Sheep are silly

Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46

This morning I’m going to serenade you with two classic ballads of the Christian faith. Each is as deeply serious as it is theologically rich. The first is entitled “Sheep Are Silly” and it goes something like this:

Sheep are silly! (Silly?) Silly, my friend.

Sheep are silly! (Silly?) Silly, my friend.

They need a shepherd. (A shepherd?) To keep them alive.

They need a shepherd (A shepherd?) To help them survive.

Sheep are silly! Silly, my friend.

And the verse ends with an invitation that all of you associate with deep religious motivation: “Get silly!”

            The second song is perhaps even more familiar, and potentially life-changing (I hope I’m not overselling this). And it goes something like this:

            I just wanna be a sheep. Bah! Bah! Bah! Bah!

            I just wanna be a sheep. Bah! Bah! Bah! Bah!

            And I pray the Lord my soul to keep

            I just wanna be a sheep. Bah! Bah! Bah! Bah!

Now there’s once verse in particular of this classic that applies to today and it goes like this:

            I don’t want to be a goat. Nope.

            I don’t want to be a goat. Nope.

            Because goats ain’t got no hope.

            I don’t want to be a goat. Nope.

            I just wanna be a sheep. Bah! Bah! Bah! Bah!

Etc, etc, etc.

I’m tempted to preach no further, instead allowing you to reflect on the depth of the lyrics of Sheep are Silly! and I just Wanna Be a Sheep, but you’re not paying me only to make a mockery of myself up here, so let me expound on the sheepy song silliness for a second,

            There are two things I actually like quite a lot about these songs anyway when it comes to their interplay with the parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew’s Gospel. This is a hard, hard, hard parable, and these songs are immeasurably silly. That’s a point in their favor, because to the question, “Is everything a joke to you?” the only correct answer is ever, in the immortal words of Stephen Fry, “Only the things that matter.”

            We have to be willing to be lighthearted when the Gospels are not, precisely because of the second reason that I like these little songs on a day when we read about sheep and goats. The second reason is simply this: The sheep and goats don’t spend all day gazing at their navels, trying to figure out which they are, and the parable doesn’t leave room for us to do it either. When Jesus lists off a litany of things that the righteous do: feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, visiting the prisoners, the sheep don’t recognize what he is talking about. They are as clueless about their sheepy-ness as anybody else. And, yes, the same can be said for the goats. Nobody in this parable knows who they are.

            So, for some this is a recipe for constant worry. Am I good enough? Have I cared enough for my neighbor? And is that really what it’s all about? I mean, in the rest of the Gospels all we’ve ever heard about is that faith is the only ticket to salvation, and now, on the precipice of Holy Week, it seems as if Jesus is changing the rules of the game. Perhaps doing good things is the ticket after all… except—and this is a very BIG except—the model sheep don’t seem to worry either. They just go about their business, doing the things that Jesus did simply because their faith compels them to. The reason I love “Sheep are Silly” is because we should be just that: we should be silly when it comes to matters of our salvation, because the one thing that is universally unattractive in sheep is a sheep that takes him or herself too seriously. After all, we need a shepherd to keep us alive. A sheep that thinks it can lead itself is a dead-sheep-walking. A sheep that worries over its salvation is forgetting its role in the matter.

            So, it’s OK to say, “I don’t wanna be a goat, nope.” But #1, that’s not in your control. And #2, no amount of staring at yourself in the mirror will give you any insight into the matter. Sheep don’t need to know they are sheep. Sheep only need to know that there is a Good Shepherd who takes you into his arms—sheep and goats, both. It’s in the Good Shepherd we put our trust—not in our sheepiness. So, it’s still faith that matters. Faith is all we really have. The good works are nice. You need to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and visit the prisoners, but your salvation is still a matter of faith, because all those good things that you’ve done will never convince you that you are a sheep. The promise of eternal life in Christ is something understood with faith. Then, and only then, is that faith lived out for the sake of others—even if you don’t realize it.

            In the hands of the Good Shepherd, we have a promise of eternal life and salvation, and those other fears—that promise of eternal damnation—is a promise that is obliterated by the cross. Is it possible to get there still? Is it possible for a person to go to hell after Christ dies for all of humanity?

Why are you asking that question? Why are you trying to decide who is a sheep and a goat, or whether there are any goats in the first place? That’s the shepherd’s job. Sheep who sort are ugly sheep who have forgotten their way. Sheep aren’t smart enough to sort in the first place. Don’t be those sheep. Be sheep who go around doing good things for the sake of making a better world not because that’s the ticket to God’s heavenly party, but because, having received a promise that there will be a party, there is only appropriate response: Share the heck out of it. In the end we will likely be surprised to find that we-sheep have been doing all of our good works for the sake of the shepherd all along.

See, sheep are silly, and they aren’t very smart. Sorry. But that’s maybe better news than we would have imagined. It’s freedom to stop looking so hard in the mirror, to stop re-living all our previous mistakes, to admit that we aren’t perfect, we aren’t all that pretty, and to simply exhale, knowing that it’s not our job to put the party together. It’s the Good Shepherd’s job. So if you come away from this scripture worrying about eternal damnation, STOP. You can’t do a thing about it, but you have a God who is forever widening the tent, a God who meets with sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes, a God who picks out disciples that have failed at following lesser rabbis, a God who obsesses with the least, the last, the lost, the little, and the dead.

So, relax. Jesus didn’t pay so high a price to make the afterlife an exclusive club, but that's not to say that Jesus doesn't demand much. He demands faith lived out for the sake of those with less. That’s tough. It’s easier to sit on the couch in the knowledge that I’m OK, we’re all OK, because Jesus says we’re OK. The Gospel of Matthew is so harsh because Jesus wants to make it abundantly clear that the idea we’re OK because Christ makes us OK is not Christianity. Jesus seeks to show couch potato Christians for the hypocrites that they are. Yes, this is real and unforgiving because it’s a thing that matters. It matters that you feed the hungry, clothe the poor, that you welcome the stranger and visit the imprisoned. It matters because, with all the navel-gazing we’ve been up to—with all the selfish internal worrying that has plagued us—the only thing that will soften our hardened hearts is to actually do something Christ-like; not for our own gain but out of joy for the gift we have been given.

Amen.