“The Great Sorting” Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church on November 26th, 2017 Today, is the last Sunday of the Church year. Next week we will begin the “watchful waiting” of Advent, but this last Sunday we anticipate the “Reign of Christ”, the coming of “the Prince of Peace”. And so, today, we look back on Jesus’ last days on earth. Jesus is in Jerusalem with the disciples, his friends and followers. What he has been foretelling, in the verses leading up to today’s scripture, is troublesome to say the least. He has predicted that the temple will be destroyed, and there will be wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes. Nations will rise up against nations. There will be “false messiahs” and all kinds of confusion. Jesus tells his disciples that in a few days he will be taken away and crucified. They will be left alone, to face the chaotic coming times, left with the promise that in the fullness of time Jesus will return to them in glory. I think the disciples could be excused for being worried. They are facing the prospect of being disconnected from Jesus, their source of comfort and guidance. They are soon to be cast loose, like sheep without a shepherd. So Jesus gives them a vision, of how things will be in the end, that they will know where to find him while he is gone. It is a vision of the end of days, in which he “the son of man” will return in glory, appearing both as a reigning monarch and a shepherd. All nations are gathered around him and he is sorting sheep from goats. This is how Jesus’ followers, appear in this final scene - either as sheep or goats. The criterion for sorting is simple. In the time that Jesus was gone from the earth did they, or did they not,
The sheep have done all of these things, but the goats have not. Both the sheep and the goats are confused and surprised. "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” Both the sheep and the goats ask the same questions. And the answer is the same in both cases: Jesus has been with them all the time present to them in the hungry, the naked, the stranger, the sick and those in prison. The difference is that the sheep showed mercy and compassion while the goats did not. When I hear this story I anxiously wonder how I will be sorted. Like a nervous first-year Hogwarts student, faced with the sorting hat and hoping for Gryffindor, I try to imagine how I will get into the sheep’s group
This kind of anxiety gets me nowhere. If I am totaling my acts of mercy this way, balancing the positive column against the negative, it seems unlikely I am really a sheep. Am I more concerned about my own standing in the final judgment, being sure to recognize Jesus, than simply loving my siblings on the margins? But, of course, whether I am a sheep or a goat doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Jesus is always present in surprising ways. This makes me think of an occasion when I was a working as a chaplain intern in a long-term care facility. I hadn’t been working there long, when my supervisor told me there was a new woman on the unit, close to the end of her life. She was quite isolated. Could I add her to my list of visits? I wanted to be sure to get to her, so later that afternoon I made my way to this woman’s room at the end of the hallway. Her mind was confused from the disease she was suffering and the treatments she had received. She had not been communicating well with the nursing staff and the other patients. It seemed that they had decided to leave her alone. In her stark room there were a few pictures of good-looking well-dressed family members. But it seemed they, also, had decided to leave her alone. And so she looked up to me from the hospital bed, and threw her arms up in despair, “I never expected to end up like this!” she cried. After we had sat for a while, the darkness of the evening was drawing in, I offered to say a blessing for her. I felt sadly inadequate. As a Jewish patient she deserved a well-spoken Hebrew blessing, but that was beyond me. I pulled out my booklet of Jewish blessings, and read in English. Our eyes met and hers welled with tears. Even as the words were less than traditional, the feeling that passed between us was filled with a holy presence. “Thank you,” she said, “thank you for being here, thank you for coming.” I touched her hand good bye, and on the drive home I silently prayed “thank you for being here, Jesus, thank you for coming.” And so now I have a sense of why Jesus would have us visit him while he is sick: because it gives us a sense of his holy presence. My time with this woman was not simply a satisfying “feel good” experience. We had been there together, sharing suffering and isolation for a few moments while we looked into each other’s eyes. This is just one connection that I made during my time at the care facility. But I learned more about connection from someone who participated in a small group meeting I once attended. This person, full of compassion and love for all who suffer, said: “If something is happening to someone else it is happening to me.” She was talking of the power of connection with one another. She lamented the ways in which we have become so disconnected in our world today:
Jesus is the one who meets us in the connections we go out of our way to make. On the borders of separation, at the boundaries of social grouping: that is where we can recognize the Good Shepherd. Over the past 2000 years we Christians have looked for Jesus in the lofty places: in lovely sanctuaries, in stunning cathedrals, in candle lit retreats, in visual art, in transporting music, in complex theologies, and in scholarly sermons. All these things may serve to build us up, center us, challenge and call us to deeper questioning. But in the vision we have today, of the Reign of Christ, Jesus invites us to find him by crossing boundaries and the borders to the ones from whom we have been disconnected. If we are sheep – and I know that we are – we will know where to find the shepherd. Go and find the shepherd, you know where, go and find. Thanks be to God, Amen!
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