Matthew 25: 31-46

When the One Like Us comes in glory in the company of his messengers, he will sit on his splendid throne with all peoples gathered in front of him, and he will divide them into two groups in the way a shepherd will separate sheep from goats. The sheep will be placed at his right hand, the goats to his left. Then the king-like One will say to those at his right hand, "Come along, you have the benediction of my father: you are to inherit the estate that has been yours from the foundation of the world. Think back to when I was hungry and you gave me food; when I was thirsty you saw to it that I had something to drink; when I was an alien and you treated me as family; when I was without clothing and you put some on me; when I was sick and you came to me; when I was in prison and you visited me there." Then those will say to him, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and fed you or thirsty and gave you to drink? When did we know you were an alien and treated you as one of us? Or that you had no clothing and gave you some? That you were sick or in prison, and came to see you" And the One will answer this way: "In truth, what you did for any of my own that others consider insignificant, you did for me, too." The One will then turn to those on his left and say, "You, my unfortunate friends, stand condemned and will go to the place of eternal flames stoked by the devil and his messengers. Go away! You should try to remember that when you saw me hungry you gave me nothing to eat, when I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, when I was an alien and you shunned me, when I was without clothing and you left me exposed, when I was sick and imprisoned and you forgot about me." Then they will say, "Well, Lord, just when was it that we would have seen you hungry or thirsty or shunned or unclothed or weakened or sick or in jail and did not try to help you?" Then the One will say to them, "I tell you that whenever you did not do for those of my family others consider unworthy of help, you were ignoring and shunning me." These [on the left] are headed for everlasting hell, while those [on the right] to everlasting paradise.

(Translated and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

 

 

 

 

Lectionary Year A ends, appropriately enough, with what might as well be called Matthew's Ninth Symphony. Matthew begins his crescendo toward it with the parable of the wedding banquet at 22:1ff. The themes progress: willingness, readiness, preparedness, timeliness -- all related to the close of the age. Judgment is implicit in each of the parables. Sometimes they go so far as to consign the unwilling, the unready, the unprepared and the tardy to the familiar outer darkness where, of course, there is much weeping and no shortage of teeth-gnashing -- all of which is summed up in the term "everlasting punishment" (κόλασιν αίώηιον) at the end.

 

The glory of this passage is its devotion to the ethical base of Jesus Judaism and to what, finally, is important. It is not doctrine; it is not dogma; it is not right cultic practice. It is human behavior. The sense of the passage is that salvation comes by works or it does not come at all as in James 1:27: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and in the same document at 2:20b: Faith without works is dead.

 

One is tempted to rationalize the judgment part of the passage to say that the reward of doing good is in its doing -- in other words, consequential. Human experience validates such a rationalization. Matthew had a different idea: Not doing good, that is, omitting to attend to the needs of other human beings is punishable by death. Jews and Christians are so accustomed to the "thou-shalt-nots" that a "thou-shalt-not-fail-to" comes as a rude surprise.

 

It is an amazing, Dante-esque scene Matthew crafts. It is global in scope and universal in its sweep. It reminds one of Luke's story of Dives and Lazarus in its unforgiving nature. It is in the end just such people as the Lazaruses of this world with their open sores, hollow eyes and body odor who are to be embraced first, last and always. If there be privilege, they are the privileged.

 

From a late first century CE overlook, this passage would have to be considered admonitory and cautionary. But what it represents is solid evidence that the Jesus Judaism emerging into the Christian church was fundamentally an ethical religion with far less emphasis on the jots and tittles of theology and liturgy than later practice would suggest.

 

 

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As the church stands poised at the end of one liturgical year and the threshold of another, the parable of the sheep and goats* furnishes a minor-key finale to a crashing and somewhat dissonant symphony, the final resolution of which will lie somewhere beyond the score and in the lives of those who have heard it and been moved by it. Its effect is stunning and fearsome.

 

Its challenge is daunting but not beyond human understanding for those who summon the nerve to be undaunted. It asks only that human beings look at their weakest and most vulnerable as bosom sisters and brothers. It asks that those with some reach out to those with none, that those with much understand that they must open their hands to those with little -- and to do so not as one brushing crumbs from a banquet table, rather as a maitre d'hotel provisioning such a table.

 

 

Notice: Readers of the Westar Institute/Jesus Seminar's journal The Fourth R will find an article by Harry Cook on pages 19-23 and 28 of the November-December 2014 issue (Vo. 27, No. 6). www.westarinstitute.org/resources/more-about-the-fourth-r