READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Daniel 7:9-14
2 Peter 3:3-14
St. Matthew 25:31-46
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 1)
So, Jesus speaks to us today in His Penultimate Gospel and
says,
“Before him will
be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
Though there is righteousness and holiness and goodness
abounding in our Gospel reading for today, our primary thought is how to be a
sheep and not a goat. We see the King seated in judgement and we think that He
graciously reveals beforehand what’s on the test so that we can pass it.
Giving food to those who are hungry. Giving drink to those
who are thirsty. Giving welcome to those who are strangers. Giving clothes to
those having none. Giving comfort to those suffering in sickness and peace to
those suffering in prison.
And these follow quite nicely on the coattails of Jesus
words: “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor” (Mt 19:21).
For, if you sell all you have then you will have money for extra food. In fact,
you don’t need the extravagant lifestyle you are living right now
anyways.
You can learn to be happy and live with less. Your
grandmother and great-grandmother did it. They survived the “Great Depression”
with just a garden and some chickens. No big screen TVs, no game days, no cell
phones. Just people living in the moment and being decent. What a nicely laid
out plan. Thank you God.
But this holy compassion of yours dies miserably when
someone cries out, “Black lives matter” or some other social justice chant.
Then your charity stops, your heart closes, and your mind turns antagonistic.
“All lives matter”, or something else “clever”, is the response. But that is
not what Jesus says to you today.
He says the “least of these lives” matter. And if someone is
suffering and in pain, wouldn’t they fall under this category? Yes, social
movements can get out of hand and violence should be opposed, but don’t you
think they started because someone was hurting?
Jesus says today that hungry lives matter, thirsty lives
matter, hospitality matters, sick lives matter, and imprisoned lives matter.
Jesus intentionally goes out of His way to help specific groups of people
— the alienated, mistreated, and those facing injustice. It is of course, the
Christian thing to do, is it not?
And the trap has sprung. Your mind and heart have been
ensnared and you are caught in a loop of self-doubt and self-loathing. You know
you need to love your neighbor as yourself, but you just can’t bring yourself
to help the “other side”. You have heard God’s demands and you reject them
Repent. There is nothing satan loves more than being able to
toy with your moral sensibilities, especially when he can throw God’s Word into
the mix. You see the hungry and you pass them by. You see the thirsty, the
stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned and you cast the responsibility
upon someone else, for a few pieces of silver.
The hard truth of the world is that No Lives matter. Not
yours, not “theirs”, and not even the alienated, mistreated, and those facing
injustice. Why? Because all lives are sinful lives caught up in the never
ending loop of self-importance and self-justification. You and the demons seem
to think that simply by completing this little list from our Gospel reading, that
you will have attained righteousness.
In other words, you have heard the Gospel all wrong.
In the first place, what verbs in the Gospel could you
possibly even conceive of being in your hands to mold to your own actions?
Where in the reading is God commanding anything of you, in order that you earn
an inheritance or even become sheep?
Jesus is the Son of Man, coming in His Glory, not you. He is
sitting, He is gathering, separating, placing, and speaking. Jesus is the only
one Who is doing the actions here and by thinking there was morality and
justice to be gained, you lost it.
The morality and justice to be gained here is by hearing and
believing that Jesus is the Son of God. It is not receiving wages for some
goodness you think you created, but a handing out of inheritance. The Christian
is not a hired hand doing good and seeking justice in the world. The Christian
is an heir, by rights. That is by the rights of Christ. And anyway, you don’t
earn an inheritance.
Look to our Introit, Gradual, and Alleluia Verse. God saves
me. God hears my prayer. God helps. God upholds and He delivers. In the
Gradual, God calls to heaven and earth, that He may judge. And finally in the
Alleluia, the Lord ransoms. Jesus is doing all the actions.
In the second place, Jesus is not describing a plan of human
action, but a plan of His divine action. Do you not remember our Lord’s words
from the cross, “I thirst” (Jn 19:28)? Do you not remember that Jesus ate with
sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes (Mt 9:11)? That He was the Stranger
that came to His own and His own received Him not (Jn 1:11)? Or that they stripped
Him before His crucifixion (Jn 19:23), or that He was sick unto death, the
death of the cross (Phil 2:8), or that He was locked up in the prison of the
Tomb and death?
It is Jesus’ life that matters. He is the One without sin
and the only one to receive an inheritance from God. He is the Beloved Son Who
does all His Father commands. He stays pure among every sin and even remains
God in death.
What this means is that no matter how hard someone tries,
unless Jesus choses him, he will remain in his sin. Unless Jesus turns someone
into a sheep, he will never be a sheep. Unless Jesus gives faith, mercy, and
life there will be none. Jesus alone has everything.
What our Gospel reveals to us today is the Gospel that Jesus
will sit in Glory giving gifts. That is Christ’s glory. He is a Giver of gifts
to men. In the glory of His death and resurrection for sinners, He purchases
and wins an eternal inheritance for you, for free, for His Name’s sake.
Truly His Judgment seat is a Seat of Mercy. Though sin forces
Him to judge, His true purpose is to suffer and die that He might hand out the
benefits of His life and His actions. He comes to forgive, to seek, and to
save. This is why He describes Himself in this way today. Not so that we simply
ape Him, but so that we find Him!
The one True God will be serving. That is how we find Him.
We find the seat of mercy where the kingdom of heaven is being handed out to
forgiven sinners. We find the inheritance where the Son of God is truly given
in Word, Baptism, and His Supper. We find the camp of sheep when we believe
that Christ has given us faith to do so.
We do not make ourselves “sheep”. Jesus makes sheep. He
gives faith to goats and turns them into sheep. He baptizes sinners and turns
them into sons. He communes with rebels and renames them “blessed by my
Father”.
Jesus says, “For you have the poor with you always”
and the hungry and the thirsty, the unclothed, the sick, the imprisoned, and
also social problems. There will always be those things around you, not just to
show a sinful, corrupt world to you, but to give you a neighbor. So do good to
him.
“But Me you do not have always”, Jesus continues in
St. Matthew 26:11. You will always have opportunity to do good to those who
hate you, but churches come and go. Who’s to say Jesus will be in Accident
forever?
The difference is, in God’s presence He is the One doing
Good. He is the Servant in Divine Service and His inheritance He hands out,
even this day, in water and Word, Bread and Wine, Body and Blood. For He is not
just “everywhere”. He is seated in Glory handing out the Kingdom of God in Word
and Sacrament.
So Jesus’ Life matters and now, with His death and
resurrection for all flesh, all lives do matter, for His sake. Not because some
politician says so, but because God dies for all and all are deserving and made
worthy to receive forgiveness in Christ. All lives matter because Jesus’s life
matters, you have been baptized into that Life, and now, as sheep, get to lay
down your own lives.
Jesus creates worth and gives worth to everyone. Even to
you.
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