Rabbit Trails

This sermon that was heard at the First Presbyterian Church on Sunday November 23, 2008, Christ the King/Reign of Christ Sunday, the 34th and last Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 100
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

In geometry, a line that intersects a curve at only one point is called a tangent line, a tangent for short. The single point where they touch is the tangent point. The most common way of drawing a tangent line is to draw a circle and then draw a straight line that touches the circle just once. Look out though, if the line intersects the curve at two points, it’s not a tangent anymore, it’s a secant.

Of course this is the easy way to describe a tangent. There are tangents in three dimensions, like where a ball touches the floor, that’s a tangent plane with its single tangent point. Actually, the line doesn’t have to be straight; a tangent point exists even when two circles touch at only one point. The curve doesn’t even have to be a circle, but that’s most familiar. It could be an ellipse, or a parabola, or a cone, or whatever other curved geometric figure you have in mind.

This is just the middle school geometry description of a tangent. This doesn’t include the tangent in trigonometry. In trig functions, on a triangle, the tangent of an angle is the ratio of the length of the opposite side to the length of the adjacent side. In fact, there is even a secant in trigonometry. That’s the ratio of the length of the hypotenuse to the length of the adjacent side, which is the reciprocal of the equation used to find the cosine.

If you are wondering just what in the name of all that’s holy I’m doing reading from an ACT/SAT prep manual you have every right. I am trying to make a point. The point being that in rhetoric, a tangent is a line of reasoning that goes off of the main thought. Sure, it touches at one point, but from there it’s off into the wild blue yonder, just like how a tangent line touches the curve.

Notice I started with one description of a tangent, a very simple one, and then took it all over the place. So not only did I explain two types of mathematical tangents, I used my description of mathematical tangents to create a description of a rhetorical tangent. That’s going off on a tangent. So let me get back to the main thought.

When reading this passage from Matthew’s gospel, one of the things that grabs me and demands my attention is the wonderful imagery. The pictures drawn by the mind’s eye are bold and vivid. Who doesn’t imagine something that Cecil B. De Mille couldn’t put on screen in “The Ten Commandments”? I see a valley, like the one off of the highway by the Bluebird outside of Eureka Springs. I imagine the throne of glory in the field, a fog settling around on a cool crisp morning. Like ants marching across the plain, I imagine the procession of sheep and goats making their joyful way to the Lord in his glory.

This may be the image most commonly associated with this passage, the sheep and the goats. The people of the church often see this part of the passage envisioning themselves as the sheep, with concern and even pity for those goats who will go away into eternal punishment. The weeping and gnashing of teeth thing we read last week has new urgency when we read about eternal punishment. It’s very, very scary.

We hear from the Lord who sits upon the throne of his glory that he will put the sheep at his right hand where they are blessed by the Father and will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world for they fed the Son of Man when hungry, gave drink when thirsty, welcomed him when a stranger. They gave him clothing when naked, took care of him when ill, and visited while in prison. In very real ways, they carried the Lord when the Lord needed carrying.

“When, oh when did we do this?” the sheep ask. “When you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family.” the Lord answers.

It is impossible not to feel a glow right now. The sheep of the fold, the Church of the Lord, not any individual denomination or sect, but the entire universal church is blessed by the word and hand of the God through the work done on behalf of the Son of Man. We inherit the kingdom by the work we do for God.

This is the tangent. This isn’t the whole circle; this is the one point that touches the circle before going off into Euclidian eternity. This isn’t the main point; this is just one of many.

The point of doing good works, the point of helping the poor is not to earn the kingdom. We can’t do enough to earn this reward. We can’t hope to do enough for a “passing grade” letting Mother Teresa and Billy Graham get the A-plusses. We are called to follow the path of justice not for a holy reward but because that is where the Son of Man is now.

There’s always a lot of talk in the church about eternal salvation and the heavenly reward. These things are wonderful and glorious, but this glimpse of tomorrow must not become a barrier stopping us from going and working where our Lord is today. We live for tomorrow, but we must live today. Today there is pain and suffering, and where pain and suffering exists, the Son of Man is there, and the Son wants his children to be there too.

Another diversion from helping the sick, the poor, and the incarcerated is actually rooted in the vision of watching the sheep and the goats on their way across the valley floor. Sheep have been the symbol of God’s people since the days of the prophet Isaiah. We have become sheep as the adopted children of God at the foot of the cross through the blood of the Son of Man.

So when we sheep look at the goats wandering across the floor of the valley, sitting at the left hand of the throne of glory, we look upon them with compassion and with pity. This is dangerous. This judgment upon the goats is not for you us make.

It is not up to us to separate the sheep from the goats, even in our mind’s eye. This is the job of the sovereign God who comes to judge the nations. We are not worthy to make the final judgment about who is a sheep and who is a goat. Our sight is flawed; it is colored by the shroud of sin that covers all humanity.

Yet we make judgments and in our world we must. While the final judgment of the nations is not ours, we are called to make some judgments. This passage teaches us our vocation is to follow the call of the Lord to serve the distressed. If we did not make any judgments, we would not follow where the Lord leads. This sort of judgment is not of other’s personal or religious values, but of our vocational discernment. We are to follow what is good, what is right, what is just, what is Godly. But the judgment we make is provisional. The final judgment belongs to the One who actually separates the sheep from the goats.

I have sent us down some rabbit trails; I have hopped us from one subject to another jumping all around the point. I have done it quite intentionally because these two items, inheriting the kingdom and separating the sheep from the goats, seem like big things in this part of Matthew’s gospel. For us, they aren’t.

Today we celebrate Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday of the Reign of God. Today we celebrate that God is in charge and we are not. Christ is King and we are the humble subjects. We are not to separate the sheep from the goats. We are not to wait for the coming kingdom like we are waiting on a bus. We are to follow our Lord, and the Son of Man makes it clear that he is with the poor, the sick, and the naked.

We are to start giving praise with the word that begins this passage: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory.” The word is “when,” not “if.” This is the wonderful and glorious reassurance that the Son of Man comes. His coming is not conditional. This isn’t a maybe; it’s a someday. It is the assurance that the Son of Man will come in his glory, and with all of his angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.

Until he comes again in his glory, we are to come to him in his anguish. Not because it is good for us, not because we will enter into the kingdom, we are to do this because it is as our Christ the King commands. Serving those who need, we serve the one who will come in glory.