Lectionary Year A, Proper 29 - Christ the King: November 24, 2002

Today, we have heard the judgment parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew's gospel. Continuing with the theme of animals, I want to tell you a story. [1]

One upon a time, there was a small raccoon named Rick. Rick loved to read, and one day he couldn't find his book. He stomped over to his older sister and growled, "Find my book! I've looked everywhere for it, and I can't find it!" Lydia, his sister, shrugged her shoulders and asked Rick where he was when he last read from the book. He shouted at her, "Look, if I knew that, I'd have found it by now!"

Lydia sighed, because Rick was always having angry fits over his problems. Normally Rick was pretty good natured, but he would never politely ask for help, and he didn't go out of his way to help any of the other forest creatures. He seemed to prefer to remain angry and frustrated over not being able to fix or find or do what he wanted.

Lydia tried again to help Rick picture where he was the last time he read from his book, but Rick just blew up. He cried so hard that Lydia couldn't make out what he was trying to say. This make Rick even madder, and he stomped away, slamming the front door hard as he went outside. Lydia went into her room to play.

Later Rick came back into the house, and saw Lydia having fun in her room. This made him mad all over again. He saw the book she had been reading, and so he took it figuring it was easier to take her book than find his own. Besides, by taking her book he could get back at her for not helping him.

The next day when Lydia was searching for her book and asked him is he had seen it, Rick said in a high, squeaky, mocking voice that pretended to be like Lydia's, "Where is the last place you had it?" Lydia narrowed her eyes at him and her tailed bristled into a big puff. "Did you take my book?" she demanded. "Why would I want your silly girl's book?" said Rick.

A few days later Rick couldn't find his favorite blanket to sleep with, and he began to stomp and growl as usual. He whined to his mother, "Find my blankie for me!" His mother shook her head and said, "Enough of your shouting. Time to take responsibility for your own things. I will help you look, but you are old enough to take keep track of things for yourself. And do not be so rude." Rick made an angry "HUMPH!" and stomped away. His mother followed after him, and sent him to his room to think about how unkind he had been. But all Rick could think about was how he could make his mother unhappy. He wanted revenge.

So Rick snuck out of his room, went into his mother's room, and stole her favorite silver hair brush and hid it with his sister's book, under his bed. His anger had made him exhausted, so he crawled into bed and fell asleep.

As Rick slept, he began to dream. In the dream he was sitting on his bed, reading his sister's icky girl book, and holding his mother's brush on his lap. A raccoon came into his room to visit. This was no ordinary raccoon; he did not have a black mask on his face. "I am Swiper," said the strange raccoon. "I have come to visit you." "Go away," said Rick. "Where is your mask, anyway?" "Better to ask if you know why you have a mask?" said Swiper. Rick considered this and replied, "It's just there. All raccoons have them."

"No, Rick, it is there because of my angry, selfish, taking ways," Swiper began. "When I was young, I was angry too – just like you. I would steal or smash things that belonged to others. That's how I got my name, 'Swiper.' When I walked through the forest I did want to help my fellow creatures, because I did not understand that I was an important part of the forest that the Creator made. I thought that everything in the forest was put there for me. I also wanted to be perfect because I thought my parents, and my brothers, and my sisters were perfect. Everything seemed to be so easy for them. I wanted to be like them. I thought that the Creator wanted me to be perfect. When I felt I wasn't measuring up, I would get angry, and I would act up; steal stuff."

Rick was getting upset, because he had thought the same things. "But it is easier for them. They can reach things I can't! They can figure everything out faster than me."

Swiper laughed. "Have you every considered that things were not always easy for them? Perhaps they too struggled and learned for themselves, and that is why they can do things you cannot? One day, I noticed that when I stopped being angry, my brothers and sisters were more eager to help me. We all seemed to get along better. I even thought the forest seemed prettier. Deep inside I began to feel that I was connected to the forest, my mother, my father, and my brothers and sisters in ways I never knew possible. One day, the Creator of All Things said to me, 'Swiper, you have finally learned that by reaching out to others in compassion you will receive compassion'." Swiper explained that all raccoons after him would wear the mask as a reminder that they are creatures of the Creator who although they were once stealing, selfish creatures, it was possible for them to change. It was possible for them to show compassion because they felt compassion; to love one another because they felt loved. They could honor all creatures in the forest – even the ones who were not raccoons.

"Now it's your turn Rick," Swiper stated. "You must give back what you took, and begin the mission of teaching others the truth, thereby taking away revenge and stealing. Can you?"

Suddenly Rick began to feel important, and very grown up. Being given a mission was quite something. It was not an order. He was not to do this work out of fear of punishment. He had a mark. It was a special mark. That is what the mask was – a special mark.

As Christians we all wear a special mark. It is not as visible as the mask on a raccoon, but it is an indelible mark. Our mark comes at Baptism where we are marked as Christ's own forever. Not only are we marked as Christ's own – we are also given a mission. Our mission is to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

In our everyday lives we meet all kinds of people – just like Rick met all kinds of animals in the forest. Maybe, like Rick, we have met goats and sheep. In today's parable, Matthew tells us that at the end of time, the Son of Man will, as Christ the King, separate people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. While it is true that Jesus' parables in Matthew "are rife with images of separation: the outer darkness is the final destination of the man without the wedding garment and of the servant who buried the one talent; the wrong side of the door is the place for the foolish virgins." [2] But in the story today of the Great Judgment, we need to hear Jesus' words, and hear them carefully. Jesus says that "he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." A shepherd in Jesus' time kept both goats and sheep. Goats were valued animals, not evil ones. Indeed goats are prescribed as acceptable Passover sacrifices in the book of Exodus (Ex 12:5). The sheep and the goats all belong to Jesus – the good shepherd.

Today's parable is the culmination of Matthews parables on the Kingdom of God. And with nearly every one, Matthew makes clear that they key to salvation is "responsibility." For example, Matthew compared the kingdom of God to a wedding banquet for the king's son. One guest failed to appear in his wedding garment, and the King had him thrown into the outer darkness. Matthew tells us in that parable that even when something is freely given to us, we have a responsibility. Matthew says "Look people, you have been invited to eat with God at God's table! Act accordingly!" The underdressed guest failed to rise to the occasion and demeaned the king. In the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, Matthew tells us that it was the responsibility of the bridesmaids to prepare themselves accordingly for the occasion. Five of the bridesmaids remembered to bring extra flasks of oil and five did not. Matthew wanted his community to understand clearly that it is the responsibility of all of those who benefit from God's grace to respond to that grace accordingly.

Through God's good grace, Jesus took all of the evil of the world onto Himself. The final judgment is not a destruction of evil, it is, as Robert Capon puts it, "a sequestration of evil in the Son of God." [3] Jesus is life to all peoples: He is the shepherd of the goats and the sheep. They are all in his flock together. Matthew is not portraying Jesus "as having taken off the velvet glove of grace to put on brass knuckles." [4] Matthew is not turning the Good Shepherd into a wolf.

Matthew is not telling us to dread God. What Matthew has done by parading one silly character after another before us in his parables of improbable plots is to shock us into recognizing the stupidity of unfaith and lack of trust in the divine love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. The wedding guest without his garment, the bridesmaids who leave the banquet at midnight to buy oil – all of these are "cartoon characters designed to elicit a smile at the preposterousness of their behavior. We identify with these characters because we too are preposterous. We spend our lives invoking upon ourselves all sorts of imagined necessities – creating God in the image of our own fears." [5]

The response Matthew wants to evoke from us is faith. Pure and simple faith. Not good works. The Son of Man who separates the goats from the sheep does not commend the sheep for compiling a splendid moral record, but that they had a relationship with himself. "Amen" he says, "I say to you inasmuch as you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." The Son of Man "praises them for trusting him to have had a relationship with him all along." [6]

How do we know we are in relationship with God? I'm not sure we can really ever know. When the Son says "for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink," the righteous answer him, "Pardon me your Highness, when exactly did we do that?" They didn't know. The righteous didn't know they were in relationship anymore than the cursed knew they were despising the King when they didn't so minister. "Knowledge is not the basis of anybody's salvation or damnation. Action-in-dumb-trust is." [7] Martin Luther once said, No [one] can know or feel he is saved; one can only believe it." [8] At then end, we will be judged by our response in faith or unfaith to the Savior – Christ the King. In the end, Jesus will affirm His gracious relationship with all of creation – and honor what the sheep and the goats did with that truth from their side. More than anything we just need to trust Jesus and the passion He has for us.

When Rick, the little raccoon, awoke the next morning, he looked at his reflection in the mirror for a long time. He looked at the mark – the mask – in a new way. He felt profoundly different. Rick mended his ways and became the next in a long line of dreamers who believed he mattered and that his life had new meaning. He knew that he would spend his days helping all of the creatures of the forest feel and respond with trust and faith in the perfect and infinite love of the Creator.

Thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord GOD: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats.

Let those who seek my life be ashamed
and altogether dismayed; *
let those who take pleasure in my misfortune
draw back and be disgraced.

Let those who say to me "Aha!" and gloat over me turn back, *
because they are ashamed.

Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; *
let those who love your salvation say for ever,
"Great is the LORD!"

1 Corinthians 15:20-28

In fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For "God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "All things are put in subjection," it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.

Matthew 25:31-46

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."

[1] The story of Rick the raccoon was inspired by Lisa Suhay. "Racoon Unmasked." Tell Me Another Story. (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2001) 11-20.

[2] Robert Farrar Capon, S.J. The Parables of Judgment. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989), 171.

[8] Martin Luther as quoted in Robert Farrar Capon, 176.

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