31 ‘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. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34Then 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; 35for 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, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37Then 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? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40And 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.” 41Then 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; 42for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I 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.” 44Then 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?” 45Then 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.” 46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’
There are 156 Sundays in the lectionary cycle and if I ranked them from 1-156, with 1 being the easiest to preach on my first Sunday and 156 being the hardest, this Gospel would come in at 156. This is one of those readings where I sometimes wonder if the correct response is “the Gospel of the Lord?”
Is this really good news?
If the choice is sheep or goats, all of us want to think that we are sheep. But then worry starts to creep into the back of our minds. Sometimes we don’t act very much like sheep; sometimes we act like goats. I know a thing or two about goats, as a Minnesota Twins fan and a recovering Vikings fan. In the sports world you can go from chosen one to goat in a matter of minutes, just ask Joe Mauer. In life, it sometimes happens even quicker.
I’ve only known some of you for a week and for many of you today is the first day so perhaps I’m being presumptuous, but seeing that you are all human beings I think I can assume that, if you are honest with yourselves, you probably could see yourself as both sheep and goat. Some days you give to the poor, some days you welcome the stranger, and some days you are just in a bad mood and want nothing to do with anyone. We could break it up into smaller periods of time and see that some minutes of your life have been dedicated to taking care of the sick and then some minutes later to looking out for yourself. In fact, so many actions we take are both good and bad; in the real world, right and wrong is often hard to figure out.
A professor of mine once said that you sin even when you give to charity, because we could have given that money to somewhere else and you chose not to. His point was not that you should not give but that you can’t get away with calling yourself a sheep because of your gift. You don’t get to label yourself; that is Christ’s job.
I was reminded of my professor’s brazen statement this past Wednesday, which was Give to the Max Day in Minnesota, a day meant to encourage giving money to non-profits across the state. I looked on the website: there were 3,181 different non-profit groups asking for gifts on that day. Most of which were causes I could see myself getting behind. So what do I do? Do I give to my seminary or my synod, Second Harvest or Feed My Starving Children, the Wildcat Sanctuary or the North American Bear Center? Or do I look at the bank account and think, Man, I really can’t afford to give anything until my first paycheck.
We all make these kinds of financial decisions. I talked with the seventh-graders at Confirmation on Wednesday about times when they had enough—when they had an abundance—or not enough—a scarcity. Twelve and thirteen year-olds are thinking about these things, so surely all of you are. The decision to give of yourself sometimes isn’t even a conscious choices. Everyone of us has hurt somebody without even realizing it.
So here we are—left with a Gospel reading that tells us some of us are sheep and some of us are goats, but none of us really know. And that, strangely enough, is where the good news starts. In a world that places value on knowing things, this is a lesson that says, “No. You don’t know; you cannot know.” The sheep are as confused as the goats. “When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food?” they ask. “When was it that we welcomed you, a stranger, or gave you clothing? When did we visit you in prison?” The sheep don’t know. It is not in their hands and it never was.
This passage from Matthew is so very different from the entire flow of the Gospels that it makes sense only when we know what is to come—the death, the resurrection and eternal life. As Robert Capon puts it, “Jesus is interested in the least, the last, the lost, the lonely, the little and the dead.” If you’re not in one of those categories, tough luck. The good news is that you are all in one of those categories: some of us are on our way to pitching the perfect game. And that is what this parable points us toward. It does not allow us to see ourselves as sheep; the Gospel only shows you the Shepherd. As Capon again puts it, “[Jesus] is the Love that will not let us go. If anybody can sort it out, he can; if he can’t nobody else will. Trust him, therefore. And trust him now. There is nothing more to do.”
You don’t need to worry about being a sheep or a goat, at the right hand or the left. All you are called to do is act in dumb trust. That is all that sheep do; they are not very smart. And neither are we. So give. Give of yourself: your time, money, resources, the shirt off your back, whatever it is that you want, but don’t do it to know that you are saved. You can’t know. The more you think about it, the more uncertain you will become. Instead, do it because you cannot help it; do it because you believe in a God that is working for the redemption of the whole world, because you believe in a God that died on a cross for all of our half-hearted attempts to become sheep.
There really is nothing more to do.
Amen.
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