A woman was driving home from work at the end of the day. It was already getting dark. She was running late for dinner with friends and pre-occupied with issues at her job. In her haste and distraction, she hit someone, not really hard—just kind of bumped them over, then kept on driving without looking back. As she pulled into the driveway, her cell phone rang. A voice said, “Your husband was hit by a car. He’s at Kingston hospital. Come quickly.”
When she arrived at the hospital, she found her husband in with a broken arm, cuts and bruises, but otherwise very much alive and able to tell her what happened. As he told the story of where he was walking when struck by a white Subaru Forester, it became clear to her that she was the one who had hit him. She wanted to lie but she told the truth. “I was driving that car. I knew I had hit someone, but didn’t stop.” Her husband was shocked. “You knew you had hit someone, but you didn’t stop and call for help!” She said, “If I had known it was you, I swear, I would have stopped. I would never have left you there injured and alone.” Now he was even more shocked: “If you had known it was me you would have acted differently? Good to know! Even if it had been a poor homeless person pushing a grocery cart full of empty cans, you should have stopped. For God’s sake, you know better!”
This is a quite extreme story, but I thought of this hit and run illustration as I sat with this text from Matthew’s gospel. There is plenty about what Jesus is saying here that feels extreme and troubling to me. For one, I don’t like the metaphors—sheep are the good folk, and goats are the bad ones (it’s really not fair to goats). And the good ones get to go on the right, and the bad ones have to go on the left (I’m left-handed, so never like the association of the left with sinister things). But more seriously, I no longer believe that Jesus, the cosmic King, the love-filled monarch, the teacher who calls us to love our enemies and does it himself, the Good shepherd who lays down his life for the world—I don’t believe Jesus is invested in eternal punishment for those who have caused even unspeakable harm. I do believe that God–Creator, Son, and Spirit—will work justice both in and beyond history, but I don’t know how. I confess that there are some people who I think deserve to burn in hell. But, thank God I am not God, none of us is, and we are not in charge sorting people out or the process of finally doing what is just. God will do justice in the end, and I am certain that it will be far more creative and re-creative of human beings than an eternity burning in a place called hell. So, all of these things, big and little, are troubling to me in Matthew’s account of the last judgment.
But what I want to focus on in this text is the thing that surprises both the “sheep and the goats.” In all of their encounters with the hungry, the naked, the stranger, the sick, the prisoner, they were encountering Jesus. It isn’t this reality, in and of itself, that I find troubling. What’s troubling is how we sometimes talk about it and use it as a way to motivate human behavior. If we take what Jesus is saying here to mean you should care for the poor and the suffering because when you do it you are really caring for me, and if you don’t do it, you are really dissing me—if we think that’s what Jesus is saying, then we have missed at least half the point he is making.
The so-called sheep in this scenario, the ones on the right, the ones who inherit God’s kingdom because they served people in need, didn’t do it because they secretly knew they were really taking care of Jesus. They are from all the nations of the world, not only from the nation of Israel. They likely don’t know anything about Israel’s God, and wouldn’t have known who Jesus was even if he were wearing a huge nametag around his neck. They minister to the poor, the suffering, and the truly disadvantaged because in their bones, in their DNA, in their higher consciousness, in their hearts, they recognize all of these as brothers and sisters, kin, fellow human beings who have a moral claim on their concrete love and care. They aren’t trying to serve Jesus or score brownie points with him, nor trying to avoid a reserved seat in hell. They are doing what human beings are made to do—looking out for the good of every person, and especially those who don’t have the power or means to look out for themselves. Their love is not calculating. It is pure gift. And in this way of living, to their great surprise, it turns out that they were in the closest possible companionship with Jesus, and already hanging out in God’s kingdom—their actions enable the kingdom to come on earth as in heaven.
Meanwhile, the “goats” in the story are even more surprised than the “sheep” to discover that Jesus was present in all those they didn’t bother to care for. And I’ve been imagining the kind of conversation that might take place between them and Jesus. “Wait a minute…. If we had known it was you, we would have thrown a huge feast, given you a new tunic, welcomed you to stay in the guest room, we would have come to you on your sickbed, and visited you in the Roman penitentiary. You should have told us you were there in all those needy folk we crossed to the other side of the road to avoid.” They would sound a lot like the woman who found her husband in the emergency room and said, “I swear, if I had known it was you that I hit, I would have stopped and cared for you!” And like the husband, Jesus would have said, “you know better than that.”
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus’ harshest judgments are always reserved for those who identify themselves as the people of God, and who are convinced that they are getting it right and have earned a place in God’s kingdom, and who sit in harsh judgment over those they are convinced are getting it wrong. Like every other human being they are created to know that every fellow human being has a moral claim on their love and care. And beyond that, since they are God’s people, they know what God desires and requires of them—love God with everything that you are and everything that you have, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and always, always, give your special attention to those who do not have the power or the means to care for themselves. They know better, and they are called to love better.
So if Jesus isn’t saying something like, “love your neighbors because I am in them and I am the one you would be serving and loving, and I am the one who really counts because I am keeping score,” what is he saying? First of all, he is saying the person in need really does count, they really do matter, they really do have a moral claim on our love and care. And when we come into relationship with the poor, the suffering, the truly disadvantaged we begin to see things that we were blind too before. We see their humanity, we hear their stories, and we see the systems and structures that perpetuate their physical poverty. We see that Congressional decisions about tax reforms that advantage the rich and disadvantage the poor do not line up with the values of God’s kingdom. We begin to understand that loving those in need is both intensely personal, and also intensely political. The call to love is large and inch by inch, we live into that call.
And second, Jesus is saying, “I really am present in a special way in and with those whose needs are greatest, who are powerless, and maginalized. If you are looking for me, you will find me hidden in the least of these. If you want to grow in love that is not calculating, if you want to grow in grace that does not keep score, if you want to be converted, if you want your heart to be enlarged, then love and serve those who society counts as no bodies. Put yourself in relationship with these people because they matter and you need them as much as they need you. And know that you will find me there too,” says Jesus, “and I will feed you and clothe you and serve you and stretch you and fill you with my uncalculating, unconditional love. And you will find yourself sharing in and enlarging the kingdom of God, where every body is some body and love keeps opening our hearts and our eyes, and opens the way to abundant life for us and for all.