Poem/Reflection for the Feast of Christ the King St. Andrew's-By-The-Sea, Nags Head, N.C.
November 22, 2020 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 Psalm 100 Ephesians 1:15-23 Matthew 25:31-46
What About Us Goats?
The Feast of Christ the King began in the 1920's when Pope Pius XI was trying to deal with a world which had changed as a result of the first World War. Kingdoms, which formerly could be counted on to support the church, had been overthrown and democracies were rising as a norm for societies. Pius wanted the people to remember that all people needed to be ruled not be majority opinion but by Christ as King in their daily life. That is not a bad thought; the problem lies in what is the nature of being ruled. Are we being ruled by love or by fear?
Pius had a fear of the future, myopic nostalgia for the past and anxiety of the present. He wanted a return to order and therefore he made alliances, which he came to regret, with people who would impose order by hijacking the past, constructing a comforting myth for the future, and lying about the present; people like Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain and Hitler in Germany who imposed order through fear. Their image these rulers gave of Christ the King, was as a warrior prince who ruled by reward and punishment.
A couple of Sundays ago, your Rector preached on Matthew's Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, where the Foolish Virgins who ran out of oil to keep their lamps burning, were not allowed to be admitted to the Feast of the Bridegroom. In this Parable, Matthew remembers Jesus suggesting that the Bridegroom is in the role of the Second Coming of Christ, and in Matthew's remembrance, the Foolish Virgins are told by the Risen Christ that they were not fit to be Christians when the oil in your lamp, your faith, runs low. Your Rector allowed as sometimes the oil in his lamp runs low, when he catches himself muttering non-Biblical un-loving words to an erratic driver who cuts in front of him in the crazy summer tourist traffic. If all your Rector knew about Jesus was the punchline of this parable, then he would indeed be in trouble. But your Rector puts his trust in the full understanding of the Good News.
As I looked over those lessons from two weeks ago and the lessons for this week, I reflected on the Matthean community, out of which the Gospel of Matthew was shared in oral form before it was reduced to written form about forty years after the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. If you had been waiting for a long time, forty or more years, for Jesus to come back, you might have had some feeling like your oil of faith was running close to empty. Wilson's theory about how I might act if I had to wait for decades, is that I might be more than a touch cranky and less than comfortable with those who fall short of my expectations. I think I would be tempted to suggest that some people needed to be sent to Hell as goats. That is being a dysfunctional human with a fear of the future, myopic nostalgia for the past and anxiety of the present.
That parable of the foolish virgins suggests that God will exclude those who fall short of the expectations of God. That message can be seen as echoed in today's Gospel lesson for the Feast of Christ the King, where Christ as the King in the Second Coming will divide the sheep from the goats; consigning those who disappoint, the goats, to the fires of Hell; and those who live up to the mark, the sheep, will be rewarded by being allowed to join in the new Kingdom of the Heavens.
What is the difference between Sheep and Goats? I was watching a film on You Tube about one homesteader's opinion. He said that Goats are like teenagers; always wanting to test the limits. They have no fear and will drive you crazy on wanting to be the boss over their own lives. Sheep, on the other hand, having a lot of fear, are more content to stay safe in the flock.
In the human flocks and herds when victors win; “To the victor belongs the spoils!” Victors punish their opponents and reward their true followers. The Victors try not to reward people who challenge their authority. Heck, we just had an election and a lot of people who supported the loser in that election are going to have to find new employment and those who worked hard to win the approval will get prestige appointments. With the exception of Abraham Lincoln, as documented by Doris Goodwin's book “Team of Rivals”, most Victors usually choose safe people, not rivals who might challenge them, for appointments in government.
But what does Jesus do? When Jesus is resurrected, does he come back and read the riot act to his disciples who all let him down? All of them betrayed Jesus; Judas did it for money, the rest of the disciples by denial and refusing to stand with Jesus. They are all, all of them, goats! Yet he gives them his peace. Sheep or goats, it does not matter, he gives them his love. He does not consign them to Hell for their lack of faith; rather he shares his Holy Spirit and blesses those who are not worthy to be blessed. He does not talk about a return to order of the past, but a building of a new creation. He doesn't waste time of strict conformity but chooses all sorts of people, like for instance Paul, the writer of the Epistle for today, who once was his enemy, but the love of the risen Lord changed him. The Spirit of the Risen Christ is changing the world, and he asks them to help change the world from our worship of reward and punishment to claiming love as the fall back position of life. For followers of Jesus, it is not about the striving for rewards and avoidance of punishments after we are dead, but about continuing the redemption of the world.
Jesus understood that forgiveness is not granted as a reward for proper behavior, but forgiveness is a gift given by the one who was hurt to all, even the undeserving, so the one who was hurt doesn't have to keep carrying the hurt around but enters unburdened into a new kind of living.
Dorothy Day, a 20th Century Social Activist wrote about her life’s work serving the poor:
What we would like to do is change the world — make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute — the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words — we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.
What about those who refuse to accept the forgiveness so freely given? C. S Lewis wrote in his, The Problem of Pain:
I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside . . . they enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free. . . . In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be (accept being)forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does.
Thomas Merton, a Monk at Gethsemane Abbey outside Louisville, Kentucky, one of God's beloved sheep, a truly Holy man, not a goat in any way shape or form, except in his own opinion, was running around doing errands, in downtown Louisville on the corner of 4th and Walnut, in the middle of all those human beings, probably more goats than sheep, when God gave him a vision:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being (hu)man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift. (Confessions of a Guilty Bystander)
I was here at St. Andrew's for a few months before you got lucky with finding your new Rector. St. Andrew's is like every one of the churches with whom I have been honored to serve. I have never served a congregation of well behaved fear filled sheep. Every church had a healthy combination of sheep and goats who made me lovingly earn this old goat's stipend. It was the goats who made the places interesting. The sheep were a gift, and the goats were a gift, and both groups were in God's heaven on earth. Heaven is not a far off place after we die, but it is this sacred space from before the beginning of creation, in and between each of us, that we experience in each moment in this life to beyond death.
What About Us Goats?
We goats say, “Maaaa-n, I wouldn't have done it that way,
unlike you sheep keeping quiet afraid of being baaaaa-d,
you covet your lives safe, afraid of ending up being sad,
when we could come together to live heaven's space today.”
We all probably'll fail, running out of faith's oil,
some of us know our sins only much too well,
but we'll stop passing consignments to hell,
rather come to hope we're standing on Holy soil.
Saints and Sinners all crammed in, up together,
on this blue marble's time of rampant infection,
blessed sinners and forgiven saints in connection,
sheltering in safe place from the stormy weather.
Why waste time trying to get in above,
when all we are called to do, is love.
