The Jesus Seminar prints today’s Gospel story in black.
It’s the voice of
Matthew’s community, not Jesus.
They write it down, probably in
Syria,
shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem,
making a point about
what Jesus’ teaching means to them.
They look around and see the outcasts of
their world—
the poor and the weak, the ill and the abandoned.
Their own
dispersion
after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70
has
made them outcasts, too.
So they express what Jesus would say,
based on
where they are, what’s happening around them,
and how they apply Jesus’
teaching to their own
situation.
____________________________________________________
It’s
obvious, as Catholic scripture scholar Raymond Brown points out,
that “the
verdict is based on the treatment of deprived outcasts,”
the very treatment
Matthew’s community is experiencing
not only from the Romans
but also from
the leaders of their own Jewish religion.
They understand the message of
Jesus
to demand a very different standard from the “insiders,”
those
leaders both religious and political,
who pay more attention to the rich and
the powerful
than to the whole people of God
and the Way of
Jesus.
____________________________________________________
Matthew tells
his Last Judgment story in the context of monarchy,
but we don’t have that
context here in our lives today.
Pope Pius X set up this feast of Christ the
King in 1925
in the middle of a conflict between the Vatican and the state of
Italy
about who was in charge.
That controversy was settled four years
later with the signing of the
Lateran Pacts,
so that church-state context
is gone, too.
The worldview in Matthew’s time
allowed for kings and
thrones and angelic escorts on high.
That’s gone, too.
The facts of our
scientific cosmology
place the context of today’s story
firmly into the
world of our
imagination.
____________________________________________________
So
what’s left?
Not kings, not judgments in the sky.
What’s left are
outsiders and insiders,
exclusion and inclusion,
and the clear message of
Jesus:
nothing can separate us from God’s love
except our own failure to
love and serve others.
Our tradition is full of examples of people
easily
identified by the sheep-goat metaphor of today’s Gospel passage.
On the one
hand we have someone like Francis of Assisi kissing a leper,
and on the other
hand we have religious and civil leaders
conspiring to burn Joan of Arc at
the stake.
____________________________________________________
We can
still recognize those insiders and outsiders,
those sheep and
goats,
today.
Some high-profile sheep:
• Protesters this weekend
standing vigil at Fort Benning
to remember the victims of the School of the
Americas;
• TUSA, ABLE, and TCC—Toledoans United for Social
Action,
Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, Toledo Community
Coalition—
and other local groups
working to protect poor children from
lead paint
poisoning.
____________________________________________________
And
countless lower-profile sheep. I look out and see each of you:
• meeting the
emergency needs of the poor for food, clothes, and housing;
• contributing to
organizations like Catholic Charities
and the Campaign for Human
Development
and Habitat for Humanity
that empower the poor to build new
lives and better neighborhoods;
• tending to how and where you buy what you
need,
being careful that your purchases don’t support injustice
like child
labor, human trafficking, harmful labor practices,
or environmental
degradation; and
• taking the time to visit friends and family in hospitals
and nursing homes,
write to relatives and neighbors in college or in the
military or in jail,
and to listen to the joys and sorrows of the people you
meet along the
way.
____________________________________________________
And what about
the goats?
In Matthew’s story, neither the sheep nor the goats
knew what
they were doing.
They both ask when it was that they did or didn’t do the
right thing.
But the image Matthew uses
makes the sheep and goats clearly
distinguishable,
if only they would look around.
Just as we can easily
tell the difference between a robin and a turkey,
so we can look around our
world
and see who’s being excluded
and who’s doing the excluding
and
who’s doing the including,
or who’s not being served
and who’s failing to
serve them
and who’s trying to serve
them.
____________________________________________________
The hard part,
I think,
is looking in the mirror
to see if I am being a sheep or a
goat.
And the hopeful part
is seeing that God is in
everyone,
everywhere,
so there’s always another connection with the Divine
Presence
as we continue along the Way.
--
Holy Spirit Catholic
Community
at 3535 Executive Parkway (Unity of Toledo)
Saturdays at 4:30
p.m.
Sundays at 5:30 p.m.
www.holyspirittoledo.org
Rev.
Dr. Bev Bingle, Pastor
419-727-1774
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