Matthew 25:31-46

The Gospel reading for today was the last lesson that Jesus taught in the Gospel of Matthew, so there is a sense of urgency about it.

It is one of those Judgment Day scenes; in fact it’s the one we refer to in our Apostles Creed: when we say Jesus shall come again to judge the living and the dead.

What we see here is the ultimate audition. All the nations are gathered here; all those alive, and probably all those who have ever lived, stand there waiting for word on who makes the cut.

We know from our daughter the almost unbearable stress that comes with auditions. And it’s the same thing that goes on backstage at tryouts for American Idol, at NFL football training camps, at auditions for opera or a prestigious orchestra, or even at job interviews.

I don’t know how they stand the suspense, the anxiety of hoping against hope to hear their name called.

You set your heart on something that could decide your entire future, and you pour yourself into making that dream happen. Now the day of decision has arrived. Here comes the moment of truth that we’ve all been waiting for: did you make it or not?

Take the anxiety of those scenes and multiply it a hundred times. The stakes here are infinitely higher, because we’re talking about the ultimate prize: do you make heaven or don’t you? Do you get to spend eternity with God, or does the hammer come down and you face the unthinkable alternative? Could we have a drum roll? The envelope please.

This story does not tell us how the news is broken to the hopeful aspirants. Just that through some lightning round of judgment, the winners and losers are separated. On one side we have the sheep, those who made the cut.

On the other we have the goats. They are the ones who get the "we’re sorry, you didn’t make it, but thanks for playing."

Jesus constantly comes up with the unexpected, and do you know what is absolutely astounding about this scene? It turns out nobody understood the rules. Not the winners, not the losers. This most crucial of events, on which so much is riding; and nobody was clear on what the rules were.

Jesus announces that the division between sheep and goats is based on how you treated Jesus when he was in need. How did you treat Jesus when he was hungry and thirsty? How did you treat him when he was a stranger, when he had no clothing to keep warm, when he was sick, when he was in trouble?

In those situations, he says, the sheep treated him well, with mercy; and because of that, they’re in. The goats did not, and so they don’t make the cut.

The problem is, no one can remember those situations ever happening. Even more perplexing, these are situations that don’t make any sense. They aren’t realistic; they couldn’t have happened.

The risen Lord doesn’t need food or water or clothing. God isn’t a stranger; the whole world is his—God is never outside his own comfort zone. God doesn’t get sick, and almighty God certainly is not going to be incarcerated.

The criteria are so obviously bogus that everyone cries foul. How can you judge us based on something that never happened? What kind of justice is that? It is so unfair that there is something very close to a rebellion going on. Standing before the throne of the Almighty All-Wise and Holy Supreme Being, everyone on both sides tosses out the red flag to challenge the decision on the field.

Now we would expect that reaction from the goats. They got the short end of the stick and they have so much to lose. They complain bitterly that they are being condemned for something they didn’t do. They have lost out on eternal life because of something that never happened.

Why weren’t they judged on real things, important things, like how much they worshipped God and honored God, and how strongly they believed?

There is a legend about J.C. Penney that when he was hiring someone for a management position, he first took them out to dinner. If the prospective employee salted or peppered any of his food before tasting it, he was eliminated from consideration.

The disappointed applicants never saw that coming; they were focused on the important things: poise, competence, experience, resume. To get the axe because they salted their potatoes? It seemed so unfair. But Penney’s reasoning was that he did want to hire someone who acted before knowing all the facts.

We seem to have the same situation here. Whatever happened to John 3:16? Whatever happened to baptism and belief in Jesus as the two requirements for eternal life? Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be all about? Those things never get brought up here; they are not even mentioned as factors in the decision. We don’t know what the sheep or the goats believed, if anything.

There are no doubt some very holy people, very religious people among the goats. People with long and impressive resumes in church life. Yet they can’t even get a foot in the door because of hypothetical situation that never happened.

So they’re not only distraught, they are angry. They feel betrayed. They file a protest. You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game, and decide an issue as crucial as eternal life based on some weird criteria that nobody saw coming.

Again, we would certainly expect that kind of reaction from the losers. But isn’t it interesting that we get the same baffled reaction from the winners? They do not respond with an outburst of glee and joy and relief and high fives and giddy hilarity at having the ultimate burden lifted from their shoulders.

Instead, they stand there opened mouthed in shock. They don’t understand what just happened.

You would think they would just shut up and accept their good fortune. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. If that’s the way Jesus wants to play the game; hey, it worked out well for us so just let it go.

But they are so bewildered by what’s gone that they can’t keep silent. "What in the world are you talking about?" they ask. "If those are the rules, the requirements, how did we get in? We never saw you in those situations you describe, and we didn’t do what you said we did."

Jesus answer: when you acted as you did toward the least of those in my family, you did it to me.

You’ve all been around people who have nothing to eat, who are homeless, who are strangers and without friends in the world. You have been around sick people and those in prison.

I am in and with every human being on this earth, Jesus says. And I am especially with those for whom life is difficult. With those who are suffering in pain and need. That’s where you can best find me. When you show love to those people, you are showing love to me.

This judgment day scene is so unsettling because no one saw it coming. Not the sheep, not the goats. Nobody really understood the rules. In other words, no one in this story made it to heaven because they followed the rules so well. Because they demonstrated great mastery of the requirements for eternal life.

No one in this story was rejected from heaven because of failure to follow the rules. Because they failed to meet the requirements for eternal life.

The sheep got in not because they mastered a set of requirements, but because Jesus changed their lives. They became people who lived in the grace of their Lord. They were living so fully in the goodness of God that it didn’t occur to them to act any way other than what they did toward their fellow humans.

An old-school pastor told me of the time when he was lectured by a member of the church council that visiting the sick and the troubled was his job. The pastor responded: I don’t visit the sick and the hurting because it’s my job. I do it because that’s what Christians do.

The sheep in this story weren’t doing what they did in hopes of a reward; in fact they did not even seem to understand that they were going to get a reward for doing it. When they fed the hungry, they were just doing what Christians do.

The goats failed to get in because for one reason or another Jesus was not able to be a part of their lives, and could not change their lives. Many of them were apparently astounded at getting shut out. They may have protested that they worked very hard to please the Lord. That while they were not perfect, they certainly were more devout than many of those sheep that got let in.

The issue here is focus and motive. The goats were concerned with trying to impress the Lord. There is a big difference between trying to impress the Lord and living in the Lord. When you try to impress someone, the focus is on the self. The focus is on how high you can raise yourself in the other person’s eyes. The focus is on how well you can play the game to get what you want out the situation.

Eternal life is a crucial goal. How well can you impress God so that you can get those benefits?

There was a great scene in the first episode of the television show West Wing, in which Sam Seaborn learns that the daughter of his boss will be visiting the White House along with her school class. Sam is desperate to curry favor with her to earn points with the boss. Although he does not know which one she is, he tries so hard to make a good impression while talking to the class that he makes something of a fool of himself--to the point where the exasperated teacher pulls him out of the room and asks what is wrong with him.

Sam confesses that he’s out to impress his boss’s daughter and makes it clear that he’s not interested in impressing anyone else, especially not the teacher. Finally, he begs her to tell him which member of the class is his boss’s daughter.

The teacher answers, icily: "That would be me."

Had he simply acted with concern and compassion for all people, Sam would have impressed the boss’s daughter. By having a very narrow and predetermined idea of who she was, he lost sight of her. By focusing so hard on trying to impress her, for his own benefit, he lost sight of who he was, and so managed to alienate her.

The goats have been trying very hard to impress God so that they can earn their way to heaven. They have this picture of God as this person who demands sacrifice and rituals and stern and rigid codes of behavior. That is the God they have in mind as they fall all over themselves in their attempts to impress.

They think they are impressing God by showing how righteous they are. They think they are impressing God by quoting and passing on pious sentiments. They push aside the hungry and the lost and the weak and the powerless so they can focus on the more important task of impressing God by promoting a Christian agenda. They ask with righteous indignation, "Where is God in our society?"

And in the fingers of the hungry and the powerless and the hurting—the people they have ignored, God taps them on the shoulder and says, "That would be me."

In this vision of judgment, the people stand there nervously waiting for God to make the call, to divide themselves into sheep and goats. Only to find that this eternal life business is not an audition; it is not a prize to be won by impressing God.

The Judgment Day in this scene is not what anyone expected. It is not the ultimate turning point. In fact, nothing really changes on Judgment Day. God doesn’t make any decisions. It isn’t God who creates the division between sheep and goats. The goats have already made that choice. They decided they would rather impress God than live with God.

The message of this story is that there is no audition for eternal life. Eternal life is living with God. The invitation is given to all of us. We either want to be with God or we don’t. If we are not interested in living with God on this earth, if we don’t like the company God keeps in this world, we show that we aren’t much interested in living with God. And so we won’t.

The sheep who enter into the joy of the master at judgment discover that they were already living in the joy of their master. The good news for them is in discovering that nothing is going to change on judgment day and that, through God’s grace, they can continue to live with God forever.