SERMON FOR CHRIST THE KING, NOVEMBER 22, 2020          TEXT: MATTHEW 25:31-46
          According to the ecclesiastical calendar, today is the last Sunday of the church year. Next week we start a new one with the season of Advent, when we prepare to celebrate the Lord’s first coming as the baby born in Bethlehem. But we end this year with Christ the King Sunday, looking to the future when he will come again as victorious Lord of all to judge the living and the dead.
          Over the last several weeks we have heard Jesus repeatedly warning his disciples about the end times. He has admonished them to be vigilant and to be prepared, lest they be taken by surprise and find themselves rejected, consigned to the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Today’s Gospel about the separation of the sheep and the goats is the last in the series of parables Jesus uses to call his hearers to account, and according to Matthew, it is the last piece of the Lord’s public teaching before his passion begins. How surprising that, with these warnings still fresh in their ears, Judas proceeds to betray Jesus, Peter to deny him and the rest of the disciples to scatter as the Lord goes to his death. Even more remarkable is the fact that when the risen Jesus returns, he does not refuse to acknowledge them. Nor does he condemn them. Rather, he claims them as his own and promises to be with them always, even to the end of the age.
          In today’s story it is not Jesus’ followers or the Jewish people who are being judged. “All the nations will be gathered before [the King],” we are told, “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 his left.”    “The nations” is a traditional term for the gentiles. In this final parable Jesus is concerned with the response of those outside the community of believers. He has warned his followers of the persecution awaiting them. Matthew would have turned to the traditions he inherited to strengthen and empower his church as it faced hostility and danger. One commentary on this text concludes: “Judgment means that things will be set right. But here, it also means more. The community of faith is given a preview of what is to come and in the process now sees outsiders, the nations, in a different light. God will remember their suffering in persecution. God will also remember the kindness, the mercy, the love from those whom they might think are enemies to them, to the church, ‘the least of these.’”
          We do not face deadly persecution for our faith, although in other parts of the world Christians do. We do know what it is to be misrepresented, sometimes mocked, often dismissed as irrelevant or condemned as toxic. And certainly some who claim the name of Christian deserve such censure. It isn’t hard to respond in kind, to slip into an insider versus outsider, us-against-them way of thinking. The vision of the sheep and the goats pushes us to reflect beyond that divide. The three preceding parables challenge believers to be prepared for their Lord’s coming; this final parable offers a universal prospect. When the Lord comes again, he will come not just for the church but for all the nations.
          It is striking that after the repeated exhortations in the earlier parables to vigilance, preparation and mindfulness, in this last one both the sheep and the goats are taken by surprise. Neither recognize themselves in the King’s pronouncement. Both are puzzled and ask, “Lord, when was it that we saw you . . . ?:” The sheep and the goats are distinguished as those who are righteous and those who are not, those who have done good works for others in need and those who have left those works undone. However, what divides them unconditionally is not the achievement of moral discipline; it is the practice of mercy. In Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice, the character Portia describes its power in her famous speech to the aggrieved merchant Shylock:
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Or as Jesus teaches in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” The impulse to see with the eyes of compassion and to act can become reflexive, unconscious habit. So can the impulse to see selectively or not at all. And so the truth takes both the sheep and the goats by surprise.
              In the mercy of Almighty God Jesus Christ was given to die for us. For his sake God forgives us all our sins and renews our lives each day. We know mercy up close and personal, what it looks like, how it feels. Who better to carry its healing power into the world? Who better to defy the cold indifference to suffering so evident all around us?    And then, when the Son of Man comes in his glory, we will be ready indeed. Amen.