Proper 29

Many worship services around Thanksgiving will have a harvest theme. As the hymn says, “All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin …” And in many parts of the United States, it had better be gathered by now or it’s going to freeze!

Harvest is not something most of us typically experience unless we live in farm country. For urban and suburban America, food comes dried or frozen. If it’s fresh, it’s hauled to the supermarket in refrigerated trucks.

But for Jesus’ disciples — and for just about everyone else in the ancient Near East — the harvest is a subject of intense personal interest. When Jesus tells a parable about a shepherd’s harvest, the ordinary act of separating sheep from goats, it’s something everyone can relate to.

To this day, it’s common for Palestinian shepherds to raise sheep and goats. The two species graze together, side by side. There’s a practical reason for this: sheep are quiet, docile creatures, while goats are more stubborn. Should an intruder — human or animal — try to sneak up and drive the herd away, the goats will raise a ruckus to bring the shepherd running.

When the harvest comes and it’s time to shear the sheep or bring them to market, the shepherd must separate them from the goats. The shepherd stands there, staff in hand, nudging each beast one way or the other.

When Jesus sets out to teach his followers about God’s judgment, he recalls this familiar scene: sheep go one way, goats the other.

Most of us have heard this passage as a guilt-inducing story. Those who teach it that way assume it’s mostly about the church and how some of us will make it into heaven and some of us won’t. Some of us, this interpretation goes, are going to be awfully surprised when we learn which side of the barbed wire we’re on.

But that’s not likely how Jesus’ followers would have heard the tale. The very first line would have grabbed their attention: “All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats …” (Matthew 25:32).

The words that would have grabbed their attention are: “All the nations will be gathered before him.”

“OK,” those Jewish listeners would say to themselves, rubbing their hands together in glee, “this is the moment we’ve been waiting for. Now we’re going to hear how those goats, the Gentiles, are going to get theirs, while we sheep from the house of Israel will be saved.”

But that’s not the way the story ends up. Jesus the storyteller deals them a surprise ending, one that surely shakes their beliefs to the foundations.

First, neither sheep nor goats in the story recognize the Messiah when he comes. All of them are equally clueless. “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty, or a stranger or naked or imprisoned?”

The messiah answers, “Just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Members of my family? Say it isn’t so, Lord!

Second, the distinguishing feature between the two sets of people is not ethnic identity, as Jesus’ listeners suppose. Neither sheep nor goats seem to know which group they belong to, until the shepherd sorts them. Once they find themselves in that group, they haven’t the slightest idea how they got there.

So, this isn’t the old story about God’s people Israel being destined for salvation at the last, while all the Gentiles go to perdition. Jesus is spinning an entirely new tale. The distinguishing feature in this story isn’t who your parents were. It’s some invisible mark only the shepherd-judge seems able to see.

A moment later, Jesus clues his listeners in on that distinguishing mark. It’s whether or not they’ve lived in a caring, compassionate way. It’s not ethnicity, but empathy. Not membership, but mercy. Not lineage, but love.

This was a truly revolutionary message in that day and age, and probably not a message many of Jesus’ listeners wanted to hear. They were looking to have their prejudices confirmed, their patriotic fervor pumped up. Instead, Jesus is saying, “Look, in the last judgment it’s not going to be as you expect. The judge will look not at outward circumstances, but deep into the heart. Some who think they’re sheep will find themselves to be goats, while others who thought they were goats will discover they’re sheep after all.” Not all Israel will be saved, and not all Gentiles will be lost.

When we hear this story told in church, it often fills believers with fear and dread. We hear it as a message of doom, addressed primarily to the faithful. It’s like the law school dean who tells her entering class each year, “Look at the student sitting on the right of you, then look at the one on the left. One of you three is not going to graduate.” 

But there’s another way of hearing Jesus’ story: as a message of hope addressed not to an in-group of true believers, but to the entire world. Remember that the story begins: “All the nations will be gathered before him …” Not just the people of Israel. Not just the devout faithful. But “all the nations.” Everyone.

All people will be judged, and some will be found worthy — both within Israel and outside it. The standard of judgment will not be the usual self-righteous human standard. It will have nothing to do with what groups we belong to. It will have everything to do with the people we’ve reached out to. It will have nothing to do with the love we’ve felt inside. It will have everything to do with the acts of love we’ve performed.

“But what about faith?” you may ask. “This sounds awfully close to works-righteousness.” Protestants know all about that. Those of us who are Protestants have been taught from a young age that we’re justified not by good works, but by grace through faith.

The parable of the sheep and the goats doesn’t rule out justification by faith. But it does hold up a truth Protestants are sometimes not so eager to recognize: that genuine faith inevitably issues in good works. If you don’t have the good works, you probably don’t have the faith, either.

Most of us sat at a Thanksgiving table a few days ago. We spent at least a few moments with heads bowed, effusively telling God how thankful we are. The message of this disturbing parable is that God is not so interested in our thankful words. God would much rather see our thankful deeds.

If our faith has become more a matter of believing than doing, then there’s still time to change that. We are in the midst of stewardship season. Having talked in recent weeks about the stewardship of money, maybe now’s the time to talk just as emphatically about the stewardship of time. We encourage tithing in the church: giving 10% of income to the work of Christ. But what if each of us were to give 10% of our time to God as well?

If we spend eight hours a day sleeping, then that leaves 16 waking hours. One-tenth of that is 1.6 hours. Multiply that figure by seven, and you get around 11 hours a week. Just think of what we could accomplish for the Lord if every member of every church tithed 11 hours a week to Christian work! An army of willing Christian workers would rise up such as the world has never seen!

Try giving just a little of your time to the work of Christ, and your life will never be the same.

It’s Thanksgiving season, the time of the harvest. What sort of harvest does God reap?

Some may think God’s harvest is our harvest: the portion of the money and time we have at our disposal that we donate to the work of Christ. But that’s not what God’s harvest consists of. God’s harvest is not what we give, but who we are.

We are the harvest. We are the sheep that the careful and discerning judge separates from the goats. We are the ones to whom, by sheer grace, he may one day say, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.”