November 20, 2005

          (Jimmie Johnson)

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 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 bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 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, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: 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, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken.

Ephesians 1:15-23

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Matthew 25:31-46

“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.”

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                                      Sermon

The approach of the holidays is a sentimental time. It is a time full of feelings, and that’s the danger. Sentimentality tastes sweet, but it bitters the soul. The reason for this is that you cannot go back and recapture the past through the feelings clustered around your memories. Most of those memories are fictions anyway, created to offer a false peace in the heart. Any attempt to escape the present by reclaiming sentimental memories is spiritually dangerous. It blocks your awareness of God in the present.
That’s why I suspect that the timing of these texts from Ezekiel and Matthew is so good for our hearts, minds, and souls. Texts about judgment are always a challenge and a countercultural move when the shopping malls gear up for the holiday rush and the cash registers ring with false cheer. But, if you are willing to be brave worshippers and seek God’s presence breaking upon your life in the present and not only in the past—you might be surprised by how wonderfully astonishing this time of the year can be from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day.

Look, here is the deal. These Scriptures from both Ezekiel and Matthew—though harsh when first encountered—are inviting us to experience the love of the Lord, not condemnation. Here is what I mean: Of God’s love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone, from the Pope to the loneliest drunk on the planet; secondly, God’s love doesn’t seek value, it creates value.

Both Ezekiel and Matthew, in these texts, are insisting that it is not because we have earned value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift and not an earned credit.
See, Ezekiel insists it is God who makes the first move, seeking us out, and not the other way around. God’s prior love assures us that our value is simply in being human, not in our human achievements. Ezekiel informs us that we are in fact so lost that God must take the trouble to find and rescue us. And astonishingly, God is more than willing. Ezekiel discloses an eager willingness to undertake the mission.

Some of this news sounds good, the idea that God desires to feed us, wipe away our tears, and bind up our wounds. Good news. Good news that God wants to find us when we are so lost and scattered. Good news that God wants to shepherd us to a place where we can relax and be calm rather than fearfully fretting and running to and fro like lost and panicky sheep in a dark storm.

But such news also makes us uneasy.

Are we really that needy and so unable to help ourselves?2 Presbyterian beliefs 101 says: “Yes, we are that helpless.” It is an old-fashioned, old-school Calvinist idea called “total depravity.” It refuses to locate hope originating on this side of heaven but assures us that hope comes to us in our lostness.

So why not see the folly of our being judgmental? Ezekiel calls us on our folly of being so quick to judge, which requires that, before we even listen to someone, we want to know if he or she is liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, gay or straight, hot or, God forbid, not.3 Ezekiel says we are ridiculous with all this. Just ridiculous, because we are all lost sheep. Judgment belongs to God, and God’s concerns are not our own. When God starts sorting out the flock, it is not to divide the good from the bad. God doesn’t insist on a litmus test of faith or political convictions. God seems disinterested in how literally we take the Bible or how literally we believe the doctrines. No, God in the time of judgment, according to Ezekiel’s viewpoint, is seeing what we refused to see, seeking out the weak who have been butted around and battered on their way to the feed trough. God’s compassion is relentlessly searching for those who have been wounded by the selfish actions of others. This is the strange sorting out of the sheep in Ezekiel’s story of God. God alone is the only one capable of being judgmental, because God alone is so full of regard for those who seemed to us without value. Ezekiel is adamant that we have judgment all wrong.

And Matthew’s picture of the second coming of King Jesus is also relentless with its word regarding judgment. If Ezekiel says we have no right to claim for ourselves God’s job description, then Matthew warns us about our lack of spiritual imagination. It’s fascinating, isn’t it, that Matthew doesn’t relate judgement to human sexuality issues or heresy charges or the religious experience of being born again. Matthew doesn’t even relate God’s final judgment to the normal ways we think of sin. Sin isn’t even mentioned in the text.
No, judgment here in Matthew 25 is all about one thing: the living of your life as if Christ is in other people, or the calloused failure to be so imaginative. That’s what judgment is about in Matthew 25. A failure to be imaginative.

The standard of judgment in Matthew 25 is very simple: did you live so imaginatively that you saw Christ present in all the faces which religion and culture usually calluses your heart against, causing you to conclude that God could never be so humble and loving as to be in those faces? The sick one, for example, that we’d rather condemn because we are convinced that their lifestyle contributed to their illness. Or the hungry, who should have been able to fend for themselves if they had tried. Matthew plainly declares, if we are to experience Christ in others, the exercise of our imaginations is vital.

And you and I know perfectly well what counters our imagination? Sloth! Spiritual laziness! Self-righteous contentment! Those condemned in the text of Matthew 25 are not the blatant sinners we so easily condemn. No, the condemned are the good whose goodness has blinded our ability to imagine. Imagine Christ present in the least likely.

See, sloth, laziness, self-righteous contentment, they all pervert our imagination and make it possible for us to look at a starving child . . . with a swollen stomach and say, “Well, it’s not my kid.” To look at a recent widow and say, “It’s not my mom.” Or see an old man riding his wheelchair down the street and say, “Well, that’s not my dad.”3
Matthew 25 judgment is all wrapped up in the capacity of the human spirit to look out upon the world and everything God made and say, I don’t care. It’s not my problem. A lazy lacking of imagination which says, I don’t see how it affects my life.

Look, I don’t know what you intend to ask for during the holidays, but after listening to Ezekiel and Matthew, I am going to be asking for a lot more imagination. I want to get rid of my slothful judgmentalism and receive a brand new super-duper imagination. One that will help me see the astonishing God who hangs out with, rules through, and helps out those I always think are least likely. Such an imagination would come from a God who asks us to see ourselves and our world in such a strikingly new way.

How we choose to return this remarkable gift to God is entirely up to us. But you and I had better believe we’ve got a lot riding on it. I think we need a whole lot less of conventional religious thinking and a whole lot more of a wilder, holier imagination. On Judgment Day it will all be about whether you and I had the imagination. Or, had the imagination but failed to exercise it. Whoa!

1Coffin, Credo, 2004
1, 2Kathleen Norris, “Christian Century,” Nov. 15, 2005
3Norris quoting Craddock

Sermon: Dr. Jimmie D. Johnson
Edited for publication by: Georgia Brady