King of the Goats

'Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 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?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ 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.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”'

--Matthew 25: 31-46

My mother loved goats. On South Fork Road, a little less than five miles from the house where I grew up, there was a hillside that, for years, had goats roaming across it. Mama used to say that someday she wanted to live with goats – that never happened, and maybe for the best, since she had no idea how troublesome they ae. One year our priest, Fran McCoy, preached on this Gospel text from Matthew 25. I was too young to remember exactly what she said, but there was something about separating sheep from goats. Likely thinking of my mother, I went up to Fran after the service and asked, “What’s so bad about goats?” Fran later told me that she knew then that I would be a priest. I’d like to think both my mama and my priest were having a nice chuckle in heaven watching me preach this past Sunday. 

Totes m'goats!

Fran never really answered my question, but I’ve come to understand that the answer was, nothing. There’s nothing bad about goats. They’re goats – totes m'goats, if you will – they only act the way God intended for them to. Living in a society of shepherds, Jesus uses the imagery of sheep and goats less because goats are evil and more to highlight how those in his audience would naturally try to keep the sheep and the goats separated. This kind of imagery is used by Jesus when giving his final parable about the eschaton, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, what is sometimes called the Second Sermon on the Mount because it’s given on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem mere days before Jesus’ death. A king, he says, will separate folks out – righteous from unrighteous - like a shepherd separating sheep from goats.  

And what is it that characterizes the righteous from the unrighteous? The righteous are those who clothed the naked, fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, visited prisoners, and all around showed care and love for those in need. In doing so, the king says to them in the parable, you did all of those things to me. The unrighteous, though, are the ones who saw such needs and did nothing, as though they were ignoring their own king by ignoring the needs of others.

It's not a stretch, I believe, to say that the entire Christian ethic for how we care for anyone in need, is right here at the end of Matthew 25. Why clothe the naked, feed the hungry, or visit the prisoner? Because in doing so we do it to Jesus himself. But did you notice one little detail? When the king in the parable tells the folks standing before him at the end of the age about the kindness they showed to him, they ask when was it that they saw him in such states? They didn’t help those people because they thought they’d get credit for it. They didn’t do it simply because it was an expectation or to assuage their guilt. They did it for the sake of being in relationship with the other, going out and meeting those folks where they were, finding out what their need was, and helping in the ways they could. Maybe if the so-called unrighteous knew this they would’ve actually done something, but that’s the point of the parable. To serve their king was to serve others, especially when they weren’t even aware they were doing so.

This past Sunday marked the end of both season we call Ordinary Time and our church year as a whole. That day we wore white to make what is known as Christ the King Sunday (or Reign of Christ Sunday, in some contexts). The Feast of Christ the King was created in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. The world was just seven years removed from the Great War, but fascism was on the rise, and in less than 15 years there would be a Second World War.  In response to the growing popularity of authoritarianism, the pope wrote in his encyclical Quas Primas, that the faithful should gain strength and courage from the celebration of this new feast, as they were reminded that Christ must reign in their hearts, minds wills, and bodies, and that the leaders and nations would see that they were bound to allegiance to Christ, not the state. It is Jesus alone who is our sovereign, the one from whom we take our cues, and the one to whom all of our praise and adoration is directed because he is the only one worthy of any of it. Something tells me we need to remember that today, as we head into an election year.

But the portrait of soverignty painted by Jesus in this parable in Matthew 25 flies in the face of what we are told authority is meant to look like. Top-down, right? Power-over?  Not so with Jesus. This is what makes the Gospel so radical. The very principles of power held by nearly every single civilization that has ever existed are turned on their respective heads in the person of Jesus.  Kings are seated on thrones in palaces, they eat at banquets and are clothed in splendor.  Not this Jesus.  Not this king.  His is power-with, not over. He dines with the riff-raff of society.  His clothing is tattered.  He covers himself with a newspaper when he sleeps on the park bench.  He reaches his hand out to us and asks us to help him.  This is our king, this Jesus, and we meet him every single day.

Homeless Jesus statue outside of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C.

The mark of salvation, according to Jesus in this parable, isn’t that we have faith it’s how we do faith. How am I – how are we – doing faith in real, meaningful ways? We hear Jesus’ words in this parable and we are prone to say, “Yeah, I’m on board with that!” and so we go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen or take donations to a second-hand store. That’s really nice, but what then? We return to our lives segregated by race, or class, or religion. How often are we transformed by those experiences and forge new relationships through them? When do we ask ourselves what’s our motivation for doing what we do? Is it simply because Jesus tells us to do things, or because we might get some merit points for the afterlife? Or, is what we do for the sake of being changed by forming relationships with people, understanding that it is in the eyes and hearts of the other that we meet Jesus, our king? What's stopping us from going out and meeting people where they are, addressing their need, and forging new, transformative relationships?

Many understand, for example, the importance of inviting people who don’t look like us to come to church, especially if there’s a guest preacher or program promoting racial equality, but what’s stopping us from going to their church to sing their songs, pray their prayers, and be changed by them there? We raise money and sometimes volunteer for charitable organizations, but why not actually spend time with the people who go there seeking help; after all, Desmond Tutu said it’s not enough to pull people out of the torrid waters, we must go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

The parish where I currently serve is next to one of the Finger Lakes. It's a gorgeous location, and very often we see folks fishing off of our lakeside, despite signs up saying they're not supposed to. But - I asked our parishioners on Sunday - what if we went out and met them, learned their names, heard their stories, and let them know they were welcome here? What might happen? What’s stopping us from going out and meeting the folks who fish off our lakeside, hearing their stories and letting them know they’re welcome here? 

Such are the places where we’ll find Jesus, where we’ll find our king, and it’s in those relationships that we forge with the other that our own relationship with Jesus finds meaning and purpose. 

At my ordination in 2012, Fran told me, “Now, Joe, your job is to go be with the goats.” Jesus has a way of bringing people into our lives at the most inconvenient times, making unreasonable requests. What is asked of us is not to fix or be someone’s savior, they already got one of those, but to just be with those in need where they are and do what we can however we can. That’s how we love and serve the Lord, serve our King Jesus. King of glory, king of peace, we will love thee!