Sermon preached by The Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
The Church of the Redeemer / Sarasota, Florida
The Feast of Christ the King
23 November 2008

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses, and Yves Saint Laurent tie, leans out the window and asks the shepherd, “If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?”

The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers, “Sure. Why not?”

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone, and through a series of machinations, including connecting to a NASA satellite that scans the area and a processing facility in Hamburg, Germany, and within seconds has the information he needs. The yuppie turns to the shepherd and says, “You have exactly 1586 sheep.”

“That’s right,” says the shepherd. “Well, I guess you can take one of my sheep.” He watches as the young man selects one of the animals and looks on amused as the man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then he says to the young man, “Hey, if I tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?”

The young man thinks about it for a minute, then says, “Okay, why not?”

“You’re a consultant,” says the shepherd.

“Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

“No guessing required,” answered the shepherd. “You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked; and you don’t know nothing about my business … Now give me back my dog.”

First of all, I have nothing against consultants, so if you’re a consultant, please don’t take offense. This being a Sunday when the Gospel had to do with sheep, I just couldn’t resist!

This is the last Sunday of the Christian Year, and we heard in the Gospel the parable of the Last Judgment, in which Jesus, who has returned in glory to judge the living and the dead, separates all of the people of the earth into two groups, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats.

In the days when Jesus walked the earth, families needed both sheep and goats. According to George Lamsa*, who grew up in Palestine under conditions very similar to those of the first century A.D., sheep provided mutton for food and wool for clothing. Goats provided hair for tents, bags, and ropes. Both provided milk which was also used for butter and a nourishing cheese—a major food of the time.

But sheep were much easier to deal with. They were docile, easily managed, and responded to the shepherd’s voice. Goats were much more of a challenge. They were wild, willful, and headstrong. They went astray. They would climb to out-of-the-way places and hide, the shepherd often having to go to great lengths to find them. In other words, they were hard to shepherd.

“Jesus, who grew up in Nazareth, and lived most of his life in Galilee, would have known the sheep-goat drama only too well,” as would those who heard the parable of the Last Judgment for the first time. No one would have wanted to identify with a goat even before the parable was told. Everyone would have wanted to identify with the sheep. Before they even heard the parable they knew that when Jesus divided the sheep from the goats he was dividing between the good and the bad.

The moral of the story is very simple. Those who are saved at the end of time in the final judgment are those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, and visited the prisoner. Those who are not saved at the end of time, who are sent to eternal punishment, are those who did not do these things. It is worthy of note that the judge does not say that their salvation rests upon whether or not they have received Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. In this story, that doesn’t play a part. Salvation depends upon whether or not, when you saw a person in need, you tried to meet that need.

I have to admit that while I have always known how important it is for faithful people to care for the needs of others, I have had difficulty dealing with the theology that is expressed in this parable of Jesus. Are we saved by grace through faith, or by works? This parable might suggest that, contrary to much of the rest of the New Testament, we are saved through works, and the more works you do the more saved you are.

But, since the Church teaches that we are saved not through our own merit but through faith in Jesus Christ, then how does this story fit into that theology, for surely the Church would not teach something contrary to what our Lord himself taught? So how does this parable make sense given our theology?

The answer is that works of mercy bear witness to the faith that is in us. In other words, if we truly believe that Jesus is Lord of our life, then we will live in the way that he would have us live. And what way is that? It is to love others. We are back to that central tenet of our faith—love. Now I am not talking about love as a feeling, but love as action. In the parable of the Last Judgment, Jesus doesn’t mention the word love at all; but he does describe love in action.

Some of us in this parish have been hit very hard by what is happening in the economy. It is a worry for many. But, I have talked with several parishioners whom I know to be having a difficult time and I am so impressed by the faith of everyone with whom I have spoken. They know that they are in God’s hands and that God will take care of them, and they inevitably end up talking about others who are probably in worse shape than they. They are thinking about others’ needs, and they are active in trying to help others who are having a hard time.

That is the best way to deal with this economic crisis as well as the best way to live. When you find yourself feeling sorry for yourself and keying in on the negative, that’s a sure sign that you need to get out and help someone else, for whenever we focus on ourselves for any length of time, we are putting the center of attention where it ought not to be and behaving like goats.

While we are saved by grace through faith, the interesting thing is that when we respond in our faith to the needs of others our faith is strengthened, and we become more the people God created us to be. Through forming the habit of caring for the needs of others, we know more and more what it is to live by faith, which is the way we are saved.

*Information from George Lamsa is taken from Synthesis, an Ecumenical Resource for Sharing the Word