“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels are with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be assembled in front of him, and he will separate them from each other as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats on his left.” (Vss. 31-33)
Welcome to the last Sunday of the Christian year – a Sunday that has come to be known as ‘Reign of Christ’ Sunday or the ‘Feast of Christ the King’. Either way these terms have uncomfortable political connotations for today, and today’s Gospel reading adds to that discomfort, I feel – it being full of uncomfortable political imagery.
The analogy is to that of a shepherd separating his sheep and his goats but the basic metaphor is of Christ the king, separating ‘all the nations’ before him into two groups. His loyal subjects He places on his right hand, while traitors and malcontents are placed on his left, awaiting punishment. It is a story of judgement (of the final judgement, indeed) and, as I say, I find the whole scene uncomfortably political in nature.
My mind goes to our king, of course – King Tony – and the way he passes judgement. He’s had a habit of discriminating between all who’ve come before him. Those who are refugees or asylum-seekers invariably find themselves on his left!
Perhaps referring to our Prime Minister as ‘King Tony’ is too gracious. Perhaps we should refer to him as ‘Prince Tony’, loyal vassal to Good King Barack? And perhaps we should drop the term ‘Good’ in that title? Either way, we know full well who ends up on the left hand of the royal judgement in our land – refugees, asylum-seekers, those on welfare benefits, the mentally ill … I’m not sure who is at the right-hand. Not many from around here!
It is an uncomfortable setting – this scene of final judgement – and as the story progresses things get more uncomfortable.
Then 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; for 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, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
Then 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? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ (Matthew 25:34-39)
And we know the answer that the king gives to his loyal subjects, don’t we? ‘When did we give you food or drink or welcome or cloth or visit you, Lord?’ they ask. ‘When you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me’, says King Jesus!
At one level these are powerful and wonderful and inspiring words – yes – but they are discomforting words too, as they suggest that even Jesus’ loyal servants didn’t have a clue as to what they were doing!
We might have expected that of the great unwashed – the goats in this story. They find themselves on the wrong end of the confusion.
“When did we see you hungry?” they ask. They don’t have a clue! Did we expect them to? But what about the faithful few? Surely they sensed the presence of Jesus in the poor person that they fed? Apparently not!
The whole scene is one of great confusion, and the sheep in the story seem to be just as confused as the goats. Nobody, it seems, really understood what the king was looking for in His subjects. Nobody really understood what it meant to be a loyal citizen. Some got it right and some got it wrong but nobody seems to have anticipated or understood the basis for judgement, and that’s not a comforting thought!
I appreciate, of course, that confusion has been a dominant theme in so many of the parables of Jesus that we have been listening to:
- The labourers who worked all day in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) could not understand the basis upon which their pay was being worked out!
- In the parable of the great wedding banquet (Matthew 22:1-14) there was enormous confusion regarding who was invited and who was not!
- Then we had that story of the ten young girls (Matthew 25:1-13) who end up out in the cold, banging on the bridegroom’s door, for reasons they don’t understand!
- And finally the parable of the talents (Matthew 15:14-30), featuring a servant who buries his master’s money and does not seem to understand what he has done the wrong until it was all too late.
In each of these stories, the principal players keep getting it wrong. They misunderstand the master. They don’t grasp the way He operates. They keep doing the wrong thing without realizing it and they keep ending up on the wrong side of the master for reasons they don’t really comprehend! In this story it all comes to a head! It is the final judgement and a final separation is being made between all the peoples of this world. Finally it is being made clear who the real servants of God are in this world and yet the whole process seems to leave everybody involved completely baffled, and that just seems radically unfair!
If this life really is an examination for the life to come, you’d think that those of us under examination would be properly informed as to what it is we are being tested for! Moreover, if we take this story at face value, it would seem that the criterion upon which judgement is made – through which God’s own sheep are separated from the goats – is remarkably unreligious.
“Then 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; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I 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.’ Then 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?’ Then 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.’” (Matthew 25:41-45)
I’ve been reading the Quran lately. I’m about 80% of the way through it.
I’m embarrassed to say that, despite all my inter-faith work with the Islamic community over the last ten years, I had never read the holy book of Islam from cover to cover prior to this. I’d read plenty of excerpts, of course, but I realised that it was about time that I read the whole thing thoroughly from cover to cover, and I’m very glad I did.
One of the things you find with the Quran, and I know it’s one of the things that Muslim people appreciate about the Quran, is that it is remarkably consistent.
There are lots of depictions of the final judgement in the Quran – lots – and, from what I have understood of the Quran, the basis for that judgment is straightforward and consistent. Those who are judged to be worthy of God’s eternal rewards are those who believe and who do good works.
If you want to attain the rewards of God in the world to come, says the Quran, you must believe in the revelation that God has given you and do good works – faith and good deeds! The simplicity of the formula is attractive, I think, and it stands in sharp contrast to this story that Jesus gives us in Matthew chapter 25, where the recipients of God’s favour aren’t even depicted as being particularly religious!
“Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” says king Jesus, and He points to all the pious acts of love that these people have performed over their lives – feeding and clothing and caring for Him – and these good people answer Him in unified bewilderment “when?”
Apparently they didn’t know they were ministering to Jesus! Perhaps they just thought they were doing the right thing? Perhaps they didn’t think much about what they were doing at all? In truth, their motivations aren’t even on view!
Were these ‘sheep’ all people of great faith who were motivated by their love of God and devotion to Christ to perform acts of love towards the needy? Maybe. Or maybe they did what they did for reasons best known to themselves. Jesus in entirely silent on the subject!
Conversely, the goats, it seemed, had no intention of leaving Jesus cold and hungry. Had they realised that Jesus was somehow concealing Himself in the poor and desperate of this world they might have acted differently, but what sort of religion would have taught them that?!
And this is indeed the final discomfort in this Bible passage, I think. It is the bizarre teaching that Jesus, who we know identified with the poor and marginalised throughout His earthly ministry, somehow went on to become the poor and marginalised! That seems to be what the Gospel here teaches!
I don’t want to pretend to have penetrated this mystery too deeply, just as I don’t pretend to have had a mystical experience of Jesus every time I’ve tried to support someone who is cold or hungry or lonely or persecuted. Even so, the disturbing affirmation of the Gospel that is revealed to us in this story is that Jesus does indeed live on in our world, but that He does so through the poor, the hungry, the dirty and the disfigured, and this is surely exactly where we did not expect to find Him!
I don’t like to launch into criticism of other traditions within the Christian community, especially when representatives of those traditions are not here to defend their particular understanding. Even so, it has to be said that the teaching that is prevalent today in so many churches around the world – that Christianity is the religion of winners – is a long way from today’s reading in the Gospel of Matthew.
I still shake my head when I hear people speak of how Jesus has ‘blessed their business’ as part of their testimony on how following Christ has taken them to the top! The consistent pattern that we see in the New Testament is that Christian discipleship invariably takes you in the opposite direction – to the bottom!
The Lord Jesus Himself was, like most of us, born into a middle-class family, but He was downwardly mobile, and the teaching we receive in passages such as today’s Gospel reading is that it’s in this same process of downward mobility that we meet him again today.
Jesus is not waiting for us at the top of the ladder, looking down from on high and waiting to help us up those final few rungs so that we can finally graduate our way into Heaven after having scaled the ladder of success on earth.
On the contrary, Jesus dwells at the bottom of the ladder – even in the swamps you fall into when you drop off the ladder! This is where you find Him because this is where He chooses to dwell!
I began my reflection on today’s passage in Matthew 25 by saying that it contained a lot of uncomfortable political imagery. As I conclude I’m not sure whether my issue with the passage is that it’s too political or that it’s not sufficiently religious! Certainly, if religion is understood in terms of spiritual things and other-worldly piety then there’s not a lot of religion in this passage!
I think the truth is that Jesus actually redefines both politics and religion. Jesus redefined authority in terms of service, and he taught that religion is less about being religious than it is about compassion!
Welcome to the feast of Christ the King – He who brings down the high and mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly. He fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich empty away.
Christ the king will bring final peace and justice to this world but not by the means of political power-play that we are familiar with for His kingdom is not of this world. In the meantime, whatever it is that we do for the least of His sisters or brothers, we do to Him!
First preached by Father Dave Smith at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, on Sunday the 23rd of November, 2014.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker, martial arts master, pro boxer, author, father of four. www.FatherDave.org
