God's Beloved Family

Matthew 25:34 – “Then he will say to the sheep on his right, ‘Come, blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”

Two things strike me about this passage. First the phrase ‘foundation of the world’ implies that there is a plan, and that those who go along with the plan inherit the kingdom. I will come back to that in a later post. For now, I want to think about inheritance. In this time of CoVid-19, I see a lot of articles about end-of-life directives and wills. Although, my spouse and I had a will when we lived in Chicago, we have not updated it. We were inspired, as I’m sure many were, to update it as well as our healthcare directives. This entails thinking about who we want to deal with our possessions, and who we want to get our stuff. That led us to thinking about our families and friends. 

Families and friends are embedded in the concept of inheritance. We don’t give our money to random strangers. We want to support our families and friends, give them something to remember us by. In this passage, the word inheritance tells us that God wants us to be her family, that God considers us family. You’ve probably heard this many times, but let’s take a moment to drink that in: God considers us her family.

 

How does that make you feel? It makes me feel loved, but also a sense of belonging. That sense is hard to feel right now between our friends and family, because many of us are at home and cannot visit. Zoom, Skype, and FaceTime help, but they are no substitute for hugs. Good news! We don’t need computer programs or phones to feel loved by God. We only need to remember that God loves us and we belong to God and to God’s community. That is part of our inheritance as members of the family of God, the Church of Christ.

In times like these, especially if we or our family members have this disease, it is easy to lose that sense of community and belonging. If we have lost our job and must now stay at home, many questions assail us: how to pay rent, how to feed ourselves and our families, how to survive? For homeless people, the question becomes where to shelter. For prisoners, there is only dependence on others to keep them safe. For refugees and immigrants, there are worries about family members being incarcerated at the border or being incarcerated at the border oneself. There is also the ever-present danger that the president will try to take away more of our rights, more land granted to Native Americans, more money from taxpayers under the guise of emergency. There is no question that this is a trying time for all of us. The future seems uncertain and anxiety increases. The isolation only encourages anxiety and loneliness.

I have read many accounts of survivors of the Holocaust. One thing the survivors tend to have in common is that they found ways to feel loved and connected to God even in the hell of the concentration camps. They didn’t lose their humanity; they helped others. (This is not to say that those who died did not do these things.) I have found that doing something to make another person’s day brighter or to help them in some intangible way makes me feel more hopeful, more joyful, blessed of the father. I feel God’s presence when I am sharing what I have with others. I feel loved when I do things for others. I feel a sense of community when I do things for others. Even if all I do is fix dinner for my spouse and me. There are other ways to connect with God: pray, meditate, draw, listen to music, play music, write, dance, clean, cook, listen to a sermon, the possibilities are endless. 

My prayer for all of us today is that we feel God’s presence, that we feel connected with God as family members, and beloved as one who belongs. Because we all belong to God, however we conceive of God.

B

Sheep on the RIght, Goats on the Left

Matthew 25:32 – “The sheep he will put on his right and the goats on the left.”

What does it mean that the sheep are on the right and the goats are on the left? Merriam-Webster has a great discussion of how words that mean ‘left’ or ‘on the left hand side’, in particular the Latin word sinister, are associated with evil. Even “demonic possession.” Words associated with ‘right,’ therefore, mean correct, good, angelic. In English, we have the term ‘right-hand man’ meaning someone we depend upon. This distinction seems to have arisen because only ten percent of people are left-handed. Even though we know that left-handed people are not, in fact, possessed by demons, our language still contains those associations. This parable is part of the reason for that! 

We’ve been discussing these three parables in the context of being ready for Jesus to return. It is no coincidence that the Son of Humanity put the goats on the left. The goats on the left, of course, were wicked. The sheep on the right were good. It is clear that the sheep were ready while the goats were not. Unlike the other parables, this one doesn’t translate well into our own context, because Christians have been reading this parable for thousands of years. We’ve known about the criteria involved, whereas the sheep and the goats are both characterized as ignorant of those criteria.

 

With this verse, the stage is set for the judgment that follows. With this parable, we get another set of criteria, more explicit than the others. Yet, it still boils down to: Love your neighbor. Who is your neighbor? Everyone. Everyone is your neighbor.

While we all hunker down in our homes out of love for our neighbors, let’s not forget that many are not able to. Homeless people, for instance. In Cleveland, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is using a Days Inn. They have 25 rooms set aside for up to 50 people to shelter-in-place. What is your city or county doing? Contact your representatives and find out. Maybe you could be the catalyst for this in your community.

Whatever you do, stay at home as much as you can to deny this virus opportunities to spread. It’s what the sheep on God’s right hand would do.

B

Scapegoat

Matthew 25:32 – “All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate one from another just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

Far from representing the greatest of all time, goats were sacrificial animals in Israel. The book of Leviticus describes how a perfect goat would be chosen to carry the sins of the nation into the wilderness. “Then Aaron (the priest) shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness (Lev. 16:21-22, NRSV).” 

Nowadays we use the word scapegoat. A scapegoat is a person or group who has been chosen to be blamed when s#!t hits the fan, in much the same manner as the goat as sacrifice in Ancient Israel was chosen to bear the sins of the nation.

But, back to the parable. We will soon see that the reason that the Son of Humanity is separating the sheep from the goats is for purposes of judging them. This is the third parable describing heaven and who will gain entrance and who will be left out. And I have to confess that I have had a very hard time this last week not playing God and deciding on my own who will make the cut and who will not, especially regarding the president and his enablers. Instead, I have been continuing my prayers for the world. It’s difficult to remember when the president’s actions are getting people killed, that he is hurting. This chaos and confusion he is creating echoes the chaos and confusion in his mind. He is very unfit for the position he is in.

This morning, while I was praying, it occurred to me that I could treat Donald like an alcoholic. Let me explain. I am a member of Al-Anon and one way to deal with an alcoholic is to not let their words derail our hour/morning/day. Donald may or may not be an alcoholic, but the lies, the gaslighting, the constant changing of plans, the chaos and confusion are all actions alcoholics tend to take to keep the focus on something besides their alcohol consumption and the problems it creates. The point is, life is more manageable when we recognize that someone’s word is not to be trusted, when we can ignore it, when we have a plan B. So many of us have not yet recognized that Donald’s words are not to be trusted, and so he is able to create chaos and confusion. I understand that news networks have started cutting away from his daily briefings, belatedly recognizing that he is abusing the privilege. 

When it comes to the pandemic raging around the world, don’t trust the president. His agenda is not to inform, but to make himself look good, no matter who pays the cost, to create scapegoats. He's very good at creating scapegoats. If you, like me, find yourself on Donald’s emotional roller coaster, get off. However, you’re able to do that. Whether by remembering he is not well, working to ensure some of his worst ideas do not come to fruition, by remembering that ‘hurt people hurt people,’ or by spreading love in the world. Our time and emotional energy could be used for more positive, productive, and healthy purposes, like loving our neighbors.

We’ll get through this as a nation one day at a time. That was a hard sentence to write because many people won’t get through this, which makes it all the more important to spread God’s love, love our neighbors, stay at home if we can, check on those around us, check on friends and family.

How will you get or stay off Donald's roller coaster today?

B