Readings: Ezek.34:11-16, 20-24; Matt.25:31-46.
So, the privilege has fallen to me to give you my thoughts on this, the crowning Sunday of the church year, on the reason why Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords, across all times and all places. If I should find that privilege humbling, and I do, then it’s no less humbling than trying to face the challenge of that Gospel reading we just heard, probably the most anxiety-inducing story in the entire Bible.
We can’t literally see Christ, of course, and it’s easy to forget the fact that he’s literally King of kings and Lord of lords, and go about our lives just as we always do. But in that terrifying Gospel reading, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, the fact of Christ’s kingship hits hard. I must confess that I feel extremely uncomfortable when I hear that Parable. To put it bluntly: am I a sheep or am I a goat? At first sight, it seems an easy question to answer. Of course I’m a sheep: I’m a committed Christian who cares about the world, about the poor and about injustice. Isn’t that enough for God? Well, is it? That’s the nagging doubt I always feel listening to this parable. Because if I base my hopes that I’m a sheep primarily on my religious commitment, well the parable suggests I think again. Both the sheep and the goats recognise that Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords.
So am I a sheep or a goat? Well I do my best: I give money to charity regularly, I buy the Big Issue from time-to-time, and as often as not I give money to people who approach me on the street. Does that qualify me to be a sheep? I hope so. But I’m not sure, because by the same token, I’m aware that, like most people in this country, I live a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. Yes, I do give money to charity, but I could give more, probably much more if I was willing to forgo all my comforts. And what about those times when I’m too busy to be charitable, when I walk quickly past someone asking for money in the street, trying not to catch their eye? Surely I’m behaving like a goat then? What’s more, is giving money to charity enough? Am I not just paying someone else out of my abundance to do the things I myself ought to be doing: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the prisoners?
I can’t ignore these questions, hoping they’ll go away, because according to the parable, my attitude now will come back to haunt me in the future, “when the Son of Man comes in his glory”, as it puts it. It is a parable of course, deliberately told in symbolic language, just like the related idea of the Son of Man coming back on the clouds with the angels before the Day of Judgement. We don’t have clouds or angels here, we have sheep and goats, with a king sitting on a throne, dividing them up to the right or the left, the sheep going to eternal life and the goats to eternal punishment. It’s all deliberately and heavily symbolic: we’re not meant to take it literally. True enough: we should be very cautious before formulating doctrines of heaven and hell based on this. And some people, I know, prefer to overlook it altogether and say, well, God isn’t really like that. God is all-loving, all-forgiving, not a stern judge. Yes, this viewpoint goes on to say, we ought to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and so on, but because we want to and because we care, not because of some eternal threat hanging over us. After all, everyone will go to heaven ultimately…Well, I have sympathies with that approach, often called universalism, and I sincerely hope it’s true that all will be saved ultimately, but I myself don’t feel so confident that I can second-guess God’s purposes, given that the deposit of faith with which we’ve been entrusted contains many stories of judgement like this.
After all, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats is by no means the only challenging passage in the Gospels, nor the only one which speaks of judgement. What about the equally-worrying passage towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven.” And what about the parable of the talents, which comes just before the Sheep and the Goats? Are we like the wise servants who use their talents wisely and are rewarded, or are we like the complacent, foolish servants, who effectively hide our God-given talents away, and end up being thrown into the outer darkness where there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth?
I could go on, there are plenty more passages like this, which make for uncomfortable reading, and I’m sure they’re designed to do just that. If we feel discomfort listening to these parables, then I think we’re feeling the right thing: we’re in touch with that very same Jesus who simultaneously both mesmerised and frightened the people of C1 Galilee and Judea. They were in awe of him one moment, and they were outraged the next: they worshipped him on Palm Sunday, and they put him to death on Good Friday. This reminds us that the Jesus of history is not always the same person as the Christ of our faith. The Christ we like to worship is so often consistently kind and understanding and undemanding (“gentle Jesus, meek and mild”). But here, we’re reminded that the Jesus of history was consistently difficult and demanding, to both friend and foe. The real Jesus was a disconcerting person to be around; he had an alarming tendency to upset the good citizens who thought they were doing OK.
As I said, today is the very last Sunday in the church’s year. Next Sunday we begin Advent, the first Sunday in the year. At Advent, we begin the story of salvation all over again, by looking towards Christmas, and expecting Jesus as a newborn baby. But today, we’re ending the story, we’re looking at the Son of Man seated in heavenly glory as the King of kings. And as with the earthly Jesus, our picture of Christ the heavenly King is also often a bit soppy, a bit “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” The chapel at my old theological college, built around the same time as this Cathedral, is completely dominated by an enormous stained-glass window showing Christ enthroned in heavenly glory. He’s wearing a gold crown and lavish robes, and he’s surrounded by angels, saints and splendour. I often used to stare at it during the morning liturgy, you couldn’t not, and I’d always feel there was something not quite right there. Was it because he has blond hair and blue eyes? Well partly, but that wasn’t all. I didn’t realise what was wrong until after I’d left, when I was working in a parish, trying my hardest to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, and visit the prisoners in my own way as a humble curate. It was really quite simple when I realised what was missing in the window: this Jesus was just too magnificent, too much like an earthly king. Most important of all, his scars were almost invisible. Because the Gospels give us a completely different picture of Jesus as a king. Before his crucifixion, the soldiers put a crown of thorns on his head, a reed in his hand for a staff, and clothe him in a purple robe. He’s covered in blood, but they beat him some more and mock him: “Hail, King of the Jews!” This is the real coronation of Jesus. This is his real kingship: the man who is despised and beaten, worth nothing but to be crucified as a criminal. This is our real king. But we find this image so offensive that we conceal it behind lavish robes and golden crowns. But when we stand before his throne, not knowing whether we belong with the sheep on the right, or the goats on the left, it will be the despised, beaten, crucified king that faces us.
So am I a sheep or a goat? To be honest, I really don’t know, but neither do I think I’m supposed to know. In the parable, as the Son of Man separates out the sheep and the goats, they’re both equally surprised by his judgements. “We didn’t know we’d be judged for that”, they all say. I suspect that this is the real point of the story, not so much heaven or hell but simply that we don’t know what’s critical, what’s at stake ultimately. Quite simply, we can’t take anything for granted. My salvation, please God, is in the future, and it’s to be a gift from God: always has been and always will be, which means it can’t be earned by anything I do, or believe. I simply can’t be complacent about it. I must live with my eyes constantly set on Jesus. Not the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus in lavish robes, but the Jesus who is sick, who is naked, who is hungry, who is lonely, who is a prisoner, who is crucified. This is the king who will face me when I stand before his throne.
