Skinny Baa
Ezekiel 34:11-24; Matthew 25:31-46

November 20, 2005

Samuel Lieu of Macquarrie University in Sydney flooded us with numerous images last weekend of the vestiges of Nestorian Christians and Manichaeans who had reached the coast of Southern China in the latter centuries of the first millennium and who almost converted the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan to Christianity. What a different world we would have had if that had been successful! This, however, is the one world we have, and to prove how odd it is, Sam showed us one last slide that really did not quite fit the rest.

Here was a contemporary Christian church in the Peoples Republic of China, nothing remarkable about the building. Over the door was a colourful painting of two lambs facing one another, not an unusual use of Christian symbolism, except that as Lieu pointed out, there are no sheep in that part of China. All those sheeply images in the Bible are lost on the local Christians. A foreign animal represents a foreign religion in a foreign land and culture. Nearby a many centuries old tombstone bore an inscription for a Chinese man converted to Christianity, who was given the rites and honour of an “honourary foreigner.”

I guess our ideas, symbols, and assumptions are not always universal, nor the centre of the universe: there are other Middle Kingdoms that compete for divine and human attention. Nevertheless, spiritually we are people of the sheep; or is it rather, people of the sheep? Our churches have pastors, pastors have flocks, we are continually called sheep. Woolly bully, let’s be sheep all the way.

Jesus is not just inventing the pastoral terminology, for Ezekiel sorts out the sheep and the goats much more bluntly in chapter 34. Shepherds are called to a rather stern accounting. The shepherds are the political and religious leaders of Israel who have failed the people miserably when the Babylonians finally came to town, burned down all the buildings, killed lots of innocent people who got in the way, and dragged off to exile in far away Babylon many of the useable persons of the nation.

Meanwhile, the shepherds had it pretty good - drank the milk, nice clothes from the wool, mutton galore - but they never bothered to feed the sheep, to protect them, to be concerned for their welfare. Collateral damage, I think our shepherds might comment today. God says through Ezekiel that the shepherds of Israel are going to be damaged collaterally. They always found ways in the darkest times to feed themselves with collateral food - now they are the collateral food.

God separates out the rams from the goats, a little variation on Jesus’ theme. God has decided to take over the shepherding and make certain that all the skinny sheep are not ignored any more or abused by the plump sheep. God wants to make sure that we are fattened up, provided with rich gardens full of vegetables, and no longer are living half-starved, taunted by threatening outsiders to the fold.

This is the kind of scripture many of us shudder to hear: a ruthless reckoning of wrongs and rights that so much of traditional Christianity loves to recount as the ultimate end of all religion. I imagine that those who express such gleeful delight in the separation of sheep and goats mostly assume they are the sheep, that they know how to live right and that God is their shepherd. Many of us cringe at such harsh judgmentality because we recognize in our humility that we are not skinny enough sheep, for it doesn’t take much to own up to the grievousness of our own sins and ignorance of the unfortunate and oppressed. I do not believe I am a bad or wicked person, but I know that I have been far less than perfect. There but for the grace of God, we say, but with a poignant twist. The grace of God has protected me from being judged harshly - and probably fairly - for my faults.

So maybe we don’t really want to listen. This isn’t the Good News we come to hear, but then Jesus sneaks in another parable - the last parable - that seduces us to listen against our better judgment and scratch our heads. We cannot believe it, because it is Good News. No sheep attached.

Clarence Jordan employs a different batch of animals to get the point across. The Son of Man is a farmer separating the cows from the hogs, neither of which can usually be accused of being skinny. The cows seem to be favoured and the farmer welcomes them into the Movement, “for I was hungry and you shared your food with me; I was thirsty and you shared your water with me; I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ragged and you clothed me, sick and you nursed me; I was in jail, and you stood by me.”

They respond, bewildered but “glad cows,” “This is unbelievably wonderful, but after all, we are honest cows, so we have to ask, When? We really don’t remember.” “When you did it one of these humblest brothers of mine, you did it to me,” answers the farmer and then turns to the hogs. “Get away from me, you fallen skunks, and into the flaming hell reserved for the Confuser and his crowd.” “When?” again rise the squeals, or whatever sounds skunks make. This farmer needs remedial animal identification work. “When you failed one of these humblest people you failed me.”

I have heard some preachers have been telling you in the midst of sermons that “you haven’t got it yet!” All right, you and I have been reading and listening to the whole Gospel, and this is the last Sunday in the church year, and essentially the last teaching that Jesus gives out. The Passion story takes over from here and that’s a different kettle of fish. So this is the point where you need to get it.

There are no organized lists of things you have to do or say as a Christian to make the top grade. There are no rules or laws or commandments that require you to behave in a certain particular way. There is nothing that you are “supposed to do.” God doesn’t care if you know you are doing good; God cares if you do good. And look, there is nothing in what Jesus says that implies you have to like it or that you like the person you are helping. God wants you to do good to someone suffering or deprived or oppressed in the first place, and the loving and the liking will come in due time. After all, being human we don’t love all the time. But helping someone, even someone you do not know, goads the heart and builds up its muscles. No one really loves if he or she does not help the little ones - lambs, cows, hogs or skunks.

On the edge of the precipice of another year, we are about to begin again in Advent trying to figure out just who this Jesus is and what he wants to do with us. The Child of Bethlehem, the Christ and Messiah, fully human and fully divine, God was in Christ, and so on - we can never put our heads around this paradox of what has been called the Incarnation. That’s one of those fancy theological terms that angels can dance around on a pin, but never really gets down to earth in practical terms. We don’t get it.

It isn’t in the Gospel, but I hear Jesus’ voice jumping out between the lines. I have been teaching and preaching and healing all this stuff, parables coming out of my ears, and I want to know if you have gotten it yet? I don’t care about all that Christological language about me. It doesn’t matter if you have a personal relationship with me. It doesn’t matter if I’m your “sweet Jesus” - sometimes it makes me wince. Sometimes it makes me sick. If all you’ve got is holy words, then we’re all in trouble. I want to know if your Word has become flesh, and does it dwell among you now?

You live the Incarnation, not just talk about it or discuss it. Words aren’t necessary, because Jesus takes on the flesh of a hurting person that you may not know and haven’t yet learned to love. It doesn’t make sense - it is a paradox after all - but you feed, clothe, heal, visit, love someone and you don’t even know she is God, not even supposed to know it. Why, it also happens that you are Christ, you are Jesus at times, times when you are hurting and suffering, oppressed and crushed. But you don’t know it either. That’s real Incarnation, where scripture is lived, prayer is unceasing, love is indiscriminate, people are helped just because they are suffering, not because they are your brother or sister or political or social companion. That’s it, that’s the Gospel Jesus was trying to get us to get. It’s the Good News because now you are free - free from all the pressures and manipulations of false and empty words, and insincere actions. Just don’t neglect those sheep, and cows, pigs, and skunks, no matter what you do. I hope you are getting this.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan