"Judgement Day"
Are you a sheep or a goat?
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Paul Scott Wilson
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Text: Matthew 25:31-46
I don't know how my preaching students at the University of Toronto speak about me when I am not there. I don't know what they say about my lack of flexibility. When students have signed up for a preaching class, and they come to the preaching class unprepared with no sermon, and are not ready to deliver, I don't say, “Well, that's way cool!” or “You can do it when you feel like it,” and so, they may well call me an “old goat.”
Today, I wouldn't mind if they called me an “old goat,” because we are looking at one of the most fearsome texts in the Bible - the division of the sheep and the goats. Today, I feel like a goat. Today, I read this text as a goat. So, today I am also going to preach this text as a goat, but not just any goat - a goat in sheep's clothing. “At some time in the future,” Jesus says, “the Son of Man will come and divide up all of humanity into the sheep on the right hand and the goats on the left.” It is rather like it was in elementary school, when we were divided for our sports teams, and the captains would call out the names of the people who were to be on one side or the other. There is only one difference: Here there is only one captain calling the names, and it is Jesus Christ, the captain of our souls.
All the sheep on the right, they are the ones that hear the words spoken to them that everyone wants to hear. Jesus says to them:
Inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger in your midst and you welcomed me; I was naked and you clothed me; I was in hospital and you cared for me; I was in prison and you came and visited me.
Then, to the goats on the other side are spoken the words that no one wants to hear:
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 did not give me anything to drink; I was a stranger and you left me outside; I was naked and you gave me nothing to clothe my body; you did not come and care for me when I was sick; and when I was in prison, you didn't stop by.
The amazing thing about this text is that both groups are utterly astounded at Jesus' words, because neither was aware of what it was doing. “When was it,” they say, “that we saw you sick or thirsty or a stranger or naked or in prison? When was it that we saw this?” And Jesus replies to them both and says, “Truly, I tell you, just as you did or did not do this to one of the least of these, you did or did not do it unto me.” One way of thinking is that Judgment Day happens whenever we fail to recognize Christ in a neighbour.
In this particular instance, there is no Court of Appeal, because this is the Court of Appeal. This is the Supreme Court. This is CSI and Heaven's Gate. There are no degrees of guilt. It is simply if you are a sheep, you are right, and if you are a goat, you are wrong. At least, that is how Jesus' words are understood. Jesus' words are frightening words. Many of us, contemplating our own deaths, wonder whether we would be counted amongst the sheep or amongst the goats. Yet Jesus' words are such good news for so many people.
Still, this week, hundreds of people will be killed in the Darfur region of the Sudan. Hundreds of blacks will be murdered, as they have been for the last few years. The United Nations has not been able to put a stop to it. Arab troops are forcing people out of their villages. They are putting dead animals down the wells so that people cannot return. The refugees are gathered in various places with not enough food. Those people need to know that at some point in the future God's justice will be meted out, and that all of those responsible for the violence that they have experienced and the killings they have seen, that all those people will be brought to justice. They need to know it.
What Jesus is saying is also good news for all those parents with children and others who have been killed in terrorist bombings around the world, not least in Iraq. They need to know that justice will eventually be done, and someone will be held accountable. Jesus is saying to terrorists and rapists and murderers and all those who have pillaged the earth for their own greed, and those who care nothing for the suffering of others: “Tally time is coming!” Every life that has been damaged is precious in God's sight, and Jesus tells them their account is soon coming due. They will have to pay for their sins. They are all going to the checkout counter where every sin has a price and every deed will be scanned.
You may have thought that you could bank on your good deeds, but you haven't done enough good deeds to pay for your sins. You may have thought that you could pay with a wallet fat enough, but you don't have a wallet fat enough to pay the price. You do not have enough bonus points on your credit card in order to pay the price. You don't have enough property to mortgage in order to pay the price. You do not have enough friends in high places to get you the right kind of influence to pay the price. You don't have people at the back door to let you in to pay the price. Justice will be done!
This is gruff news for the goats, but it is good news for the sheep. It is such good news for the sheep that it is worth shouting “Alleluia” about! When as people of God we want to shout Alleluia! we should be able to, even here on Sunday, when we don't usually say anything in the sermon. We should all be able to muster an “Alleluia!” and so I am going to ask you - when I say “God's justice will be done” to say, “Alleluia!” When I say God's will will be accomplished,” we can again say “Alleluia!” All right, I can tell that you are a little bit reluctant to raise your voices in “Alleluias,” but I know that your hearts are singing it, and if we stayed here long enough, we'd all be able to hear the volume of sound, and I am right here with you cheering as well.
Then, I remember that I am one of the goats, not one of the sheep. Before any of us get too excited at the sweet prospect of other people getting the punishment that is due to them, let us all remember that we will stand before God's big checkout counter in the sky. We will all be there, and there isn't going to be a separate line-up for those with 13 sins or less! There is not going to be an Express Checkout. There is not going to be a separate line-up for all those who are terrorists and murderers and rapists and pillagers. There will not be a separate line-up for greedy warmongers either. We are all standing in the same line with our shopping buggies in front of us, and they are all laden down with all the evil deeds that we should not have done, all the deeds that are going to be scanned, all the things we would like to hide from others.
We are each there with our shopping buggy in front of us, and people are looking around and examining your buggy, and you are looking at other people's: you did that, and you did that! It is all there for people to see. Truth be told, none of us will be able to pay. I know that when my own sins are scanned, I won't be able to pay the price. That is when we all hope that we have done good deeds and lived good lives, but I know that I have willingly, down at Bloor and Yonge, walked by people sitting on the sidewalk, hats out in front. I have walked by and it hasn't even occurred to me that Christ might be that person who is sitting there. I know that I have driven on 401 past Kingston, and I haven't pulled off at the penitentiary to visit Christ in prison. So, by the plain words of our text, I am one of the goats. I am not one of the sheep. So are we all! We are all goats.
Here's the problem. If all sin has a price, and if every evil deed is scanned, when the checkout registers tell what is owed, no one will be able to go home. If all of the nations are divided into the sheep on the right hand and the goats on the left, then over there, on the left-hand side are going to be vast multitudes of people - helpless! We will be amongst them. Over there, on the right-hand side, where the sheep are gathered, there will be one lone sheep, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the only one who is truly innocent. One sheep and many goats - the odds are not good!
Well, as a goat, I figure that Jesus already knew the makeup of the teams when he spoke about Judgment Day. He already knew how vast was the number of people who couldn't pay for their sins, and that is why he came. No sooner does he finish telling this frightening story of Judgment Day, than he turns to his disciples and announces that the Son of Man will be crucified in the next week. In other words, there is a connection between this frightening story of Judgment Day and his crucifixion and it is this: He is going to the cross to die for the goats; he is going to the cross to save the goats; to give hope to all of those who have no hope; to give promise to all of those who have none.
As Jesus said to the Pharisees earlier in the Gospel of Mathew (and remember that the Pharisees were the righteous people, the people who observed the law, and far more righteous than we are), “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick do. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I have come to call not the righteous, but the sinners.” He came to call the goats, not the sheep; he came to save the goats, not the sheep; he died to save the goats; he rose again and sits at the right hand of God for the goats; he is God's judge; he is God's payment for our sins. He is the one who comes over to us when we are coming up short at the checkout counter, patting our pockets and purging our purses looking for the means to pay. He is the one who comes to us and says to us with a loving voice, “Hi, I see you are a goat. Well, goat, I love you. Won't you let me pay for you? I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Won't you let me offer you my cloak that you might share in my innocence and my glory?”
And so, to each one of us individually, he takes off his cloak and puts it over our shoulders, that wonderful white cloak of innocence, that we might not only look like sheep, but be counted as sheep by God, having been given the innocence of Christ. When we feel that cloak over our shoulders, we know that it is one hundred per cent pure lambswool - even the wool of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.
I heard a story not long ago from the mouth of Jane Glaves. She lives in Brantford, Ontario, and when she reached the age of 65 and was retiring from teaching, she decided she still had a lot of life left in her and she wanted to fulfill her lifelong ambition of being a missionary. So, she wrote to various agencies to see if they would take her, and most wrote back saying that her teaching certificate was too old, and so was she. Then, she heard from an orphanage in Malawi that was willing to have her come and care for some of the orphans there. She was given responsibilities for three children: A girl who was five and two boys who were two-and-a-half. The boys were brothers. They had been left there by their father because their mother had died and the father felt that he couldn't care for them. They were all malnourished, and so she nursed them back to health. In that country, there aren't separate beds, families sleep on the same pallet, and those children gave her scabies and she gave them love, and nurtured them back to life.
Some time after she had been there, the boys' father remarried and came back and took the boys away. Before she left to come back to Canada, she was concerned about them and wrote and asked the father if she could come and see them. He said, “Yes,” and when she went to see them, they were malnourished, their bellies were protruding, their eyes didn't have the same glint. They reached out to her, but not with the same sparkle, and she knew as she looked at them that they would die if they stayed in their father's care. He still didn't have enough resources. She prayed about it, and then she said to the father, “Do you suppose it might be possible that I could take them back with me to Canada and care for them as my own?” He said, “I have been praying that you would say those words.” With a lot of help from a lot of people, including paperwork from Africa and London and Canada, she was able to bring, not only those two boys, but the young girl as well, with her. At age 68, she returned to Canada with a new, young family. Her own family, while grown, thought she was crazy, and maybe she is crazy, but one thing we do know for certain: She is counted as one of the sheep.
We may not all be able to go so far and do so much for others, but we are all called in different ways, and God has a purpose for each one of our lives. God has something for you to do this week. All that we need to do is to offer a cup of water, bread, shelter, company, clothing, kindness or generosity, but not in order to become a sheep so you will avoid some kind of punishment on the last day, because in your baptism you were already claimed by Jesus as one of the sheep. No, do acts of kindness and be generous not in order to become a sheep, but because you are a sheep, and because you love doing what God wants you to do. If you do this each week, then there is no day in the future of which you need have any fear, for you are the beloved. Thanks be to God.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.