Preaching Paths 26 November 2023

Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

The parable of the separation of sheep and goats by the reigning Son of Man (Mt 25:31-46) brings to a close the lectionary gospel readings for Year A. It is the last of four eschatological parables Jesus addresses to his disciples. Its theme of division brings to mind other parables in Matthew, especially the wheat and weeds (Mt 13:24-30) and the sorting of the fish (13:47-51).

                  The Son of Man sorts out the mingled flocks of goats and sheep pastured together, just as many shepherds would have done at day’s end in rural Palestine. Who do these sheep and goats represent? Jesus refers to them as “all the nations,” a phrase that presents an interpretive challenge. The Greek idiom behind the phrase functions in the Septuagint and elsewhere to refer only to non-Jews (Gentiles). Yet if we limit “all the nations” to Gentiles (taking “my brothers [and sisters]” to mean Matthew’s ethnically Jewish community of believers), the parable functions only as a comforting allegory for Matthew’s persecuted community. Its broader ethical impact is all but erased. This may be why preachers since early centuries have interpreted “all nations” broadly—literally, “all the nations.” The ones they either serve or neglect are all of society’s most vulnerable. Arguably, this reading aligns with Matthew’s clear concerns, ethical and eschatological.

                  After the animals are separated, the shepherd-king renders judgment from his throne. He pronounces the sheep “Blessed of my father,” adding, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” There is no such blessing for the goats, only a curse: “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

                  The basis for judgment?  Unwitting service–or lack of such service—rendered to the Son of Man himself in situations of need. Both sheep and goats are astonished. When did they see the Son of Man hungry, thirsty, naked, without shelter, sick or imprisoned?? The shepherd-king replies that care or neglect shown to the least of these “little ones” was care or neglect shown to Jesus himself. The criterion that determines the fate of sheep and goats is not whether they recognized Jesus or not. (None of them did.) Nor does it have anything to do with professing faith in Jesus as Lord, or failing to. (The justification by faith/works debate is unknown to Matthew.) The question is clear: when you saw vulnerable people without food, water, clothing, shelter, health or freedom, did you take action?

                  It will be important in our preaching to make connections between our listeners and close-at-hand situations of human suffering they can actually engage. Our news sources feed us horrifying scenes of human suffering. Who can forget the small, bloodied bodies in an Israeli kibbutz, or rows of premature infants whose incubators have failed, struggling for breath in a Gaza hospital ward? We feel helpless; distance defeats us. We write checks, but cannot feel the fluttering human pulse.

                  Preachers will do their best this week to convey from their pulpits Jesus’ ethic of unstinting, indiscriminate mercy; yet, an equally important task will be to help our listeners discover accessible pathways taking them to sites of human struggle close to home. In Jesus’ day, even the wealthy were not entirely insulated from the sights and sounds of human desperation. Today, particularly in Western cities and suburbs, segregation of economic classes is the rule rather than the exception. Privilege distances many Jesus-followers from the grit of daily human struggle for life-sustaining necessities. The faces of hungry children halfway around the globe can be more real for us (and more compelling) than the faces of hungry children three miles from our own doorstep.

                  Jesus is as surely keeping company with the hungry and thirsty, the homeless and the wounded, who live near us, as with the hungry and homeless in war-ravaged Ukraine, Gaza, and Israel. We preachers connect Word and world by seeking out and telling local stories. We give human struggle a local address and a voice. Moreover, we need to help our congregations physically cross the gulf between themselves and human desperation. We cannot risk missing the chance to serve, unaware, the Son of Man, who will one day come in glory amid the praises of the angelic host.