“When did we see you, Lord? “
“In the least of these – the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger,
those in prison…”
It’s a powerful story that Christ tells in the Gospel today. It’s a story which we find echoed in legends and folk tales. The story of St. Christopher picks it up. St. Christopher, you remember carried travellers across a broad river. One day he found himself carrying a small child. As they crossed the river, the child seemed to get heavier and heavier, as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Only when they had crossed did Christopher realise that this little child was Christ, and the weight he felt was the weight of sin and sorrow which Christ carried on the cross.
Then there is St. Martin, who gave half his cloak to a beggar, and in a dream saw that the beggar was Christ.
Or St Elizabeth of Hungary – this may be a less familiar tale.
- Elizabeth
was a medieval Hungarian princess. She really wanted to be a nun, but that
wasn’t an option. She had to marry – a dynastic union, made for political
reasons. But her impulse to help others couldn’t be checked. Soon her
husband’s castle was full of the sick and poor – even the dungeons were
turned into a hospital.
Her husband tolerated this, but her mother in law was horrified. This was no way for a princess to behave.
The final straw came one day when her husband was away hunting. The castle was full of the sick – no room left anywhere – not a single bed, not a corner of a floor to put a mattress.
Then a leper arrived at the castle gates. He was so ill that he couldn’t walk. He pulled himself along the ground and collapsed in the castle courtyard. Elizabeth didn’t know what to do. She could see that the man was near death, and she did not want to leave him to die untended. Then she remembered that there was just one bed that wasn’t occupied. Her husband’s bed. So she carried the leper upstairs and put him in it.
Her mother in law was aghast. This time she had gone too far. She sent a message to her son – “Come back quickly. Your wife has installed another man in your bed – and even worse, he is a leper!”
Elizabeth’s husband rode straight home, and his mother in law met him at the castle gate and took him upstairs to his room. She threw open the door. “There – look at that.” But on the bed there lay, not the leper, but Christ himself, exhausted and battered. He looked wearily at the two of them, as they stood in the doorway. “Can you not let me lie here till morning? Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Ashamed and confused, they closed the door and went away.
In the morning, when they looked again into the bedroom, they found not Christ, but the leper, healed completely of his disease.
But the problem with all this is that it is a bit like motherhood and apple pie. I can stand here and tell you that it is a good thing to feed the poor and help the homeless, and you can all nod and smile, and we can all go away feeling that we have heard this Gospel story and understood it. But the hungry are still hungry, and the homeless still sleep in doorways, despite 2000 years of stories and reminders.
I always feel wary of preaching about “oughts” and “shoulds”. It is easy to say – “we ought to help others” – but on its own that gets us nowhere. We know what we ought to do. The real question is “why don’t we?” What gets in the way of us feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the prisoner? Though this story divides people into two groups, in fact there is both sheep and goat in all of us. Sometimes we see a need and meet it – I know that there are many here who have given generously of their time and money – but there are also times when we ignore the needs of those around us. So, what makes us able and willing to help – what prevents us from doing so?
The longer I looked at this story the more I became intrigued by the opening image Jesus uses. This scene he said, was like that of a shepherd separating sheep from goats. Was he just saying that this was an exercise in sorting – or was there more to it than this? Jesus was speaking to an audience that knew about sheep and goats. I don’t really, so I did a bit of research to find out more.
Both sheep and goats were kept extensively in the Middle East for meat, milk and wool. But they weren’t regarded in the same way. There were very mixed feelings about goats, despite their usefulness. One rabbi described them as “armed robbers”. Sheep cropped the grass neatly, but goats ate everything – young shoots, buds and fruit off trees – and they were no respecters of fences. They were barely domesticated, instead of staying together in flocks like sheep did, they would go off on their own high up into the mountains.
I think the associations which come into our minds when we think about sheep and goats are pretty much the same. Goats are independent, hardy, self reliant, aggressive – looking out for number one ….Sheep are passive, vulnerable, followers of the flock – needing a great deal of care… The word “Sheepishness” is a word full of vulnerability and weakness. “Goatishness” conjures up quite a different picture!
So, sheep and goats, despite being closely related, are very different animals. In many ways, I imagine many of us would rather see ourselves as goats than sheep .Who wants to be a stupid, vulnerable animal that can’t look after itself? Wouldn’t we rather be self-reliant goats, confidently leaping about on the high mountains? Who wants to be dependent? And yet consistently in scripture we are told that this is exactly what we are and what we should be. The Psalmists tell us we are the people of God’s pasture and the sheep of his hand, and it’s an image we find in that best known of all Psalms – 23 – The Lord is my shepherd. The Old Testament reading describes God as the shepherd of his sheep, leading them to good pasture.
Sheep we are, and sheep we are meant to be – needing God’s help – not goats who can look after themselves. It is a humbling thought.
Today is the feast of Christ the king. Today we celebrate Christ’s lordship in our lives. Lords, kings – their original primary role was to provide a good safe supply of food for their people - just as a shepherd does for his flock. We select our governments today largely on the issue of whether they can manage the economy so that we are provided for. If they don’t they soon find they have lost their position. The word “Lord” comes from the Old English “hlaford” – the loaf ward – the provider of bread. “Lady” comes from “hlafdigge” – the loaf kneader.
Christ’s lordship, is not about the exercise of power for its own sake. To call Christ king is to acknowledge that we are dependent on him – that we have not got it all sorted out for ourselves, and we never will. The biggest obstacle to our growth in faith and discipleship is thinking we don’t need to grow. The biggest obstacle to our knowing the truth that we are loved, comforted, sustained, fed by God, is believing that we don’t need his help.
I think that when Jesus may be telling us something important in making the sheep the good guys in this parable.
It has been my experience that the people who are the most effective helpers are often the people who know themselves to be needy too; the ones who are not afraid to acknowledge their “sheepishness”. Those who want to look strong and self reliant – goatish – often do so by by rejecting weakness, in themselves as well as in others. If they do notice the weak, they often do more harm than good in their overbearing belief that they have all the answers. These are the people who leave you feeling ten times worse – not only hungry, thirsty, homeless, but a pathetic failure who will never amount to anything. In a sense, it is a mercy if they don’t notice you!
But the “sheepish” help the hungry because they know what it is like to feel hunger. They know that they will always need God to feed them. They welcome the stranger because they know how it feels to be an outsider, one who doesn’t quite fit – and they will always need reminding that they have a secure place in the family of God. They care for the prisoner, because they know what it is like to feel trapped and helpless – needing God to set them free. These are the sort of people who manage, when they help you, to make you feel human and hopeful in midst of difficulty. And in their turn they have the joy and privilege of finding Christ in everyone they encounter – including in the needy parts of themselves.
So on this feast of Christ, the shepherd king, how about putting away that goat in you, the part of you that is determined to run your own life, and letting yourself be “sheepish” – safely led to pastures you would never have found yourself, and taking others who are hungry along with you too. Amen.
(Comments to mum@GORDONFAM.FREESERVE.CO.UK.)