No Man Left Behind

Sermon as preached on 11/23/14  at Lambs and Evington UMC



Read Ezekiel 34:11-16,20-24

Read Matthew 25:31-46

Image Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library

 Lately there has been a lot of craze in the Christian community about the movie Left Behind.  This story is nothing new really, the books have been around for quite some time, and there was already a movie made years ago with Kirk Cameron. This movie has a big time star in Nicholas Cage and it seems to have had more money in the budget for special effects. Now the movie can depict all of the explosions, and plane crashes, and cars running through buildings, and vanishing people with greater effects than ever before. I have to admit I haven’t seen the new movie, I’ve only seen trailers for it; but I have seen the original and I have read the book, but I think that too many Christians have forgotten that fact; this is just a book, this is just a movie. This new movie is fiction, it is not Scripture. For how often evangelical Christians proclaim Scripture only as their source of knowledge, it is amazing how many people see this movie or read this book and act as if it is God truth written and directed by Jesus Christ himself. Is what is depicted in Left Behind really what we as Christians put our hope in? Is this what the end of the times will really be like?

            Well, first off, none of us really know exactly what the end of times will be like, only God knows that, but scripture does give us some insight to what to expect.  Our Gospel lesson from Matthew is one of these scriptures that can help give us some insight. How do we know? Well when a scripture starts off saying, “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” that’s a pretty good clue to the fact that we are talking about the end of times. So what does our scripture say will happen when the Son of man comes in glory? Well it is the parable that is familiar to so many of us where Jesus separates the sheep from the goats. Jesus tells the sheep that they fed him when he was hungry , gave him something to drink when he was thirsty, and they welcomed him when he was a stranger,  gave him clothes to wear when he was naked, took care of him when he was sick, and visited him when he was in prison. When those who did these things questioned Jesus about it, he said, “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.” These sheep then inherited the Kingdom prepared for them. Likewise as the goats come before the throne, Jesus rebukes them for not feeding him or giving him a drink, clothing him, welcoming him, taking care of him, or visiting him. For failing to take care of the needy we are told that the goats are then separated and go away into eternal punishment, but that the righteous go into eternal life.

            Reading this scripture at face value makes really seems to be in agreement with what we find in the Left Behind series. In the book, we have the righteous who are raptured, taken up, separated from the unrighteous who are left behind to deal with their fate and face their punishment. Like I said, at face value this seems to be very similar to what we see in our scripture with the sheep being separated from the goats; the sheep celebrating eternal life and the goats facing eternal punishment.  With this view of the end of times then our hope rests in the power of Jesus Christ to come and punish the evil and the wicked. Our hope rests in God to come and snatch us away from all of the evil in the world around us. Our life of faith then becomes one in which we make sure we do good so that we get taken and not left behind. Our faith becomes a faith in which our works determine whether or not our not we are saved. This Earth becomes just a place to escape from, to leave behind for the wicked to destroy. 

            I don’t know about you, but I have some issue with some of these assumptions. Like the good Protestant that I am, I am uncomfortable saying that my works determine my salvation, as if I could do something to earn or merit the grace of God. I certainly believe in God’s justice but  I do not rejoice or hope for punishment for the wicked. You could say, but pastor isn’t that what we find in the Bible all the time, people praying and asking for the Messiah to come and punish the wicked and restore God’s people to their rightful place?  You would be right, but Jesus broke these expectations of the Messiah. He was born in a manger, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and he did not conquer the Romans with might, but his great legacy is his crucifixion and resurrection from the dead. (Pause)   Finally I hate to think that this beautiful world that God created, looked at and called good could just be abandoned by God and given to evil for destruction. There is so much that troubles me about this view of the end of times, but what can we do? I mean this is what it looks like we have here in our scripture from Matthew.

            That is unless you put this scripture into context. You see, this image of sheep and goats being gathered at the end of times is not actually something that Jesus came up with. In fact, Jesus is referencing the prophet Ezekiel in the scripture. Ezekiel long before the birth of Jesus talks God as our shepherd. And yes there is a separation between two groups of sheep in this passage as well, but that is only secondary to the real message of the passage. This passage is about God’s justice, but it does not focus on the punishment of the wicked, but of the salvation of the needy. God says, “As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness… I will feed them with good pasture… I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.” This scripture is much more like our parable of the lost sheep. That God our shepherd will search for us when we are lost. It is a reminder that God hears the cries of the needy and will gather them in his arms. That the hungry will be fed, the thirsty will have something to drink, the cold and naked will have something to wear, and the sick and injured will be tended to.

            And now we start to hear echoes of that Matthew passage that is more familiar to us. All of these things that God promises that he will do for his flock such as feed them, take care of them when they are sick, find them and welcome them back into the fold, these are the very things that the righteous ones in Jesus’s parables are doing. Once we realize this connect then our eyes can be opened to what Jesus’s parable is all about.  It is not a parable in which the righteous have worked hard and earned their salvation and are now taken up while the others are left behind. In fact the righteous have not even been working for their salvation at all, the righteous have been working towards the justice that God proclaims in Ezekiel. The righteous are not actually thinking about themselves at all, they are thinking about this role in building up the Kingdom of God.

            When we actually stop to think about it a little deeper, then it almost becomes a well duh moment.  We so often take this parable from Jesus to mean that if we do good works for other people then we will be rewarded for our efforts; but how could the righteous be working towards these rewards if they didn’t know they were serving Jesus in the first place? Remember, when Jesus tells them that they did it unto him, they had no clue what he was talking about. They weren’t helping the poor and the needy out of some duty or hope of eternal life, they were helping the poor and the needy because that’s what God’s justice looks like.  Our hope of the end of times is not a celebration of some epic fire and destruction, but is actually a hope in the restoration and creation of the beautiful Kingdom of God. It is the hope in that which Jesus proclaims in the book of Revelation, “See I am making all things new.” Our parable is not about doom and gloom, it is about justice; it is not about being Left Behind, but God gathering in all those in need.

            But what about the goats?  There does seem to be an element of punishment for the goats in Jesus’s parable. In fact the scripture even tells us, “And these will go away into eternal punishment.”  That has to mean doom and gloom for the world right? Maybe, but maybe not.  What is it that the goats are being punished for? It was because they did not feed  the hungry or clothe the naked or welcome the stranger. In our Ezekiel story we hear, “I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide.”  The problem with the goats or with the fat sheep is that their life was a life contrary to God’s justice. Instead of working towards building the Kingdom of God they worked for themselves. Instead of searching for the lost and the broken, they butted the weak away until they were scattered far and wide. So on this day of judgment as we like to call it, these goats, these fatted sheep are not left behind while the righteous escape this world of sin, but instead they are the ones who are scattered, separated from the flock.  This beautiful Kingdom of God has arrived in its fullest on Earth, The Son of Man has returned, and they do not get to be part of it. What greater hell can there be than being separated from God.

            On this Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of our Church calendar, these stories make us stop and really think about what we believe about this day of judgement. So often we view the day of judgment as time in which God comes down with a vengeance and punishes the wicked for all of their evil ways while the righteous are rewarded for their good works. We often believe that which is depicted in books and movies like Left Behind where the just are snatched away to safety and the wicked are left on Earth to face God’s wrath. That’s not what find here in our scripture. Yes there is a day of judgment, but that is not a day when the whole world goes to hell, in fact it is quite opposite. The day of judgment is the day in which the world is redeemed, when the world is made new and the Kingdom of God is in its fullest.  And yes we do read about a punishment on this day, but this punishment is not just the wrath of God coming and destroying the wicked, but rather it is God protecting his flock. The righteous have been doing God’s justice in the world and building towards the Kingdom of God all while the goats and the fatted sheep have been ignoring the cries of the needy and even perpetrating acts of injustice. So now on this judgment day when the Kingdom has come in its glory, when God’s justice has prevailed, God separates from the flock those who would do harm and cause damage to this Kingdom. God’s justice is less of retaliation, and more of a protection of this of New heaven and new Earth. It’s is God’s decree that I have heard the cry of my people, and I will protect them.

            When our view of the end of times shifts away from an escape from this world and shifts towards the creation of something so beautiful as the Kingdom of God in its fullest; the way we live our lives as Christians today begins to shift as well.  We stop worrying about ourselves and how we can save our own souls and we begin to worry about God’s justice in the world today. We see the corruption on Wall Street and in Washington and we demand a change. We see injustice and we stand up against just like Arnold Abbott.  Arnold has been feeding the homeless in Ft. Lauderdale for years. Recently due to a new law in the city, Arnold was told by police to stop feeding the homeless to which he responded, “These are the poorest of the poor, They have nothing. They don't have a roof over their heads. How do you turn them away?”  And so at 90s years old Arnold was arrested for feeding the homeless. When we have a vision of Christ’s reign in the world in which God’s justice prevails, we are become inspired like Arnold to work towards that justice now. We will not be like the goats who refused to feed, clothe, visit, heal and welcome Jesus. We will work for God’s justice now. We do it not so that we may be rewarded in the end of times, we do not do so that we may be whisked away while others are left behind, we do it to gather others into the fold, to find the hurt and the broken so that the world may get a glimpse of what God’s justice truly looks like.