This is the last day of the liturgical year, Christ the King Sunday. And so, I suppose that it is truly right and salutary that we should end the year with a statement of Christ’s authority over the world through the victory of our Lord over death and the grave. In our final reading from Matthew for this year, and, as a tribute to Matthew’s Gospel, we witness the great apocalyptic courtroom with the great judge of the world coming in glory with his angels separating the nations, sheep on the right and goats on the left.
As we come to this ending of Matthew, it may be helpful to review where we have been and where we are going. As I was preparing for the sermon this week, it felt like déjà vu. Then I realized this is the text we used New Year’s Day. It is fitting, therefore, that we end this liturgical year with the words of divine judgment we encountered at the beginning of 2017.
I know that this feels a little odd, but it shows how the Church is out of step with the world when it comes to telling time. So, in this last reading we have from Matthew, we mark the end of this year and prepare to enter into the year of Mark in 2018. Liturgically, next week is the first Sunday in Advent, the beginning of our new year, and we will begin reading the book of Mark. Today is sort of the New Year’s Eve of the liturgical year.
As the year changes, it is appropriate that we look at where we have been and where we are going. You will remember that the first reading we had after this judgment text of the sheep and the goats in January was the baptism of Jesus. There we saw John and Jesus at the Jordan debating who should be baptizing whom. Jesus, speaking his first words in Matthew, claims that John should be the one who baptizes. “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” With these words, Jesus sets forth this whole concept of righteousness and challenges us to discern what righteousness means in Matthew’s Gospel and in our lives.
Today we are presented with the cosmic courtroom. The Son of Man has come with his angels and is sitting on his throne of glory and judgment. This is the image described as Moses’ seat, the mercy seat, in Exodus and Hebrews. The Ark of the Covenant is not only the place where the commandments and the jar of manna is stored; it is also the symbol of God’s presence as Moses judges the people. On either side of the ark cover is an angel with its wings spread over the one sitting on the ark like a divine canopy protecting the one who will judge.
So now, Jesus comes with his angels, to sit on his throne in glory to judge the nations. We are told that he separates them like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, the sheep on his right hand and the goats at his left. But in today’s reading in Ezekiel, God says, “I will separate the sheep from the sheep.” The reason Ezekiel doesn’t separate goats from sheep is, in Hebrew, the word for sheep and goats is the same word. And not only is there no distinction between them in vocabulary, in the first century world, it would be much more difficult to physically distinguish between the two than it is today. These two animals were so interchangeable that even in the rules for the Passover meal, either a yearling lamb or goat without blemish can be used.
When we think about sheep and goats, we most oftentimes think of the modern merino sheep with its thick fleece of wool, but this variety of sheep is a modern breeding accomplishment. It was not the sheep of the first century world. While there were differences between the sheep and the goats of the day, they were not always obvious. It would take a shepherd, someone who knew these animals well, to make the separation then.
As we hear these words of judgment we are not surprised, because we have been hearing about the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. We have seen them as early as the people gathering in the wilderness with John and with Jesus when he preaches his Sermon on the Mount, where they brought to him the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, from various parts of the world. We see this again at the mountainside feeding of the 4000 where Jesus heals and feeds the lame, the maimed, the blind, the muted, and many others. Here again Jesus heals them and feeds them.
We have witnessed that, when Jesus came down from the Mountain of Transfiguration, the first thing he does is heal the young boy who is an epileptic. Throughout the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has been talking with us about welcoming the stranger and caring for the sick in all kinds of ways. We have even taken a little side trip into Samaria where we met the woman at the well with the water of everlasting life, and most recently we have been challenged to define what the kingdom of heaven might be. Is it that palace of perfection beyond this world or is it the world we live in where Christ is Lord of all?
Now we come to this cosmic courtroom where judgment is being made over the nations. It is important for us to see that this is the judgment of the nations and that this judgment is based on worldly benchmarks. For this judgment scene comes as the culmination of a series of parables that have been challenging us to discern between what is the kingdom of heaven and what is the kingdom of the world, to discern between God’s rule and man’s rule:
We have talked about the extravagant sower who casts seed everywhere (even in places where the seed has little chance of growing).
We have seen the weeds sown among the wheat and the workers who are ready to tear up the good with the bad. We have witnessed those who would challenge whether or not we should pay taxes.
We have seen the coin of the empire and learned that we should give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.
We have witnessed Jesus asking the people for input into the decision-making judgment of the behavior of the servants in various parables and heard them ask for harsher and more violent judgments.
We have seen in the 10 bridesmaids and in the 3 slaves who were given talents that our worldly scales of judgment are not always adequate for understanding God’s extravagant love—that we should always be engaged in our world, watchful and alert to what it means to be faithful at any given time because we will not know the day nor the hour when we might see Christ in our midst.
Today we are told where we can begin looking for Christ’s presence among us when the son of man comes. This coming is not necessarily the coming of the messiah, but a court scene that is based on the culmination of all of the people’s decisions of those judgments in the parables that have led to this moment.
In this courtroom, there will be those, the righteous, who will be rewarded in the Father’s kingdom prepared for them since the foundation of the world, and there will be eternal punishment for those who don’t measure up (the accursed). This punishment will be with the devil and his angels. This is the judgment the people have expected the messiah to bring, but it is not the final judgment that Christ makes. Still, it is the judgment we witness now.
How well have the followers of Jesus done and how are the nations doing based on the treatment of the most disenfranchised of the nations, the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked (today we would probably say the homeless), the sick, and the imprisoned?
What continues to surprise me the most is that whether or not these disenfranchised have been cared for, the peoples have not been able to see Christ among them or in their neighbor. Both the righteous and the accursed respond, “When was it Lord that we saw you hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, or imprisoned?” These peoples, the nations, have not been able to see Christ in what they do.
It is important for us to see that, in the judging of the nations, this is not the end. The final judgment and full righteousness will not be known until the end of the Gospel when Jesus is again on the mountainside with his disciples sending them out into the world to baptize all nations into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Today’s judgment scene is not the end nor last chance for the world. Full righteousness will not be known until we see Christ on his throne, the cross. We will not know the final judgment until we have seen Jesus laid in the tomb. Even then, the final words of judgment are not heard until the stone is rolled away in the morning of the resurrection.
Last January we talked about what Elizabeth Achtemeier has to say about righteousness. She says, “Righteousness throughout the Bible has to do with the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship.”
The demands for us to fulfill in our relationship with God today seem to be caring for those who are without—the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. In this catalog, we are reminded that we have seen Jesus hungry in the wilderness. We have seen him treated as a stranger in the courtyard of the Gentiles. We will see him sick in the garden of Gethsemane seeking another cure for the world. We will witness his trial and imprisonment, his nakedness and thirst on the cross, and we will also witness how his disciples abandon him during this time. In the words of Douglas John Hall, “Though sinless himself, Jesus suffers the consequences of sin in that he suffers temptation, alienation, anxiety, and limitation,” the condition and state of those who are outside the inner social circle.
For us, this judgment is not always about our treatment of one another (although it includes that), but it has to do with the treatment of the one we have faith in, in the treatment of the one who is able to fulfill the demands of the relationship we have with God that leads to our salvation, that is with, Jesus Christ himself. So, it is that we come to this day, this day of judgment remembering what Jesus has already done for us. We do not pretend that we have not already celebrated Easter, that we do not already know the end of the Gospel. We are not pretending that this is somehow the new end of Matthew’s Gospel.
We know it is only the end of our liturgical year. We know that next week we will again begin to tell the story of Jesus’ coming to us, anticipating his coming again to judge the living and the dead. Knowing this, we go out into the world, “seeing Christ in our neighbor”, in the words of Martin Luther. Seeing Christ in our neighbors, we walk with those around us, serving one another, being present with words of hope in a world of despair.
In the midst of a world that cries out for judgment and division between sheep and goats, Christ comes to fulfill the demands of the relationship for our salvation, that we may be freed to live openly with one another, caring for the needs of all: for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. This judgment scene is not a catalog of requirements in order to receive salvation, for Christ has already accomplished that for us. Yet it stands as a challenge for us in the future and a guide for where we are going and how we will be engaged with the world around us.
As we walk out into our world, may we always see Christ in those around us. May we rise up in concern and caring when we hear the needs of those we meet in ways that raise them up into the new life we share in Christ.
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