Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46; Psalm 95:1-7; 1 John 3:9; Matthew 5:8; Matthew 16:23 Series: One offs
Preached on Christ the King Sunday—framed as the Christian New Year’s Eve before Advent—this sermon uses the arbitrariness of human calendars to ask who is Lord of our time. Working through the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46), the third in a series on Matthew 25, the pastor resists the temptation to stop at verse 40 and confronts the reality of judgment and stakes, warning against antinomian readings of grace. The division is not between good and bad people but between those who perform the works of mercy and those who do not. The core claim: the sheep seek Jesus where he is (among the hungry, poor, and naked) while the goats seek him where they want him (among the wealthy and comfortable). Conversion is a transformation of desire and direction, never merely a set of tasks, made possible only by grace—an invitation to a Christian New Year’s resolution to seek Jesus where he truly is.
Illustrations: julian-gregorian-calendar, daylight-saving-fall-back, pecan-pie-oven-burn, marathon-resolution-one-mile, jubilee-forgiving-debts, peter-get-behind-me-satan
November 26
New Years Eve
“O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed. O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!” - Psalm 95:1-7
““When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 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. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”” - Matthew 25:31-46
Intro
Julius Caesar declared a calendar for the Roman world that is still in effect even today. The reason Greek Orthodox of Russian orthodox churches celebrate a different Easter is because they follow the Julian calendar. In the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII adjusted that calendar to make it more in line with the solar year and that is calendar we have today with the days, the months, days of the months, as well as the leap year. Because of the anti-Catholic bias in England, that country kept the Julian calendar into the middle of John Wesley’s life in the 17 hundreds. And that transition looked like a two week jump daylight savings time. One day, it was July 1. The next day, it was July 14.
Someone in their nineties, when the transition happened, they would not really be super invested in the new calendar. So a lot of letters and journals and, and histories carried both dates, the old calendar and the new calendar. I say all this because of how arbitrary it ultimately is. The markings of time and the year are so because of the judgment of people over the centuries, but there’s nothing natural or empirical about our calendars. Each kind of timekeeping system has some advantages over others.
A few weeks ago, all of us slept through a moment in time where it was 2:00 AM and then it was 2:59 AM and then it was 2:00 AM Again, it didn’t go to three because of the government in this country’s inability to get rid of daylight savings time. There is nothing permanent about the calendar that our country follows. There’s nothing natural about it. It is a choice to follow that calendar over others, to be dependent on it over others. The Christian calendar is different than the Gregorian calendar. The Christian calendar starts next Sunday. The Christian calendar starts on the first Sunday in Advent, which means that today is New Year’s Eve. It is also known as Christ the King Sunday. It is the last Sunday of the old year. I went through those histories of time and calendars because it’s really important for us to be aware of who is the Lord of our time.
How we tell our time, how we order our lives matters. We can order our lives in a way that fits perfectly in line with the standard calendar of the United States and all the secular holidays and calendars, but that is different than the liturgical calendar. The Christian calendar that follows a different pattern, a pattern based on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Sometimes those calendars conflict. This is similar to how sometimes our lives conflict with the lives of the world. There’s tension there between what Jesus calls us to do, the grace that God gives us to live holy lives and the expectations and requirements of the world. We see that here in Matthew 25.
Over the last two weeks, we have looked at the first two parables of Matthew 25. The first is the parable of the ten brides, where five expect the coming of Jesus and five do not. The next is the parable of the talents, which isn’t about being good or bad, but about how we see God.
The Sheep and the Goats
Today, we have the parable of the sheep and goats. Half of it sounds really great. It is famous. When you do so unto the least of these my brothers and sisters. You do unto me. The language of the world of mercy that John Wesley uses also comes from this passage. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the foreigner, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned.
I’m always tempted to just preach the first section of the passage. It can encourage us to serve all our neighbors because all of them could be Jesus. But what happens when we don’t? Sometimes I think we take many of the words of Jesus as extra credit. We can help others when it is convenient to us or it fits in our schedule or they look deserving, otherwise we should stick to what we know. The rest of Matthew 25 shows us that that is not the case.
If we do not serve Jesus by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, there will be consequences. There are stakes involved in this life. It can be uncomfortable to talk about stakes. Sometimes grace is presented in such a way that it doesn’t matter what we do since Jesus will forgive us anyway. In the ancient world, this was called antinomianism. There have been different people over the years who claimed that Grace gave us freedom to do whatever we wanted. Sin or not, it doesn’t matter since God will forgive you so just live your life.
In this view, there are no consequences for our actions or our lives. In this view, we stop reading Matthew 25 at verse 40. In this view, the law protects us but does not bind us. We don’t need to feed anyone. We don’t need to welcome anyone. We don’t need to clothe anyone or do anything uncomfortable or change anything because they are already taken care of by grace. It is a common enough reading that ignores huge sections of the Bible.
Actions have consequences. If you grab a pecan pie out of a hot oven without a mitt you are going to get burned. Much of the world is filled with these action/reaction consequences.
Matthew 25 turns this around. We don’t see the consequences of our actions until much later. The sheep feed the hungry. We don’t know why they did it but they did it. Jesus doesn’t divide people between those who intend to do good and those who intend to do evil, but between those who perform the works of mercy and those who do not. The division is not between good people and bad people. Most of us think that we are good people. We may not be perfect, we may be selfish from time to time, or ignore our neighbors, or say something mean, but we think we are good people and we think that God knows this.
There may be some consolation in this way of thinking, but throughout the Bible we are confronted by the stark reality of judgment. Jesus doesn’t call his followers good. He doesn’t console them by saying they did enough. In one verse, Jesus praises Peter for calling him the Messiah. In the next verse, Jesus says to Peter, Get Behind Me Satan! Jesus looks into us and sees us not for who we think we are, but for who we are.
Judgement
If our souls were exposed before God, what would God see? Did we seek Jesus in the lost and the hungry and forgotten? Who, in fact, are we seeking?
Are we seeking immediate consequences or heavenly ones? And this isn’t about what our society calls Christian or not, but this stark confrontation with the actions of our lives.
I can’t judge you, your neighbor can’t judge you, but you can judge yourself. If the Son of Man came this day and split this room between sheep and the goats, would you be on the side of the sheep or the goats?
Grace doesn’t get us out of our obligation to love our neighbor. Grace saves us from damning ourselves. There is more to the Christian life than salvation or damnation. Grace doesn’t free us for a lifetime of selfishness. This is what John means in his first letter when he says everyone born of God does not sin. If we see grace as an excuse to not love our neighbor, we are spurning God’s grace. It is not even there.
But also, if we lived according to Matthew 25, we could face a lot of challenges in this world. As much as anything, the works of mercy are inconvenient. What is the limit of what God asks of us?
Faith is not a series of new tasks that we have. Faith is, instead, a different way of seeing our world, which includes our time. Grace doesn’t absolve us of some things but keep us in the same place. Grace transforms us to no longer desire what we used to desire. This gets us back to the Christian calendar and the Christian new year.
Christian New Year
We often divide our time between what we need to do and everything else. Who judges what is necessary or not?
It comes down to you. Sure, there are external factors and motivators and constraints, but we ultimately are responsible for our time and our actions. Even those aspects of our life that seem so rock solid, like the calendar, was based on the choices of individuals in history, like Julius Caesar or Gregory VIII.
We mark our lives by the Gregorian calendar not because it is good or true, but because it is convenient. We have always done it. And everyone around us does it. Were we to revert our families to the Julian calendar, it might be a tricky thing. If we measured our lives fully by the Christian calendar, it might also be a tricky thing. The Bible speaks often of jubilee, of forgiving the debts anyone owes us every fifty years. Were we to practice jubilee, the American economy would fall apart.
To where is our time oriented? Is it towards our bosses, our retirements, our families, or our Lord. This is what Matthew 25 is about. To whom are we oriented? Whom are we seeking? Who do we desire?
The sheep seek Jesus where he is: among the hungry and poor and naked. The goats seek Jesus where they want him to be: among the wealthy and comfortable. This is the heart of the passage and I want to repeat it. The sheep seek Jesus where he is: among the hungry and poor and naked. The goats seek Jesus where they want him to be: among the wealthy and comfortable.
Conversion is always a question of direction. Which way are you going? When you suffer an addiction, you’re going one way. When God heals you, you go another way.
Whatever has happened before in your life, this day you have a choice about which direction you want to go. The choice is not a discreet set of tasks. The choice is the answer to the question, who do you love? If you love Jesus, you will want to meet him where he is. It doesn’t matter if that is convenient to your life. As Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God Where will they see God? Matthew answers that question here. The pure in heart will see God in the hungry, the naked, the thirsty, the sick, and the imprisoned. How will they see God? Through their purified heart that has been converted to desire God. Christian conversion is about our desire. It a transformation of our will so that we seek, more and more, to do the works of mercy because we seek, more and more, to be with Jesus.
It is no longer an obligation but an opportunity. Conversion always takes a small step. Like a new year’s resolution to run a marathon begins by running a mile. None of it would be possible without grace. On our own, we are all goats. On our own, we seek the good whenever it is convenient. On our own, we seek God only when we want to. Yet by grace we can be emptied of selfishness and pride to seek Jesus where he is, in places the world doesn’t want us to go.
On this Christian new years, you have an opportunity for a new resolution: to seek Jesus where he is, not where you want him to be. As the Psalmist says, to sing a joyful song to the Lord with our whole life: with our time and our desire.
Jesus is here. Go to him. Go to him in the hungry. Go to him in the sick. Go to him in the stranger and the naked.
Our time is a construct. They just add an hour here, take an hour away there. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ is true and makes all things new. Our time is offered to us freely by God. We are offered grace by God. We are offered life by God. Let us seek God where God is to be found. Let us not justify our selfishness but grow in the grace offered to us this day. Let go of selfishness. Let go of pride. God is here for you. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, thank you for loving us so much that you are honest with us. Thank you for not hiding the consequences but giving us the grace to transform our lives so that we are able to love you and our neighbor fully. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.