungry and thirsty, so many who are strangers or naked or imprisoned. How can we possibly help them all? The answer is that we can’t, at least not on our own, which leads us to another question. When have we done enough to be counted among the sheep? There’s a problem with asking that though, because it is really asking what is the least we can get away with doing, and it puts our own righteousness before another’s need. Shouldn’t we help every time we can? And shouldn’t we do it for the sake of others not just ourselves? I think the answers to those questions are yes and yes. It also leads us to a realisation, which is that this work is going to take all of us.

So far what I have said has assumed that we are the ones offering the help, and that will not always be the case. Sometimes we are the hungry or the thirsty or the stranger or the naked or the sick or the imprisoned. Sometimes we are the ones that need the help. In the words of the last hymn, we need to have the grace to let others be our servants too, even if our pride does not always make that easy.

So we can appear in two places in this passage, but so does Jesus - in his glory and in solidarity with “the least of these”. I find that a difficult phrase because it sounds so dismissive and can be used so unkindly, but I believe we are intended to understand that Jesus is speaking of those who are least in the eyes of the world, for none are least in the eyes of God. Indeed I find that this whole passage can be distorted in troubling ways. The point isn’t that we help others because we’re really helping Jesus, as if the people themselves only matter as a means to our own salvation. The point is that Jesus identifies with those who are most vulnerable and most oppressed, such that he experiences the way we treat them as a blessing or an affront.

The way that we treat those the world sees as the least says a lot about who we are, and about our commitment to living in the way of Christ, and so it is perhaps no wonder that it is how we are judged. But what are we to make of the separation and punishment described in these verses? I think a lot hinges on how we understand the word that was translated in our reading as “eternal”. It can also be translated as “of the age”, suggesting something that is characteristic of its time. Translators have assumed that the age being spoken of is eternity, which is why it has been rendered as eternal, but what if eternity itself has different ages? What if this separation is to give the goats a second shot at redemption? I looked into why shepherds separate their sheep and goats, and it is not generally because they’re going to send the goats to everlasting damnation, it is for their own good because the two animals have different needs. Sheep will flock together, whereas goats are more likely to fight or escape. So if this separation is for the good of both the sheep and the goats, perhaps the fire of the age is not a destructive one but a purifying one, meant for rehabilitation not retribution.

Or perhaps Jesus is speaking of our own age. It is not entirely true that what we give to the world, the world gives back to us. There is too much injustice for that, too much kindness that goes unreturned, too much greed that seems to be rewarded. And yet I do believe that our actions and attitudes shape how we experience the world. If you see society as dog eat dog, you are going to be constantly on guard against being eaten. You are going to see everyone as competition, and you are going to struggle to form meaningful relationships. But if you see society as a global village, you are going to try and be a good villager. You are going to look out for others, and you are going to seek help when you need it. The first group may take the wealth and the power, but it is a pretty fearful and isolated way of living, and perhaps that is the punishment of this age.

Too often we read Jesus’ teaching as a guide to get into heaven, but even passages like this which seem to talk  about eternity have much to say about how we experience the life of this age. Because if we feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty and welcome the stranger and clothe the naked and care for the sick and visit the prisoner then we bring eternal life here and now. Perhaps not everlasting life, but life that bears the characteristics of eternity. Life that is shaped by love and mutual flourishing. Goats may not be able to turn into sheep, but perhaps the grace in this passage is that we can retrain our stubborn goatish natures. We can be more sheep.