Shearing Your Values: Matthew 25:31-46
Ordinary Time
"Great Choice" series on discernment
September 2026
“Now when the Human
One comes in his majesty and all his angels are with him, he will sit on
his majestic throne. 32 All the nations will be
gathered in front of him. He will separate them from each other, just as a
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He
will put the sheep on his right side. But the goats he will put on his left.
34 “Then the king will
say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who will receive good things from my
Father. Inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you before the world
began. 35 I was hungry and you gave me food to eat.
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed
me. 36 I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear.
I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.’
37 “Then those who are
righteous will reply to him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or
thirsty and give you a drink? 38 When did we see
you as a stranger and welcome you, or naked and give you clothes to wear? 39 When
did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
40 “Then the king will
reply to them, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of
these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’
41 “Then he will say to
those on his left, ‘Get away from me, you who will receive terrible things. Go
into the unending fire that has been prepared for the devil and his
angels. 42 I was hungry and you didn’t give me food
to eat. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me anything to drink. 43 I
was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me. I was naked and you didn’t give me
clothes to wear. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’
44 “Then they will
reply, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or
sick or in prison and didn’t do anything to help you?’ 45 Then
he will answer, ‘I assure you that when you haven’t done it for one of the
least of these, you haven’t done it for me.’ 46 And
they will go away into eternal punishment. But the righteous ones will go into
eternal life.” (CEB)
Three
weeks ago, seven clergy leaders were arrested in Williston, Vermont for
blocking the entrance to the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center. It almost sounds like the beginning of an
elaborate joke: two United Church of Christ ministers, an Episcopal priest and
the archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont, a Quaker leader, a United
Methodist pastor, and a Unitarian Universalist minister walk in front of a
door.[1]
But
the door was into a center that Immigrations Custom and Enforcement uses for
surveillance, specifically “where the agency ‘analyzes data in numerous law
enforcement and immigration databases to develop leads on removable noncitizens’
that are then provided to field offices.”[2] Episcopalian Archdeacon Susan McMillan said
in a later statement, “Every day, from this building, ICE surveils, determining
which man, woman or child should be targeted. And then that person, or someone
mistaken for that person, or a brown skinned person who happens to be nearby,
is kidnapped, incarcerated without due process, and their life destroyed…If
Jesus were here in the US today, he could easily be caught in this trap and
deported. This is not Christianity and I have to fight this cruelty in every
way I can.”[3] United Methodist Rev. Rebecca Girrell said, “I
think it is imperative on me, as a faith leader, to proclaim that human beings
are not targets and that God is a God of justice and of love”. The were charged with “unlawful trespassing”
for blocking the building’s entrance for some three hours while singing,
praying, and reading the names of people Girrell said have “been killed in ICE
interactions or died in detention.”[4]
Today’s
image of sheep and goats from the gospel of Matthew has become a familiar one,
often as a bludgeon to tell other people how much they aren’t being the right
kind of Christian. It can be both
tempting and satisfying to point out how one party or another or one
denomination or another is clearly not acting as the sheep; it’s
especially tempting because the implication underneath is that I am, that I
read the parable correctly and will get an A in Christianity because I am Doing
It Right just like the leaders who were arrested. An acquaintance of mine posted a meme just
this past week—proving the point of this becoming a common measuring stick—that
said, “Pretty sure it doesn’t say, ‘When I was hungry you put me on a bus, when
I was thirsty you booked me a one-way plane ticket,’ or ‘when I was a stranger
you treated me like cargo and shipped me off for political gain.’”[5] I admit, church, I fought hard with this
sermon because it seems so straightforward—do the right thing. That’s what it’s about, right? Why is that so hard?
Except
that’s a deep oversimplification of what it’s about, which is often true with
Scripture. We want bumper stickers and
God gave us an entire book of multiple viewpoints and time periods; we want
memes and God gave us memory, story, prophecy, change. So we wrestle, and we read, and we re-read.
Professor
David Schnasa Jacobsen writes, “[T]he ones being judged are not Jews nor Jewish
Christians specifically, but ‘the nations.’ This is a traditional term for the
gentiles. The question that Matthew’s Jesus handles in this vision is not about
the ethics of the church or even Jesus’ disciples, but the response to the
least of these on the part of the nations, the gentiles. Please recall as well
that Matthew’s Jesus is concerned to equip and empower a persecuted church.
“What
concerns this judgment is not the ethics of the faithful, but the judgment of
the gentiles: those who would either respond positively or negatively to the ‘little
ones,’ the ‘least of these’ that make up Christ’s community. This vision is the
final eschatological parable because it answers the question: what will God do
with all the others outside the community, those who either persecute
Christians or otherwise feed, visit, or clothe them in their time of
persecution? If you were part of that little community, you might want to know
that the Son of Man, the King, the Shepherd, has got your community’s back,
ultimately.”[6]
Matthew’s
entire gospel is built on the premise that Jesus is not only God but that He is
the long-awaited Jewish messiah, meshiach, the one who will reform
Israel and redeem the Jews from their suffering. Everything in his writing is about speaking
to his fellow Jews that the time has come.
This parable is not written for those of us who are not Jews. It is not to tell us “be kind to one
another,” at least not primarily. It is
to tell a minority faith that they are not the only ones who will be held
accountable for the world, that the ones who have held them down are seen by
God and will answer for it, that the least of these truly are protected across
all borders by the Spirit Herself.
It can be
hard to remind ourselves, those of us who are not Jews, that much of the Bible
was not written to us. It was
certainly written for us in the sense that we of the expanded faith, we
of the Church universal that reaches through space and time in God’s plan of
remaking the world, are shaped by and invited into the text. But we are not Matthew’s primary
audience. We are the nations, the ones
later invited into the work of redemption, the ones grafted into the family
tree. What this text is offering to us
is not a measuring stick by which we can whack others about Christianity but a
guideline for each of us as to how we enter the world God is creating.
This
story of sheep and goats comes after a series of end-time visions, apocalyptic
scenarios named for the Greek ἀποκαλύπτω (apocalupto), “to reveal, uncover, or
disclose.”[7] These are the last teachings Jesus has before
He beings His passion, His march to the cross and human judgment. After 23 other chapters of teaching His
disciples how to be people of a re-formed faith, Jesus is now rapid-fire
inviting His audience to see that God is with them to the end of the age but
that end will not look like they thought.
The previous assumption that God is only for a small group of people and
will only care about the actions of the Jews is thrown right out the window
because all of, all of us are now called to God’s work in the world, and
God’s work is grounded in solidarity with the least of these. It’s kind of God’s thing. Rev. Dr. Timothy F. Simpson writes, “There
are over 300 biblical texts that address matters of social justice and which
instruct the faithful on how to think about and to treat the poor, including
Proverbs 14:31, whose meaning underlies the Matthew text (‘Those who oppress
the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honour him.’). Social justice, in fact, is what messiah is
all about”.[8]
We’ve
been talking about our values lately and how we discern what drives us so that
we can mindfully listen for the Spirit’s nudges in our decision-making. We are no strangers to the importance of
social justice and the value of seeing another person as a whole person, but
Jesus’ parable invites us to think about it at a deeper level. It’s not just that we should see other
people’s humanity but that we are called to be aware of their connection to
divinity. Rev. Robert Jamieson writes, “The
surprise expressed [by the sheep] is not at their being told that they acted
from love to Christ, but that Christ Himself was the Personal Object
of all their deeds: that they found Him hungry, and supplied Him with
food: that they brought water to Him, and slaked His thirst; that seeing
Him naked and shivering, they put warm clothing upon Him, paid Him
visits when lying in prison for the truth, and sat by His bedside when
laid down with sickness.”[9]
How
differently do we act toward people when we see them not just as someone human like
us but as someone imbued with the Spirit, as someone bearing the image of God, imago
Dei, holy unto themselves? It is
this that can drive people to block the doors of an ICE thinktank; it is this
that bring people to visit those in prison even if they aren’t personally
connected to them; it is this that shifts us from being nice into having love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—the
fruit of the Spirit from last week.
Over
and over and over again, Scripture calls us to reevaluate how we think of the
ones society tells us are worthless. There
are so many narratives right now that offer us ready-made hatred: don’t trust the brown folk, be afraid of the
trans folk, dismiss the disabled folk, protect yourself from the greedy
poor. And it’s tempting to answer that
hate with a snarky little meme about how we read the Bible better and so we’re
right. But the snark isn’t what the
sheep show up with; it’s the bone-deep recognition that this other person
matters and Jesus gives that the shape of Himself; love the Lord your God
with all your heart, mind, and soul, God commands in Exodus. In doing this, you have loved Me,
Jesus adds.
Is
the value, the driving discernment force, that we shouldn’t be cruel? That’s a fine value; I certainly hope for
less cruelty in the world. But not being
cruel isn’t the same as being kind, and that isn’t the same as engaging with
others because God binds us together.
Can we be so aware of God’s presence in the world that we act in
relationship with Her in every conversation?
That’s hard
work, especially when people are absolute punks who wouldn’t willingly house
God if you paid them. Cue the memes
because surely, surely it is just common sense and these people who don’t have
it are awful. Yet the beginning of this
parable is that when “the Human One comes in his majesty and all his angels are
with him, he will sit on his majestic throne”.
God
judges. We do not. That’s not ours. We can hold accountable, for sure; we can
stand in front of ICE centers and we can call out the leaders who continually
take food from the hungry and safety from the poor; we can tear down the
for-profit prison pipelines that keep so many incarcerated to fund an industry
of cruelty and sin. We can and must do
these things. But we do not do them to
be better at Christianity than another and weaponize our goodness, we the
nations who have figured it out. We do
them because the entirety of the Bible tells us over and over and over again
that God forgets none, throws away none; we do them because the image of God
rests in all creation; we do them because we are called to bear good fruit
regardless of whether others have figured out the same.
A
key part of Jesus’ parable is that the sheep, the example, the ones who served
well, didn’t know. They weren’t
doing it to score points or post memes or even to get their names in a
newspaper for standing up to ICE; the sheep were doing it because their faith
told them love your God with your whole heart and mind and soul; love your
neighbor as yourself. And God said
to them yes, this is the measure of what is good: to know that in every person
the world has told you is less than human, I tell you they are a figure of the
Divine.
May
we learn to love that deeply. May we go
into the places that humans have left but God remains and be the light. And may we know, now and in the end of all
things, that the nations are called to hear the word of the Holy: to love, and
love, and love again. Amen.
[1]
https://religionnews.com/2026/09/04/seven-vermont-clergy-arrested-protesting-targeting-center-used-by-ice/
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
https://religionnews.com/2026/09/04/seven-vermont-clergy-arrested-protesting-targeting-center-used-by-ice/
[5]
Traced back to Randy Neal, posted 9/21/26, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10233760703065649&set=a.3859721937881
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