The scriptures and I are at the risk of repeating ourselves - here in one of the most beautiful and beloved passages of the Gospel. For we are both in danger today of suggesting that there are only two kinds of people in the world. And that means that we are in danger of concluding today that Jesus is teaching that there are only two kinds of people in the world: sheep and goats; or that there will be, on Judgement Day: those on the king’s right, and those on his left hand.
Oh, I hear you say, we already know how this sermon goes; get over it already, and come up with a new idea. But I can’t get over it.
Use the internet and discover for yourself the commonly advanced theory that Jews and Arabs are two kinds of people: both descendants of Abraham. Jews, the theory goes, are descendants of Isaac, who was the son born to Abraham by his wife Sarah in her old age. But Arabs, by this reckoning, are descendants of Ishmael, who was the bastard son of Abraham, born by Hagar, the Egyptian slave-girl of Sarah. Irony sometimes comes in layers. By this popular reckoning, Jews and Arabs have a common ancestry in Abraham. And the story of the rejection of Ishmael, and his exile, along with his mother, into the wilderness, provides a ready-to-wear conflict between Arabs and Jews, deep-seated in the mists of religious memory, that can easily lead to a biblical view that, where the children of Abraham are concerned, there are only two kinds of people: the descendants of Isaac, who were God’s chosen people, and the descendants of Ishmael, who, in the end, were not. Neither the historical nor the Biblical record actually support this dichotomy, but it sure does make for a good story. And it sure does make for a good grudge!
Of course, we know how our own Christian tradition has excelled in false dichotomies: suggesting that there are only two kinds of people, no matter where you look. Christians or non-Christians, whether they be Jews, Muslims, or anybody else. The righteous or the unrighteousness. The right kind of Christians, or the wrong kind. The saved and those who will be left behind. The chosen or those who are not chosen. The elect or those who are un-elected. The pre-destined, and everybody else. The baptized, and the un-baptized. We have gotten very, very good at suggesting that there are only two kinds of people in the world. We are so good at it that maybe it’s going to take more than one sermon to undermine this easy categorization. Hence, the repetition.
“When the Son of Man comes in 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.” What could be clearer? There are two kinds of people in the world: sheep and goats.
“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.” These are the sheep.
“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.” These are the goats.
Two kinds of people.
I don’t really know how genetically similar goats and sheep are to one another. Pretty close, I imagine. Sheep are grazers: eat grass. Goats are browsers: eat leaves. Both have horns. And both sheep and goats will butt one another with their horns. I’m informed by a farmer, however, that “a goat will often stand on its hind legs, posture, and then come down on its opponent. A sheep simply runs straight at its opponent and ‘rams’ him or her. In a fight with a goat, a sheep can easily win while the goat is busy posturing.”*. I feel like that information constitutes a parable, but I’ll leave it to you to figure it out.
“Oh, Sean,” I hear you say, “enough with the two kinds of people in the world. We get it! It’s not like people are hurting each other over this stuff! It’s not like they’re killing each other.”
No, no one, anywhere, is fighting with anyone else on the basis of the premise that you can divide the world, or significant parts of it, into two kinds of people - sheep and goats - and that maybe God already has made such distinctions. And certainly, no one in this country is using that kind of short-circuited logic - that you are either with the sheep or the goats - to interpret the world. No one would do that. Irony sometimes comes in layers.
Here’s something I notice in this beautiful passage of Matthew’s Gospel: before the people of all the nations stand before the king on Judgment Day (which is when I am assuming this event takes place): no one has suspected that the king would sort people this way: some people on his right hand and some on his left. Before the day of judgment no one knew precisely how the king’s judgment would be rendered. And even after they have been sorted, thusly, neither the sheep nor the goats understands exactly why they have been so classified. You can tell this by the questions they ask.
“When was it,” the righteous ask, “that we saw you hungry or thirsty, a stranger or naked, sick or in prison, and we cared for you?” Even after being sorted, neither the sheep nor the goats can see clearly why they have been so identified. They can’t account for their own classification. It still isn’t obvious to them that there are only two kinds of people in the world. “When was it,” ask those who are accursed, “that we neglected you, Lord?”
The issue is not that they had failed to know whether they were properly classified as sheep or goats while they lived. The real issue is that they didn’t know how to serve the Lord, or even where to find him, while they lived. And the real issue wasn’t whether you lived as a browser or a grazer, whether you ate leaves or grass, or how you used your horns, whether you postured or rammed.
No, it turns out that in the presence of the king, there is only really one variable that matters in sorting you and me out on judgment day. And that variable has to do with the sufferings of others went unaddressed, and what you or I did about it.
It’s almost like, if Jesus is suggesting there are only two kinds of people in the world, that the two kinds of people are you (or me), and everyone else. And guess where God says you will find him, in order to serve him? It is not in the mirror.
I don’t actually believe for one minute that Jesus wants us to conclude that there are only two kinds of people in the world. I do believe that Jesus knows how easily we reach such conclusions, and that he wants us to consider carefully that we are mistaken.
I think you have to read this passage hard not to conclude that there are only two kinds of people in the world. It’s like you have to read this passage when you arrive at a narrow rope bridge that crosses a ravine. You are left with the possibility that there are only two kinds of people in the world - those who cross the bridge and those who don’t. But what if Jesus is determined to get every single person across that bridge?
I think Jesus knows how good we are at binary thinking. And I think he is willing and able to use our propensity for binary thinking to try to teach us something. And I think we are awfully good at taking whatever God gives us and using it the wrong way. And I think that Jesus might be inclined to say, “OK, if you want to insist that there are only two kinds of people in the world, let’s consider what that would look like.”
So, there’s Jesus, at the entrance to the bridge that crosses the ravine that will separate the sheep from the goats. He’s reminding us of our propensity for binary thinking. He knows how easy it is for us to believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world. And I think he wants to get every singe one of us across that bridge.
I don’t know where the entrance to the bridge is. I don’t know if it’s over there at the Font, or if it’s over in the Jordan River. I don’t know if it exists in our own dimensions of time and space. I only know that when the Son of Man comes in his glory, he will come like a shepherd. And I suppose he is capable of separating us all into two kinds of people - sheep and goats. But I strongly suspect that he wants to get every single one of us across the bridge, and to the other side of the ravine; that he wants to lose nothing of all that has been given to him.
Having crossed the bridge with him, won’t it be something if Jesus can say to us, “You always suspected that there are only two kinds of people in the world, and you might have been correct. But here we are, all of us together on the far side of the bridge, every single one of you made it, because on the other side of the bridge, you decided that the only two kinds of people in the world were you and everybody else. And you decided to care about the concerns of somebody else, which is exactly how everybody manages to get across this bridge!”
And the divisions and distinctions between sheep and goats are left behind on the other side of the bridge. And all of us can move on together to inherit the kingdom, where there are not two kinds of people, there is only one shepherd, and one flock.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
26 November 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
*Shanna Duck on quora.com