Counting Sheep

“Counting Sheep”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

Matthew 25.31-45

“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.’

            George Washington died in 1797.  After his death, there was great consensus that a monument to him should be created.  The soaring obelisk at the heart of the mall in the nation’s capital, The Washington Monument, although commonly desired, was not completed until 1885.  It took nearly 90 years to construct.

            Part of the delay was funding.  The federal government didn’t have a lot of extra cash and private donations didn’t match the desire to honor our first president.  Yet, the greatest delay was design.  What would be the right message, the correct image?  This question dragged on and on.  It was only after the Civil War that the monument really came together.

            In the end, it was the tenacity and determination of the builder, William Casey, an engineer with the Army Corp, who simply ignored all direction and suggestion and debate and built the obelisk.  The design was supposed to include texts like the Lincoln memorial.  But what words should be chosen?  Casey left the obelisk completely blank.  Even Washington’s name is not on there.  And the grand entrance of statues and pillars and ornamental carvings around the door which were all part of the plan?  Gone.  It was as if: you want an obelisk?  Here’s an obelisk. 

            Now it was the tallest structure in the world when it was completed.  And it is still the tallest building made without steel.  But in terms of art, or symbol, or message it is really a blank canvas.  Some were quick to point out: it is a symbol of pure ideal, of America as a new concept, like Lincoln conveyed in the Gettysburg Address, an experiment.  Hence the symbols and the images with Washington is a kind tabla rasa or blank slate.

            This sounds good, and maybe that is what the monument has come to symbolize, but in truth, it was really a matter of frustration and determination: Just finish it already.  It would have been quite embarrassing if the monument persisted in partial form.  And, given the twenty years prior, the two decades following the Civil War didn’t create a deep sense of solidarity and common definition, perhaps no words were the only way for it to be a shared monument.

            Having seen the drawings of what the monument was supposed to look like with statues and columns and inscriptions, I like the simplicity of its unadorned form.  It is as if you are invited to offer a definition, your ideal, to it rather than consider the ideals of any one generation. Like our national anthem being a question without an answer (does the banner yet wave), there is an openendedness, an experimental quality; it's not yet complete and perhaps never will be. 

            I recently read a book asking a question about America that was a bit different in form, quite complicated question that is.  Believe Me, the Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, was written by John Fea, an evangelical himself and a historian.  Most of the book was about the history of evangelicalism in America, how, where, and when this brand of Christianity has waded into politics.  Fea’s driving question was based upon a statistic: 80%.  That was the percentage of Evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump in 2016.  80% is a striking figure of solidarity. 

            Unsurprisingly, the evangelicals had different reasons for casting their vote.  But there were patterns.  Two filtered to the top.  One: God chooses flawed people to do great things.  Character matters, but if God’s got a plan, who are we to doubt?  The other pattern was more down to earth.  Nostalgia.  Make America Great Again.  It’s the “again” that unified many even though what was to be restored ran the gamut.  Restore America to the 50s, 20s, to the 1880s, 1830s?  No one clear winner, although, the 50s is always an easy source of nostalgia.

            Fea’s book was helpful in coming to terms with how a very irreligious person could be the focus of very religious people.  But where he was most helpful was where he did the least, was unable to answer a question.  The question left unanswered was this: when was America great? When was the greatness lost? 

            Fea’s lack of an answer is not so much a mark of a poor historian.  When and how a nation is great is without question one of the most difficult to answer.  This is the question of Rome of China of Egypt of Greece, and so on and so on.  To answer when a nation or country was great is complex and has too many answers.  For centuries scholars have tried to answer: When did Rome fall?  The fall is really a way of measuring accomplishment, when was it at its best, and thus when did it begin to diminish?

            For centuries the common answer for Rome’s fall was 325.  When Constantine became the emperor and a Christian, then the glory of Rome faded.  Basically Christians ruined it.  Recently, the popular date is 212, when Caracalla extended citizenship to all people of the empire.  What was a mark of distinction and privilege was made common and with the lowering of value for citizenship came a lower value of citizen.

            I know politics and religion in the pulpit gets folks nervous, and I also know that the construction of civic monuments and the analysis of civic virtue in ancient cultures tends to put folks asleep, but it’s not my fault.  The parable of Jesus is knee deep in these weeds, has a claim to make about what makes nations good or bad, rising to greatness or falling to the abyss, and if we want to find what is up in the parable we need to ask the question: what makes us great?

            The parable of the sheep and the goats has an answer, but like most parables of Jesus, it's tricky.  The answer to what makes a nation great according to Jesus is this: great nations are those who lift the fallen, who offer dignity, who do not discard, but remember the outcast, the least.  The greatest nations are those who care for the least. 

            Oftentimes, this parable is read as a mandate for a personal ethic.  If you are going to get into heaven, you need to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and visit the sick and the imprisoned.  And most certainly those are true and noble acts.  Teaching in prison made me realize how we discard prisoners; being a chaplain in a psyche hospital showed me how much we would rather forget the mentally ill; and I could keep going, but what experiences like this taught me is that hospitals, prisons, places of extreme poverty are not where we live; we are not there.

            The parable could be read as a call: "hey, you need to do better."  Yet, the truth is, this parable is not about individuals; this is the measure of nations.  The parable said, God gathered the nations and judged them, divided them.  The measure of an individual ethic Jesus gave that in other parables like the Good Samaritan or healing the man who was brought to Jesus by his friends, lowered through a roof.  Those are teaching where we put our personal codes, habits, and measure them as to their righteousness.  When you read the parable of the Good Samaritan you should be challenged to be more compassionate.  Yet, when you read the parable of the sheep and the goats, we should be challenged by the measure of society; how is the experiment of America doing when compared to the measure of the sheep and the goats?  Are we as a people finding and caring for the least?

            In some ways this measure is not unique to Jesus.  The ideal of civic virtue is that a nation is only as good as its people and the goodness of the people is measured in terms of charity and mercy and fairness.  We are critical of nations who oppress and are violent and have no justice.  What is unique in the parable is that no one seems to know this, no one understands.  The nations that did well seem just as dumbfounded as the nations who receive a bad verdict.  They both ask the Lord of Glory how was this again?  When did this happen?

            It took four generations to complete Washington's monument.  Once complete there was nothing in terms of ideals, images, no goddesses of victory, no lesser god of war, just an ancient symbol of birth, a marker of beginning.  Don't get me wrong I like the Lincoln Memorial with its inscriptions, just as I don't like the Jefferson Memorial with its focus on the ideal without critique.  Monuments should conjure different answers to the question: what makes a nation great?  But the Washington Monument is so close to the parable, the absence of understanding, the sense that in the end we are still at the beginning and we really don't know what we are doing or why.

            This is pure speculation, but I believe Matthew placed this parable as the last of the parables to say, there is a limit to what we understand. This is his last public teaching.  Hence a kind of limit in itself.  What is not speculation is that Jesus paints a very cosmic image, throne of glory, gathering of nations, and then gets very earthy, very uncosmic.  There is nothing ideal in a prison; there is little repose in a hospital; the naked are not much by way of political theory.  In fact, in art, the naked are often the disenfranchised, those who have no voice, no vote, no dignity.

            For centuries Protestants have struggled with the sheep and the goats because it seems to suggest a way to earn grace, what is called works righteousness.  We protested that back in the 16th century and rightly so.  And fear that such progress would be erased has made for an uneasy reading.  Yet, the truth is just the opposite.  The work is not for a purpose, the work is not to earn a spot in heaven.  We don't earn an entry to the pearly gates by 10 visits to the prison.  This is not a punch card for a free sub sandwich.  This is, as all parables tend to be, a moment where we doubt our certainty.  Do we really understand what it means to be great?

            The nations who did well, they don't know it; the nations who did poorly, they didn't know it either. 

            When people ask me about heaven or hell or eternal life or judgment, I find myself drawn to the humility of this parable.  I usually tell people.  Heaven?  Hell?  Glory?  Punishment?  I don't know.  You see I am in sales not management. I am not here to count the sheep, the goats.  Above my pay grade. 

            What I can tell you is that if you were to ask me by what measure should a nation be judged, I would give them the list of Jesus: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the prisoner.  Your greatness will be measured by how much you loved the least.  That's about right.  Who is the best?  When were some people great?  Often such questions are measured in terms of battles won or empires extended or the force of an economy.  What's your market share?  That's a common way to value a company.

            You and I live in this place at this time as people of this nation.  Are we good?  Are we bad?  Are we doing great?  Lot of people have a lot of answers to that.  Was America great and now it's not?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But in this time and place all I know is we will be great by how we treat the least.  We need to be people willing to be in the wrong place, loving the least, with as few answers as possible.  Henri Nouwen said that.  He was smart.  Amen.