Today's passage is Matthew 25: 31-46.
Jesus says that when he comes again he will judge all people, separating them like a shepherd into two groups, sheep and goats. The criteria for judgement is caring service to Jesus through serving others. The sheep are those who served and they enter heaven. The goats are those who didn't serve. They go to hell.
If I interpret today's passage humanistically, I might think that I get to heaven by doing good works. But I know this is wrongheaded because Jesus talks so much against this kind of thinking. So, what is today's passage about?
When I look at it with the eyes of redemptive history, what I see is that an attitude of love is what concerns our Lord.
The sheep are astonished when Jesus says they gave water, food and clothes to him. The goats are astonished when he says they didn't give anything to him. He has to explain that giving to others is giving to him.
Jesus already told the Pharisees and his disciples that the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest is to love our neighbour as ourselves. Today's passage explains what that means.
If I love God and love my neighbour, then I will serve others with that love.
I don't necessarily have to visit prisoners, although I know one brother who does.
I don't necessarily have to feed the homeless, although I know another brother who does.
I don't have to edit my clothes and take them to the Salvation Army to help them clothe the poor, but it might be a good idea.
I don't have to invent a device to purify bad water in Sudan or pay someone to take those devices there, but I might.
I don't have to do anything big, but I might if I have a deep and sincere love for God and his poor creatures around me.
If I don't have love, however, then serving others doesn't really help me or them because "man does not live by bread alone (or water or clothes) but by every word of God." The love that motivates me to serve others comes from God. Without that love in me, I'm serving out of other emotions like guilt and pity. And that kind of service is a lot of work and tires me.
So, who are the people I'm called to be a sheep to?
The people God puts around me.
Just before my first wife collapsed from her alcoholism and was hospitalized,
she suffered from incontinence and dementia for a month.
Because I was in denial over her alcoholism, I didn't recognize the cause of her dementia and incontinence.
She was my wife, she was helpless and she needed someone to care for her.
That someone was me.
Given what I know of myself, I'm surprised that I cared for her.
For one month, I cleaned her every morning and every afternoon when I came home from school.
Every morning and every afternoon, I washed the excrement from her, changed her nightgown and changed the soiled bedsheets.
I hid the sharp knives because when I got home some days she was prowling the house with one in her hand looking for burglars.
At the end of the month, she collapsed, was hospitalized and I had to face her alcoholism.
I balanced my sheep-like service to the Lord by becoming a goat and having an affair with another woman.
I never lovingly cared for my first wife again. When she died, I was undeniably a goat.
Now I live with a handicapped brother in law who needs to be loved and cared for.
My money feeds him, clothes him and gives him shelter.
How I have struggled with my serving! I know what it is to be a goat.
But God has blessed me and started to give me the heart of a sheep.
I couldn't do it, but God has.
My questions to myself becomes these: Who are the people God has put around me?
How can I be a sheep to them?
This means giving words of praise and encouragement as well as material things.
It means giving time to help them, listen to them. It means praying for them.
Doing good works gets me nowhere.
Loving those who are around me, however briefly, gets me closer to God and makes me a sheep.
My service is, to some degree, the measure of my love.
Lord, make me into a sheep. Fill me with your love, your care for those around me. Teach me how to serve them truly without counting the cost or measuring it as to big or small. Help me serve just one person each day.
