Christ the King Sunday
Evidently I have not experienced enough cycles with the lectionary to know when the challenging passages come around. I thought Christ the King Sunday would have a slightly different sort of triumphalist flare to it.
But, here we are, the sheep and the goats–one destined for eternal life, the other for eternal punishment. I suppose this is a nice set up for Advent and those end-times readings.
No doubt anyone here who’s dipped their toe into evangelical waters for a quick second has encountered some reference to this divisive and dividing teaching of Jesus. While we may wish to focus on Jesus commending those who feed the hungry, care for the sick, and visit the incarcerated, we can’t ignore the less savory elements of this passage about the time of judgment.
Whenever I come across this teaching, I can hear the voice of Keith Green and his expressive piano accompaniment as he narrates the passage in “The Sheep and the Goats.” It’s not so much a song as a spoken word reading of scripture set to music.
Keith Green was an incredibly talented musician whose career didn’t quite go the direction folks had promised him from early on in his life. In the mid-70s as a young adult he found himself amidst the southern California Jesus movement sometimes referred to as “Jesus freaks” (including communities like the Vineyard Christian Fellowship–my alma mater of sorts). In a short amount of time he put out a great number of songs that reflected the fervent ethos of the time. One of his albums, titled No Compromise, includes the song “Make My Life a Prayer to You.” In the opening verse he sings:
Make my life a prayer to you
I wanna do what you want me to
No empty words and no white lies
No token prayers no compromise
Does that all-or-nothing call for commitment sound familiar? How does it make you feel? For me, memories of college ministry come flooding back with earnest conversations about what it means to follow this Jesus. No compromises.
In “the Sheep and the Goats” the piano starts out at a lively, percussive pace–notes flying over and past each other–as he lays down a rolling refrain. There is a sense of journeying, of encounter between heaven and earth–of joy. When the Son of Man comes in his glory with all the angels, to take up the throne–his throne . . . that’s the day we’re all (supposed to be) waiting for, longing for: when Jesus reigns, and separates out those who are “deserving” of eternal life from the rest of humanity.
Green keeps up the pace as Jesus extends the invitation to join him, and as the elect (we might call them) express their surprise at the gracious offer.
Then, suddenly, the tone shifts. The pace slows to a thrum of chords as he changes to a minor key. “Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘depart from me…’”
At this point Green starts to improvise the responses of those who will be cast into eternal fire, making it sound more contemporary, more…real.
Lord, there must be some mistake, when?
Lord, I mean, when were you hungry lord and we didn’t give you something to eat?
And lord, when were you thirsty, and we didn’t give you a drink?
I mean, that’s not fair, well, would you like something now?
Oh, you’re not hungry, yeah, I lost my appetite too. . . .
Oh lord, when were you a stranger lord,
You weren’t one of those creepy people who used to come to the door, were you?
Oh lord, that wasn’t our ministry lord. we just didn’t feel led, you know?
Finally, he closes out the song with this reflection, “And friends, the only difference between the sheep and the goats, according to this scripture, is what they did and didn’t DO.”
Try preaching that message today. . . .
Today’s gospel passage has been canonized in classic North American revivalist teachings meant to intimidate, frighten, and judge people according to certain behavioral models and values. And so, before we go any further with it, I want to invite you to do something, if it feels appropriate for you.
I would like you to call to mind a moment when you felt judged; or, perhaps it was a feeling that you experienced around certain individuals, or when hearing this kind of all or nothing message. However this passage (and others like it) has impacted you in the past, take a moment to sit with that, to hold that memory lightly.
Now, inhale deeply, breathing in the light and warmth of the Spirit of God, who is Love incarnate. With the Spirit within you, beside you, around you, holding you, show her that moment, that feeling, share how this passage has affected you.
As you exhale, allow the Spirit to break off any residual judgment that tries to hold on. Let the Spirit clear away any fears that you are not enough; that someone out there is tallying your every deed; that Jesus might somehow decide to send you to the bad place.
Now, inhale once again and, this time, feel or watch in your mind’s eye the harm dissolve by the power of the Spirit and dissipate as you exhale.
Inhale (the Spirit). . . . Exhale (the fear). You are a gift. Your presence here is a gift. Let the Spirit be a buffer between you and the story of sheep and goats.
. . . . .
Today is one of those days when I am grateful for all the lectionary readings. Here we can see how the passage from Ezekiel sheds a critical light on the gospel message. We can see one of the precursors to the Good Shepherd motif that comes up in John’s gospel.
The prophet Ezekiel describes how God plans to search for sheep who have been scattered, and to return them to verdant fields good for grazing located by mountain streams. God states God’s intention to “seek the lost,” “bring back the strayed,” “bind up the injured, and…strengthen the weak,” Then, God says, “I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.” [the fat sheep and the lean sheep]
Did you notice? No goats in this passage. Only sheep who get scattered and injured, versus those who pushed and shoved their way to food. God states, “I will judge between sheep and sheep.”
Now we can see some similarities between the two passages in terms of what, exactly, God will judge. The actions God calls out are those of the fat sheep who “pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide.”
And in the gospel message, those that ignored the hungry and thirsty, refused foreigners and strangers, and who left the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned to their circumstances—as our systems so often do—they are like the fat sheep.
What I hear from the two passages is that life lived out of the poverty of selfish ambition and self-preservation brings about trials and tribulations when faced with the reality and the order of God who is Love incarnate.
Today is one of those days when I am grateful for all the lectionary readings. Here we can see how the passage from Ezekiel sheds a critical light on the gospel message. We can see one of the precursors to the Good Shepherd motif that comes up in John’s gospel.
The prophet Ezekiel describes how God plans to search for sheep who have been scattered, and to return them to verdant fields good for grazing located by mountain streams. God states God’s intention to “seek the lost,” “bring back the strayed,” “bind up the injured, and…strengthen the weak,” Then, God says, “I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.” [the fat sheep and the lean sheep]
Did you notice? No goats in this passage. Only sheep who get scattered and injured, versus those who pushed and shoved their way to food. God states, “I will judge between sheep and sheep.”
Now we can see some similarities between the two passages in terms of what, exactly, God will judge. The actions God calls out are those of the fat sheep who “pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide.”
And in the gospel message, those that ignored the hungry and thirsty, refused foreigners and strangers, and who left the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned to their circumstances—as our systems so often do—they are like the fat sheep.
What I hear from the two passages is that life lived out of the poverty of selfish ambition and self-preservation brings about trials and tribulations when faced with the reality and the order of God who is Love incarnate.
Our earthly systems often set us up for failure.
Jesus notes at the beginning of the passage that “all the nations will be gathered before” the Son of Man. This sets up a comparative stance: where earthly nations have their own political economies and hierarchies that often (if not always) keep certain classes on top while others fall to the bottom, even to the underside of society, the Son of Man–God who is to come–is the head of a very different system. The throne of God is not built out of the bones and dust of human suffering.
The rule and reign of the Triune God administers its own economy–one that is based upon abundance, generosity, compassion, restoration, and radical embrace. When we lean into this divine economy, we are aligning ourselves with the One who provides for the least, the last, and the lost. When we live into the reign of God inaugurated through Jesus Christ, we tap into Wisdom that reveals what is the next faithful step toward love, toward generosity, toward grace shared and multiplied for others.
This is what it means to enter God’s gates with thanksgiving, even now, here on the earth (as it is so in heaven).
Because God entered creation in the person of Jesus, the kingdom – or, kindom, as I’m starting to refer to it – is both now and not yet. That is something I learned first from my siblings in the Vineyard movement. What the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ teaches us about the now and not yet kindom of God is that the wellspring of divine life is open to all who seek it. We don’t need to wait for a day of judgment before we ourselves may discern with the Spirit whether and how to feed others; to visit with the sick, the lonely, and the incarcerated; to stand in solidarity with those on the margins.
Keith Green and his wife, Melody, opened their home to a great number of folks who needed a space. In them we have an example of radical compassion and hospitality. But, his life, and the lives of two of his children, were cut short by an airplane crash. I mention that because, it’s hard to know how his own faith would have played out over the course of decades. I wonder, what would a matured Keith Green sound like? The same, perhaps…
Passages like this week’s gospel have been used to judge and to bully people for a very long time. Yet there is an incisive beauty to this particular gospel message. Here’s what I mean by that : (this passage describes how) God in Christ experiences the suffering and the harms of this world as if they were inflicted directly upon Godself. Where traditional North American revivalist (or evangelical, etc.) teaching focuses on getting on the right side of Jesus, the point is really about siding with others who hunger and thirst, who hurt and are bullied, who have been scattered and lost.
It’s better to be blind to our own good deeds than to the needs of others. Amen.
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