Lectionary readings:
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 Psalm 95:1-7a Ephesians 1:15-23 Matthew 25:31-46
O come, and let us to the Lord in songs our voices raise, with joyful noise let us the Rock of our salvation praise. Let us before his presence come with praise and thankful voice; let us sing psalms to him with grace, and make a joyful noise. The Lord's a great God, and great King above all gods he is; depths of the earth are in his hand, the strength of hills is his. To him the spacious sea belongs, for he the same did make; the dry land also from his hands its form at first did take. O come and let us worship him, let us bow down withal, and on our knees before the Lord our Maker let us fall. To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the God whom we adore, be glory, as it was, and is, And shall be evermore. Irish Psalter
I will seek out my sheep ... I will rescue them ... I will feed them ...I will make them lie down ... I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak
You might wonder about the verses from Ezekiel and pictures of goats right under the traditional heading of ‘Christ the King for this Sunday. And it is right here in the Gospel from St Matthew describing the end-times: 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, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
A couple of days ago, I caught a fascinating programme on Channel 5. It was a special episode of Our Yorkshire Farm. The series has followed the story of Amanda and Clive Owen who farm in Upper Swaledale, and their nine children, since 2015. Amanda turned her back on a modelling career to become a shepherd instead.
The programme showed how hard and tough the life of a shepherd can be; and how the children learn the realities of animal husbandry from an early age. It was a joy to watch a family whose lives together had been based on love and not acquisition; and where plain old-fashioned common sense saw everyone working hard for the family’s well-being.
All the way through the Hebrew Bible, God is often referred to as a shepherd – probably best remembered in that well-loved twenty-third Psalm. Rich images from this Psalm and from Ezekiel 34 reveal the kind of care on offer: the best pasture, rich grazing; clear drinking waters; a place to rest, searching for the lost, bandaging the injured, strengthening the sick, leaving the strong and healthy to play. (Those still involved in animal husbandry recognise the worth of providing the best for their animals, whilst recognising that it is hard work.) In such conditions of peace and prosperity, the people will truly know their God.
Jesus also spoke of himself as the Good Shepherd (John 10) and astutely describes the extreme efforts a good shepherd is prepared to go to, in seeking out any animal that has got into difficulty.
Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.(Luke 15:4-7)
That wonderful picture of Jesus has its roots and resonance in the Psalms and Ezekiel, and underpins the covenantal relationship between God and his people. The visual symbolism of the good shepherd who risks all, for the sake of the sheep, is essentially a picture of love. This is really important when we use the title ‘Christ the King’ for this final Sunday before Advent. This is not essentially a political statement, but a theological description of the creative, redemptive and sustaining power of God: the shepherd-king ought to help us to see the nature of the God we worship.
It is within this framework of love that we should understand the final judgement. Or as Ezekiel so poetically expressed it, the ‘judgment’ is more about being fed with justice. The lost and the weary, the weak and the injured seem to respond very differently, to those who do not find God’s justice to their taste.
When my children were little, I did not tell them to keep their hands away from fire, because I was some censorial killjoy, but because I loved them and didn’t want them to experience unnecessary harm. And it strikes me that God seems to be just the sort of parent who longs for the children to grow to spiritual maturity in safety, and in ways which demonstrate family likeness terms of reaching out in justice and righteousness.
This particular picture of judgement uses an image of the sorting out sheep from goats, and it is the shepherd – the one who knows the animals – who separates the animals. Although the better-known text about Jesus as a good shepherd is from John’s Gospel, Matthew also is fond of applying the images of a good shepherd to Jesus (see Matthew 2:6; 9:36; 18:12; 26:31). Now my daughter is quite passionate about goats, so I want to reassure her that I don’t believe that there is inherently anything wrong with them. And Jesus was no goat-discriminator; he merely used a well-known, first century metaphor of separation. (That is to say, that every evening when the flock returned from a day on the pastures, the animals were separated because goats don’t tolerate the cold in the way that sheep do – in the photo, they are just bursting out of the barn ready for a new day.)
This gospel indicates that people too are to be separated; not this time according to heat tolerance, but on the basis of how we meet the needs of God’s children when they were hungry, thirsty, naked, sick or alienated. (These actions incidentally, were typical Jewish works of mercy.) But we need to be alert to something more in this tale, for Matthew portrays Jesus as the ‘personification of Torah’. In other words, Jesus not only teaches but also embodies what it means to fulfil God’s commands (11:28-30).* It follows that the only criterion for those who follow Christ is whether you have seen Jesus in the face of the needy, and how you responded.
And just in case you have ever found the thought of having to live up to such a calling quite daunting, there is the text of encouragement in Ephesians; convinced of the glorious hope to which God’s children are called. The prayer for all the believers at Ephesus and beyond, is made within this context of hope.
The prayer begins (and ends) with God – the glorious Father. It is typical in Hebraic expression, pointing to God’s essential being and what flows from it in mercy, glory and power. And it concerns the vast resources of God’s power which is available to us. Translating from one language to another is not without difficulty, so when my translation reads ‘incomparable’ or ‘immeasurable’, it is to describe ‘hyperballon’, literally meaning from another sphere or out of this world.
To help with the description, the original uses a whole thesaurus of words for power (well, four at least): dynamis, energeia, kratos and ischys.
Those with engineering backgrounds will recognise potential power, effective or operational power, the strength of the power exercised in resistance and control, and inherent or vital power. For everyone else, this is the power that raised Christ from the dead.
That is breath-taking. The same power is available, according to this letter, to all Christ’s people, in order that we might better know God.
If you understand the day of the Lord as a trilogy, parts one and two of the trilogy are in place. That is the basis of the hope confirmed in the here and now that this is no mere dream. In the communion service we are invited to say ‘Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again’. Part three is the invitation to be found worthy to live in his presence forever. Now we are simply in that in-between time: our calling, equipping and enabling are the very things that offer a life-style which should help us to see the needs around and play our part in meeting them. Mission impossible? Not for God.
*Thomas D. Stegman SJ in Feasting on the Word. Stegman here follows Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) 2020
Worship at home 