Thursday, 2 April     The Messiah Claims His Kingdom on Earth.      Matt. 24:36—25:46

We said yesterday, that the two chapters – 24 & 25 – are really one continuous passage. Today, we are listening to the conclusion of Jesus’ sermon. And what a sermon it is!

Jesus tells two parables and gives several short examples of the key theme throughout this passage. He gives these examples:

·      The days of Noah;

·      Some ordinary people in a farm or village;

·      A household being broken into by a thief;

·      A Master who goes away, leaving servants to manage in his absence.

The two parables are of the ten virgin bridesmaids and the parable of the talents.

All of these have an identical theme: Keep watch! Stay alert! Don’t be lulled into thinking that this whole God-story is just a fairy-tale. Stay faithful to the Master, no matter how long it seems to be taking.

Surely we, in the 21st century, need to hear this message just as clearly as they did. 

We live in an age where the common view about Christianity is that it is just a made-up story. No intelligent person, we are often told, could possibly still believe it all. 

Hasn’t science proved that God doesn’t exist? 

Don’t we know now that religion is the biggest cause of wars and violence in history? 

Don’t we realise in this scientific age that things which used to look like mysteries and miracles were just myths and legends?

Well, actually, none of those last three questions is based in any fact whatsoever. 

1. Science has never even investigated the question of God’s existence. Such a topic is well outside its area of enquiry. There is nothing in science that causes us to have any doubt about Christianity at all. Science studies the natural world; Theology studies God.

2. More people have been killed in wars and violence caused by atheists, not religious people. Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong, just to name three of the last century’s atheists, killed far more people among them than all religious wars in all of history ever caused. Hitler was not a Christian either – he had quite rejected the teachings of the Christian faith and just used the State church in Germany as his puppet to control the people.

3. As for miracles and legends, there has been no disproving at all of the core stories of the Christian faith. In fact, the more historical and literary research that is done, the more likely it looks even to historians that there really is truth to the stories of the New Testament.

Keep watch! Stay faithful! 

The Sheep and Goats passage seems to change gears quite a bit from all the foregoing. Jesus introduces it in a way that indicates that it has a more future focus. He is more clearly now speaking about an end-time judgement.  

It contains some of Jesus’ most startling and disturbing statements. It is often referred to as a parable, but I'm not convinced that is a correct conclusion. It contains a metaphor of sheep and goats, certainly, but nothing about it sounds like the other parables that he told. 

C. S. Lewis often referred to this passage as one that caused him to rethink how he led his life on a daily basis. He reminds us that its conclusions seem to be at odds with the comfortable way that much church life is conducted. Consider these things:

There is no indication anywhere in Jesus’ words that the standard evangelical line of ‘giving your life or heart to Jesus’, or ‘being born again’, or ‘saying the sinner’s prayer for forgiveness of sins’ will be enough to have you allocated to the sheep side of this divine sorting process.

Nor, for the more traditional believer, is there any sign that having been baptised at birth or having been confirmed, or having been to confession and had the priest forgive your sins will give you any advantage in the heavenly sheep and goat yards.

On the contrary, there is the shocking and unsettling fact that Jesus seems to be saying that acts of mercy, selfless deeds of goodness, and generous giving of one’s resources will be the mark that the heavenly gatekeeper will pay most attention to. 

Now, it has to be said, that this completely undoes Luther’s and Calvin’s Reformation theology. It completely undermines standard Pentecostal and Baptist theology. It completely subverts Roman Catholic theology. I venture to suggest that it is likely that not even one of the songs we commonly sing at church reflects this passage in any way at all.

What are we to do with it? Well, to be fair to all of scripture, we must put it alongside lots of other passages that speak to the processes of being forgiven. We should probably say that it is consistent with how Jesus has been talking all along: this is the way that you will live if you are living as a citizen of my kingdom. Perhaps it is not so much a ‘way to salvation’ as a description of how those who are already saved will live. 

Still, even so, … what if??????? 

I think it behoves those who want to simplify the Gospel down to a simple sinner’s prayer and a cheap forgiveness without real and definite change of lifestyle and attitude, to read this parable carefully. It behoves those in traditional churches who rely on occasional confession and Eucharist to read it carefully and to ask sheepishly whether they are looking more goatish than they would like to look. 

In Jesus’ Kingdom, the first will be last, and the last first. The sheep we least expect to see might be bleating contentedly, nibbling the grass around the pearly gates, while some pretty self-righteous goats might be looking longingly (and worriedly) over the fence where the grass is looking decidedly greener.

Prayer:  Dear Father, please protect me from being too complacent. Give me a heart for the poor and downtrodden. Prod and poke me till I learn to become generous with my time and money. I know that your salvation is a gift of grace, but I also hear your clear warning that unless I am showing definite signs of a changed character, then perhaps I might not have actually properly unwrapped your gift yet. Amen.