Matthew 25:31-46
Last Sunday, we studied the teaching immediately before today’s reading from the gospel attributed to Matthew, a passage traditionally known as the Parable of the Talents, which gives us the line so often lifted out of context, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Of course, the servant was actually a slave, and I confessed in last week’s sermon that I am not sure what we are supposed to learn from that parable, something that was reinforced as I prepared for today’s text.
Specifically, the Parable of the Talents looks a lot like the late-stage neoliberal capitalism of our 21st century economy, profit without production, and that simply doesn’t make sense in the historic context.
The Israelite culture was founded as small hold farm communities loosely organized by clan. Given the climate, it was a tenuous existence even at the best of times, and the times were rarely the best. The small hold family might manage a surplus some years, but there was the constant threat of drought and locusts, instability and war, and the demand for tithes and taxes from the Temple authorities and occupying armies. Even more important, however, is something captured in our reading from Ezekiel, and in today’s Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
Western culture deifies the individual. We might sometimes frame this as “enlightened self-interest,” but in the end, it is just selfishness, worshipping the god in the mirror, a religion encoded in the writing of Ayn Rand and in the perverse syncretic forms of Christianity that incorporate that idolatry.
Economic activity during the late Second Temple period, the time of Jesus, was still pretty rudimentary, and where it occurred, it was communitarian. In fact, it is the deviation from this communal norm that both Ezekiel and Jesus are critiquing.
There were always some few who could not satisfy their greed. We have the famous story of Naboth’s vineyard in the Hebrew Scriptures, of the wicked king who wanted to benefit from his neighbor’s years of hard work cultivating a vineyard, and the wicked queen who was willing to arrange a murder.
The Torah system of liberating and communal economics wasn’t perfect, and could be tested at times. During the life and ministry of Jesus, it was fraying, with a growing number of Jewish people losing their small hold farms in Judea and Galilee, often working as share croppers on land they once owned. The majority of the population in Galilee and much of the population in Judea were peasants. Thirty six years after Jesus was tortured and executed, things exploded in the First Jewish War, which would lead to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Judaism would re-invent itself in a way distinct from the Temple cult, while Christianity would continue to grow as an egalitarian and diverse movement.
Our first reading this morning, from Ezekiel, is one I believe is a bit neglected when it comes to social gospel teachings. The prophet, a Jewish priest held captive in Babylon, records the word of the Lord, where God judges between members of her flock.
Here, sheep and goats are treated as one class, and judgment is on individual sheep and individual goats who take advantage of their size, literally throwing their weight around, abusing those smaller and weaker, fouling communal assets they do not need themselves, the pasture and the water.
They “take,” in one sense, more than they need. God judges, then sets up a shepherd to protect the herd going forward, using David as an archetype for this new leader, for David’s reign was the foundational story for the Israelite kingdom, and David’s story starts as the shepherd boy called in from the pasture, anointed by Samuel.
This reading also provides an important context in our work around creation care and climate justice.
Our second reading, this time from Jesus, also uses the pastoral image of a flock, or more accurately flocks, and the goats get sent to hell, and for the record, I don’t want to be speaking for the goats, but I’d totally support the Goat Liberation Army. I mean, seriously, goats were as important economically as sheep. They were not unclean.
What? Did kid Jesus get a headbutt from a kid goat, and so was traumatized forever?
Okay, really seriously, this teaching is one of my favorites, right up there with Micah 6:8. You hear me quote it all the time. But there are a couple of important text notes. One is that the judge here is not the ambiguous “master” from the Parable of the Talents, but is what is commonly translated as the “Son of Man,” and often confused by Christians for the “Son of God.”
The Son of Man is a reference to the Book of Daniel, a text written about 150 years before the ministry of Jesus.
The cited passage in Daniel, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version, reads “As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.”
Notice that this particular translation does not say “The Son of Man,” but instead uses the phrase “one like a human being.” It has never been clear how we should understand this important figure in the author of the Book of Daniel’s apocalyptic thought. I am with those who view “the Human One,” the rendering I prefer, as an archetypal human, identified in the masculine as the default in that ancient patriarchal context. No matter how you translate it, there is no way to make it mean “Son of God” in the specific way used to describe the relationship between Jesus and Yahweh, though the gospels have Jesus using both terms.
But that is a bit wonkish, so let’s get to the other text note, maybe also a bit wonkish, which is the real takeaway this morning. And this is the rare time when the Authorized Translation, authorized by King James and called by his name, gets it right, and the modern and scholarly New Revised Standard Version gets it wrong.
In the NRSV, the passage reads “All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another…” But the word rendered here as “people” is “autous” in the Koine Greek, which is the pronoun for “them.” The NRSV translators switch the subject from nations to people, then we read it backwards so that “nations” means individuals from different nations. But that isn’t what is says.
The gospel says Jesus will judge nations, dividing them like sheep and goats. Again, let’s cut the goats some slack, but maybe not the nations. The Human One, the apocalyptic figure, is judging how nations treat the least among them.
Now, I’m delighted that members of the Park Church have cared about the least among us since it was founded in 1846, from supporting the abolition of slavery to making space of addicts in recovery. We do provide food and clothing to those in need, as best we can. And the parable of the man who was mugged and rescued by the Good Samaritan does call us to individual action.
But the prophets are almost always calling for national repentance, and national actions of justice, for the rich and powerful to stop exploiting their positions, to stop butting the weaker sheep to the margins. Scripture is not a self-help book designed to make you feel good about yourself. It is an inversion of human systems of power.
Israelite identity was initially formed in the two centuries more-or-less between the stories in Exodus and the centralization begun under the warlord Saul and completed under the usurper David. During that period, the Israelites were a loose confederation of clans living in the rough hill country of Canaan, with non-Israelite neighbors. Their only king was Yahweh. Advances in Iron Age technology made the Israelites vulnerable, hence the creation of the kingdom. But they always remained suspicious of central authority, something captured in the text despite the fact that the text itself was formed under the auspices of central authorities.
Think about that a moment. All the power of an authoritarian monarchy, and after the Babylonian Captivity, of an authoritarian theocracy under the control of foreign powers, could not snuff out the communal spirit of the Israelites.
Like Ezekiel, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats prioritizes the most vulnerable in society. And it holds us all responsible, not individually, but collectively.
After the Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century, Americans turned away from collective care, because black-identified people of color had been added to the collective. This suited the rich, who were more than willing to turn their back on the poor if it fed their greed. Neoliberal capitalism requires an exploited underclass. The social safety net was cut away, with the ultimate absurdity being the expectation that “compassionate conservatism” would simply transfer responsibility for the vulnerable to organized religion, already itself in decline.
What you, the City of Elmira, have done to the least of these…
What you, Chemung County, have done to the least of these…
What you, the State of New York, have done to the least of these…
What you, the United States of America, have done to the least of these…
For I was hungry, and you created rules and an impossible bureaucratic process so you could turn me away if I hadn’t already given up in despair.
For I was a stranger, and you placed concertina wire in the river, so that I might get caught and drown.
I was incarcerated, and you did not treat my mental illness, and when I was released, I had nowhere to go.
The social gospel is not some woke liberal nonsense. It is the gospel. May we hold it in our hearts as we enter Advent. Amen.