11/20/11 Red & green zebras and dirty old goats
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
So many of us are paying more attention to personal health issues these days. We may have begun to buy organic veggies or bread or milk. We are watching our intake of fat and sugar. We may be trying to exercise more in order to control blood pressure or cholesterol.
Our gospel today is a health newsletter for our souls. It’s making absolutely clear that for the health of our souls we are to serve other people—to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned. Serving others is a spiritual discipline, much like generosity, or prayer, or fasting, or worship. It gets us in shape.
The great social critic of the early 20th Century, Dorothy Day, said that --“loving thy neighbor is not just good for the neighbor; it is essential to our souls.”—
Reaching out and helping others is good for our spiritual lives and Jesus says today that it’s the way we live out our salvation. We’ve said before that the Greek word for “salvation” is the same as the word for “healing.” Serving others brings US healing. It’s an essential part of a healthy spiritual diet. And it’s “the acid test of a living faith.” [Walter Rauschenbusch, quoted in Synthesis for November 20, 2011, p. 4]
In Matthew’s gospel the first public teaching of Jesus is the passage we call the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. …
And the last public teaching of Jesus is the passage we have before us today. Our gospel tells us how we might attain to those actions mentioned in the Beatitudes—how we might be peacemakers, or people of mercy and justice. So the two passages about serving others in this life are bookends in the public ministry of Jesus. That is very significant and helps us focus on what Jesus—what God—considers important. Serving others.
Our gospel today reminds us that at the end of time there will be a final accounting. People—the Nations—will be brought before the throne of Jesus and judged by how they lived their lives. They will be separated into two groups—the sheep and the goats. The sheep are those who served and helped others in need. The goats are those who did not serve or help, whether it was deliberate--or unintentional.
Now this gospel passage has always made me very uncomfortable because it is, on the face of it, very rigid. You are one or the other—either a sheep or agoat. You receive either eternal happiness or eternal fire. No in-between. And that’s very chilling.
But we’re not always clearly one or the other, are we?
I came across a cute little story this week that said that once upon a time a Sunday school teacher told the kids to imagine that all the goats were green and all the sheep were red. Then he asked the kids what color they would be. And one smart little kid put up his hand and said, “Striped.”
In truth, most of us are red-and-green zebras, aren’t we?
So what’s the point of this overly generalized story? Jesus tells it to emphasize the importance of serving others. And in typical Jesus fashion, it is hyperbolic—exaggerated—to make a point. But despite the exaggeration, the focus of his teaching remains: serving others is something that God expects of us. It’s the way we love others.
The theologically sensitive among us may be a little uncomfortable with this passage because it seems so very much at odds with the essential teaching of the Reformation. Luther and Calvin and a host of others showed that the broad sense of Scripture is that God doesn’t judge us worthy or not because of what we’ve done. But instead our worthiness is a free gift of God through the faith of Jesus—or through our faith in Jesus. (The language is not clear on that point.)
So what do we do with the uncertainty we may feel after thinking about this gospel passage? Here’s one possible take:
God expects us to serve because that is a fruit of love. No problem. But the idea that we are either sheep or goat is unfortunate, for we vary from day to day and situation to situation.
We know Jesus loves us and has infinite patience with us as he gives us unnumbered chances to repent and make a fresh start. And at the very end, I believe he still wants to love us and heal us. The God of infinite second chances just doesn’t give up.
One of my favorite icons illustrates this well. It’s a picture of the Good Shepherd, done by Brother Robert Lentz for Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Hartford. (There’s a copy of that icon in the parish hall on the round table.) It’s a very Semitic-looking Jesus, dressed in shepherd’s robes, hugging an animal lovingly. But it’s not a cute little sheep. It’s a dirty old goat.
It’s a very smart image. Brilliant, actually. I take comfort in how Jesus loves that goat.
So, may we try hard to live the way Jesus wants us to live, and may we ask for the supernatural strength we sometimes need to keep on loving and serving. May our souls be healed through service to others. And when we fail, may we remember that he really does love the goats, too.
Amen.
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