“Sheep, Goats, and Grace”
Matthew 25:31-46 and Psalm 95:1-7a
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
11/26/23
Come, let’s sing out loud to the Lord!
Let’s raise a joyful shout to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let’s come before him with thanks!
Let’s shout songs of joy to him!
3 The Lord is a great God,
the great king over all other gods.
4 The earth’s depths are in his hands;
the mountain heights belong to him;
5 the sea, which he made, is his
along with the dry ground,
which his own hands formed.
6 Come, let’s worship and bow down!
Let’s kneel before the Lord, our maker!
7 He is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
the sheep in his hands. (CEB)
31 “Now when the Human One comes in his majesty and all his angels are with him, he will sit on his majestic throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered in front of him. He will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right side. But the goats he will put on his left.
34 “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world began. 35 I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. 36 I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’
37 “Then those who are righteous will reply to him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? 38 When did we see you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
40 “Then the king will reply to them, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Get away from me, you who will receive terrible things. Go into the unending fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 I was hungry and you didn’t give me food to eat. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me anything to drink. 43 I was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me. I was naked and you didn’t give me clothes to wear. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’
44 “Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and didn’t do anything to help you?’ 45 Then he will answer, ‘I assure you that when you haven’t done it for one of the least of these, you haven’t done it for me.’46 And they will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous ones will go into eternal life.” (CEB)
Every time I face this passage, I reflect on those times when I have come face-to-face with God in the face of someone in need. Like Jacob at the Jabbok, I wrestle with feelings of both concern and inconvenience. It takes a hard heart to look hunger in the face and not feel some compassion. Then there’s the guilt of relief when ten bucks of fast food and a God bless you so easily buys my way out of truly seeing the human being in need. The whole experience leaves me feeling, again like Jacob, out-of-joint.
It can also be frustrating trying to decide whether an expressed need is real or just a front for some sort of addiction. Feeling used even once can jade us and make us treat all requests as suspect. And when that happens, the truly insidious thing happens: Trying decide who deserves help, we set ourselves in a position to make judgments that none of us are equipped, much less called, to make. Our judgments often fail the test of true grace.
If there’s no other hopeful word to hear in these dislocating verses from Matthew 25, there is this one hopeful word: The Father’s judgment will be carried out by none other than the Son; and his love-drenched authority to welcome, to heal, and to redeem knows no bounds.
Today, on Reign of Christ Sunday, we celebrate our faith claim that God’s realm is revealed and embodied in a first-century rabbi from Nazareth. And this rabbi not only teaches that God’s realm is manifest in the simplest, most earthy expressions of love and compassion, he lives what he teaches. Even when speaking sharply to those who oppose him, his words well up from his eternal love for them.
In the end, you see, as far as this judge is concerned, everyone is a sheep. Some just don’t act like it because they just don’t know it.
The story we’re looking at today is Jesus’ final teaching in the first gospel, and Matthew sets up an interesting juxtaposition. Jesus’ breakout sermon in Matthew 5-7 occurs on a mountain before a big crowd of people. The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes, the proclamation of blessedness on specific people. And here, at the end of his ministry, Jesus speaks only to his disciples, telling them to go and be a blessing. Tend to the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned.
Reflecting on this passage, Charles Cousar says that the “judgments declared by the Son of Man and the categories describing the needy…carry immense and even threatening power.”1 He reminds us that in the first century, each of the groups of people Jesus mentions is considered unclean.
“Sickness,” says Cousar, “carries the notion of sin and contagion, and nakedness implies shame and powerlessness.” Prisoners represent those whom society has locked out of sight and out of mind. And, while hospitality to the stranger was a crucial part of everyday life, strangers still represent those who lie at society’s outermost fringes.
“To be deeply involved with such people,” says Cousar, “means to be…guilty by association. This teaching,” he says, “demands something more profound than” being nice. To live under the Reign of Christ means mixing it up with the very people that goats turn away from in judgmental fear or disgust. To live under the Reign of Christ means to reach out to those who suffer, for whatever reason, and to love them as God loves them.
That means that goats are not people out there who don’t do right. Goats are those within the body who know better and still withhold the transforming power of God’s joy and God’s hope from people in need. The distinction between sheep and goats is hard to assess because the only person whose relative sheep-ness or goat-ness any of us have the right to judge is our own self. Besides, within each of us is an unblemished sheep and an old cranky, spotted goat.
Tony Campolo is a writer, teacher, preacher, and out-spoken advocate for people who languish on the fringes of society. I’m going to let him finish this sermon with a personal story that illustrates one facet of the sheep-and-goat dynamic.2
Walking down a street in his hometown of Philadelphia, PA, Campolo met a street person. The man’s clothes were ragged and covered with soot. Neither his clothes nor his body had been recently washed, so his bouquet was arresting. His thick beard was strung with bits of old food like ornaments on a Christmas tree. The man, whom many people today would call a bum, approached Campolo and held out a cup of McDonald's coffee saying, “Hey mister, want some of my coffee?”
Initially seized by his inner goat, Campolo politely declined and walked on. Then his inner sheep gave his inner goat a powerful headbutt. So, he stopped and said, “You know, I think I’d like some coffee.” Campolo took a deep breath, then he took a sip, and gave the cup back to the man saying, “You're being pretty generous today.”
“Well,” the man said, “the coffee was especially good today, and I think that when God gives you something good, you ought to share it.”
Stunned, Campolo said, “Can I give you anything?” I thought that he would hit me for five dollars.
At first, the man said “No,” then he said, “Yeah…You can give me a hug.”
“As I looked at him,” said Campolo, “I was hoping for the five dollars!” The two men embraced right there in the street—Tony Campolo in his coat and tie, and the street person in his filthy rags.
“I had the strange awareness,” said Campolo, “that I wasn’t hugging a [dirty street person], I was hugging Jesus. I found Jesus in that suffering man.
“Whenever you meet a suffering person,” he says, “you will find that Jesus is there waiting to be loved in that individual. That’s why Jesus said, ‘when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’
“You cannot embrace somebody…who is in desperate straits,” says Campolo, “without having that eerie and wonderful awareness that Jesus is coming back at you right through that person.”
Are we sheep, or are we goats? Well, we’re both, aren’t we? When we withhold compassion, we are goats. And there is that much more darkness, that much more weeping and gnashing of teeth, within us as well as around us.
And whenever, and for whatever reason, we show compassion to another human being, we are sheep crowning the Universal Christ as Lord. And then and there, some new brightness, some new wholeness, joy, and hope of God’s realm breaks through into our lives, and into the world.
1All references to Charles Cousar come from: Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV—Year A, Westminster John Knox Press, 1995, p. 575-577.
2I don’t recall where I got this story, but all credit goes to Tony Campolo.
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