Matthew 25:31-46

Welcome and Scripture Reading

Around the time I was graduating seminary I was in a voracious reading phase. I had aspirations in an advanced degree in theology and I was reading as many books on he subject as I could.

But since these were very specific books and highly technical in nature, they weren’t books you could walk down to the library and check out. My only option in reading them were to buy them.

Since I was just graduating seminary, we didn’t have alot of disposable income. So I had a creative solution. I would stockpile gift cards and then go to Amazon and make purchases. That part wasn’t creative. It was how I went about it. I didn’t have enough money to buy everything so I would make a list. Actually I would create two lists.

In one list was a ranked order of how badly I wanted the books. I didn’t consider price. It was straight up want. And I assigned them a point value based on want. Say I had ten books: the one I wanted the most would be a ten. The second, nine. The tenth, one point.

Then I took those same books and ranked them according to price. The lowest being a ten. The highest being a one. Then I added up their point total. Whatever was at the top of the list I would add to my cart until I ran out of money.

To the outside observer this might seem silly. They’re just books! Does it really matter?

But to me it mattered. There was subtle differences and it mattered.

There are things in our lives like that. We obsess over subtle differences that might be hidden to someone else. It could be the differences between two shades of white when choosing a paint color for our kitchen. Or a bass line between two different jazz recordings.

Our passage today is about a reckoning, a choosing where a person makes a choice that appeared to be on subtle differences. Only they didn’t turn out to be subtle at all.

The New Revised Standard Version The Judgment of the Nations

The Judgment of the Nations

31 “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. 32 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, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 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; 35 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, 36 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.’ 37 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? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 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.’ 41 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; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 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.’ 44 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?’ 45 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.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Background: Red Letter Bible

I work at a Bible software company. This means I do almost all my Bible reading on a computer. When we read scripture at church, I follow along on our mobile device.

But just because I do my reading on a mobile device or on a laptop doesn’t mean I don’t own print Bibles.

And like a lot of people, most of the Bibles I’ve owned over the years are red-letter Bibles.

Red Letter Bibles are a print convention where anything Jesus said is in red print.

For individuals these Bibles are so common, it’s almost harder to buy a Bible that doesn’t have red letter text.

There are some pros and cons of this.

On the one hand: it can create the temptation to elevate what Jesus said over what Jesus did. In reality, we need to hold these two things together and be careful to understand Jesus through what he said and did, not just what he said. You can’t get a full understanding of Jesus by skipping ahead to the red letter parts.

But on the other hand there are some neat things you can pick up in a red letter Bible that would be hard to notice otherwise.

Our text today is from the book of Matthew. If you were a pick up a red letter Bible and just flip through the pages of Matthew one page at a time you’d notice something right away: there are some long, long, long sections that are nothing but red letters.

It turns out this is a literary feature of the Gospel of Matthew. Scholars strongly believe that in writing his story of Jesus, Matthew was writing primarily to a Jewish audience and he framed his story of Jesus through a Jewish lens. Specifically, he posited Jesus as a new type of Moses.

They noticed that there are five of these lengthy sermons Jesus. Five is important because five also being the number of books in the Pentateuch. The first five books of the Bible: genesis, exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

For Matthew, Jesus then is the new Moses presenting a new Torah, a new Law, a new Pentateuch.

And this passage comes from his final sermon. Not only that, it’s words from his final sermon that lead directly into his betrayal, the last supper, his arrest, his trial, his death, and his resurrection.

Anyone that is in the public speaking game or has received training in public speaking knows and has been trained to stick the landing. You want to end on a high, memorable note. Something that ties everything together. Something that wows the audience. Something that makes people remember.

And that’s what’s happening here. It ties together a whole web of interconnected mini-sermons.

Background: The Final Discourse

And this final set of sermons gets kicked off with a couple of comments and questions. Way back at the beginning of Chapter 24, Jesus is walking out the temple and his disciples point out the all the buildings. Presumably they were marveling at just how big they were and Jesus, as Jesus often does, throws out a cryptic statement:

The New Revised Standard Version The Destruction of the Temple Foretold

“You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Naturally this confused them. Think about it this way: imagine you’re walking out of the building with Seth. You turn and look at Seth and say something like “isn’t St. James beautiful?” And then Seth responds, “truly, one day it will no longer be here. It will collapse.”

I think your official response would he “huh? what are you talking about?”

Naturally, they come back to him later and ask him a question:

The New Revised Standard Version (Signs of the End of the Age)

“Tell us, when will this be , and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

That is:

When will the temple be torn down?

What are the signs of Jesus coming and the end of the age

And then Jesus starts talking and covers alot of ground centering what the end of the age or the end of the world will look like.

It begins with warnings:

Don’t be led astray

You’ll get persecuted

And then it gets worse: The temple will be torn down and the Son of Man will appear.

But from there he leads into some application: how do we prepare ourselves for the end of time:

Learn from Fig Tree: you know the season

Keep vigilant

Don’t be the unfaithful slave that doesn’t think the master will be returning

Be like the bridesmades who wait patiently

Use your talents

The Sheep and the Goats

And this leads us the conclusion of Jesus’ final sermons.

Maybe we can think of this as a commencement speech at a graduation or something like this. It’s sort of a parting speech to the disciples who had been with him for awhile. It’s the final thing he wants them to hear and remember before he faces his death.

As far as final words go: it’s both a ridiculously easy sermon to understand and a ridiculously hard to sermon to understand.

The Sheep and the Goats: Easy to Understand

On the one hand it’s easy to understand.

Jesus sets a scene in a cosmic throne room. And Jesus sits on the throne. Before him are all the nations.

And by “All the nations” he literally means “all the people”. This isn’t a Jewish setting. This isn’t a Christian setting. This isn’t a “everybody but the Jews and the Christians” setting. All the people stand before them.

And Jesus begins to separate them. And the process of separating them is likened to a shepherd separating sheep and goats.

I wasn’t raised on a farm. I don’t know much about animals. I know even less about Middle Eastern agricultural practices 2000 years ago so I must admit that this process is lost on me.

As I understand it, sheep and goats would graze together. And unless you were the shepherd it would be difficult to tell the difference between the two.

Generally speaking though, it was important to know the difference. They had different tolerance to night temperatures. Before the night fell the shepherd would take one group inside and leave the other outside.

The main point is that the shepherd knew how to separate them and did the separation.

And this is image of the separation that will take place.

On the one hand you have those that will be blessed by Jesus’ Father and inherit the Kingdom prepared for them.

On the other hand you had those that are cursed and will depart from Jesus into the eternal fire.

And just as a shepherd could distinguish between the sheep and the goats so too can Jesus distinguish between the two groups of people.

Those that will inherit the kingdom did some important things:

Gave Jesus food when he was hungry

Gave Jesus drink when he was thirsty

Gave Jesus clothes when he was naked

Took care of Jesus when he was sick

Visited Jesus when he was in prison

And the other group did not do those things.

But the ones who did these things, they were confused. They have no memory of this and ask “when did we do this?”

Jesus responds: “when you did it to the least of these, you did it for me?”

That even though they didn’t know they were doing it for Jesus, any service rendered to others is service rendered to Jesus.

When we get down to it, these are not complex things. These are meeting the basic needs of people.

And the results are modest.

It doesn’t say:

You ended hunger

You gave access to clean water to all people

You cured cancer

You liberated the falsely imprisoned

It’s more modest than that:

If someone was hungry, you gave them a bite to eat

If someone was thirsty, you went and got them a drink of water

If they were cold, you got them something to wear

If they were sick, you ran to the store and got them medicine

If they were in prison, you went and visited them.

This is doing what we can with what we have. This isn’t a sermon for the great doers of the world.

This is a sermon for the little doers of the world.

(reddit story of Bellingham restaurant who gave a mental ill woman a bite to eat on Thanksgiving)

This doesn’t require deep theological rigor. This is a simple truth that anyone can grasp: if someone is hungry you should give them something to eat.

That’s it That’s it.

And this isn’t something that belongs exclusively to religious folks. In gathering all the nations, Jesus is commending a fundamental human experience: we take care of people.

The Sheep and the Goats: Hard to Understand

So this passage is easy to understand.

Take care of people. That’s it. You don’t need to solve world problems. Whatever your station in life is: help people.

When I was a kid I saw one of the stupidest and greatest movies of all time: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure:

If you’ve never seen it: you should. It’s ridiculous and it’s fun. The plot is, and I can’t stress this enough, ridiculous. Bill and Ted are two California dudes who are going to flunk out of high school unless they pass their final history presentation. Little do they know this, but this is of utmost importance because through their band Wyld Stallions world peace will finally be achieved.

So in order to make sure they pass history time travellers from the future come back and help them pass. They do this but taking them back in time and bringing back important figures in world history for the presentation: Bethoven, Napolean, Aristotle, Joan of Arc.

They end up passing their test and we learn their message of world peace was simple: Be Excellent to Each Other

It was something two not so bright California teenage dudes understood and it changed the course of world history. Be excellent to each other.

Turns out it was simply a rehashing of Jesus message: be excellent to each other. Be excellent to each other in little things and in big things. Just be excellent to each other.

On the other hand: it’s hard to understand:

Discussions of hell and eternal separation. For many, this is uncomfortable language. It’s language that doesn’t jive with a God of love, mercy, forgiveness, and acceptance.

It also leans into a salvation that’s dependent on what we’ve done as opposed to what we believe. Deeply ingrained in the US Christian experience is a deep belief in “Justification by grace alone”. It’s this idea that’s prevelant in the writings of Paul that our salvation can never be attained by what we’ve done but rather it’s through the work of Jesus and our faith in Jesus that ensures our salvation.

This idea that “be excellent to each other is enough” flies in the face of what most of us are taught.

To that later point I’d like to add that the Bible isn’t a systematic theology. It’s a collection of different types of literature, written by different types of people at different points in history, with different purposes.

Largely, the Bible is the story of God. It tells the story of who God is. It tells the story of how God relates to God’s creation. And it tells how we are to live in light of who God is.

Thinking of it like that makes it less surprising that there are edges that can’t be synchronized into a wrapped present with a neat little bow. In this sermon, Jesus and by extension Matthew, is trying to drive home an important point. Actions have consequences. How we live our lives reverberates into the future. True living, faithful living, living that Jesus demands is a life of excellence to one another.

Much harder for me is this idea of separation. The Biblical scholar Ulrich Luz nails my feelings when he wrote:

“With the many texts that deal with judgment according to works [in Matthew], I waver back and forth between [on the one hand] a feeling of horror and a deep resistance to bringing together a howling and gnashing of teeth with the God in whom I believe, and [on the other hand] a suspicion that this painful and frightening idea of judgment might be necessary in order for us human beings to learn that we are not the lords of the world”

And this is hard for me. As much as I would like to say otherwise, Jesus is offering a warning. For those separated. It’s bad. It’s a bad, bad thing. We need to heed this warning.

And maybe we can use this uncomfortable feeling to fall back onto something we can control. This is the only time we meeting the phrase “eternal punishment” in Matthew and the entire New Testament. There isn’t a whole lot we can glean from it’s meaning.

So I caution us to not read too much into it but we should also take it seriously.

But to focus too strongly on the question of eternal separation is to miss the forest for the trees.

But we can glean alot of meaning from what we’re asked to do:

Feed the hungry

Give water to the thirsty

Clothe the naked

Take care of the sick

Visit people in prison

Conclusion

Next week is the season of Advent. Advent is a time of preparation. We prepare our hearts for the birth of Christ.

Thanksgiving though, marks the start of the season for many of us. It’s when we start making our lengthy “to do” lists: presents to buy, parties to attend, food to make, cards to send. It feels endless at times. But what if in all this we paused and looked for ways to do the simple things: if someone is hungry. We get them something to eat. If they’re sick. We take care of them. What if the best present we can give is simply to be excellent to one another?