“The New
Revelation of Kingship”
Matthew 25:31-46
What is your image of Jesus? How
do you see Jesus? How would you describe
him? Do you see him as soft-spoken? How about mild-mannered? Do you see him as the compassionate
healer? The
straightforward teacher? The suffering servant?
How about the Son of God? The King of kings and the Lord of lords? Do you see him more as the wise and peaceful
man who walked the streets of
We all have our images of Jesus, the images that help us to see Jesus
in a way that is most comforting, most telling of our understanding of who he
is. Sometimes these images switch from
one to the other depending on our circumstances of life, depending on which
Jesus we need at a particular moment.
Most of us, including myself, tend to think of Jesus more as the way he
is described in the Gospels, which give us the clearest imagery of Jesus and
tells the most about him and his ministry.
From the Gospel’s perspective, Jesus is clearly most often described as
a prophet, healer, teacher, miracle worker, and suffering servant. Only rarely do the Gospel’s, more so for the
Gospel of John, do we see Jesus’ true identity as the Messiah of God and the
Lord or life. The Gospels are fairly
straightforward in their assessment of Jesus, and show him to be most clearly
identified with the poor and needy, with the downtrodden and the oppressed,
with the sick and the dying.
From the Gospel’s perspective, Jesus spoke out against the unjust
practices of the religious elites and political authority. He ate with outcasts and sinners, he healed
the sick, made the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the dead live
again. In Jesus, we see the true heart
and character of God as the one who brings hope to the hopeless, power to the
powerless, comfort to the afflicted, and freedom to the oppressed. In Jesus, we see and hear what the
In our text for this morning from
the Gospel of Matthew, we are given an image of Jesus that often does not sit
well with some people, sometimes even myself. In this last formal act of teaching, Jesus
gives to his disciples a final lesson with a parable of the sheep and the
goats, a parable about the coming day of Judgment, a parable about a king. For Matthew, this parable is the culmination
of all that Jesus taught and did during his ministry, and it marks the turning
point from Jesus as the great teacher to Jesus as the crucified Lord, for
immediately after this final lesson, Matthew will go on to tell us about Jesus’
last days on earth and his death on the cross.
With this final lesson, Jesus’
teaching ministry has now come full circle.
What started out as the opening preamble and hallmark of his message and
ministry, which we know as the Beatitudes, has now become the imperative for
his disciples. If his disciples are to
follow him and witness to his gospel and have eternal life, they must become
like him in everyway and do what Jesus did by feeding the hungry, giving drink
to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the
sick, and visiting the prisoners. This
is to be their mission, their calling, and their purpose after Jesus is
gone.
But the real kicker in this
parable is the description given by Jesus of himself. In this glimpse into the future, we see the
Son of Man coming in glory, with all the angels with him, and he sits upon the
throne. Stretching out before him is a
sea of humanity as far as the eye can see; people from every nation, from every
land, from every walk of life. They are
in fact everyone in the whole world, including the church, and it is the Day of
Judgment.
Now if the text stopped here, I, for one, would be a lot more
comfortable. Certainly, for us Jesus is
the King of glory, the Lord of salvation, and the judge of the living and the
dead. It is indeed our hope and our
promise that the one who we will stand before us on the last day is the one who
died on the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead for eternal
life. It gives me a lot of comfort to
know that I will stand before my Lord and Savior, the one who took upon himself
my sins and the sins of the world, the one who died and was raised so that I
may have eternal life.
But the text doesn’t stop there, and with it my imagery of Jesus, the
Jesus I want, begins to be radically altered in a way that I’m not always so
ready to experience. We all have our
opinions about who Jesus should be, how he should act, and what he should
do. If the real Jesus doesn’t fit into
our “Jesus mold” as we would like him to, it is easy for us to get anxious and
nervous, and to want to separate the real Jesus from our perception of Jesus.
Our text for this morning shows Jesus in a very different way than what
we are used to, not as the one who walked the streets of Galilee, or who as the
Suffering Servant, but as the Son of Man, the king who sits upon the throne in
judgment at the end of time. Okay, that
is fine. I certainly see Jesus and
believe that he is the Messiah of God, the Son of the Most High, and I even
believe that he is the King upon the throne, the judge of the living and the
dead.
But I begin to have problems when the king upon the throne seems
so…well…like a king, a king who mediates judgment without forethought, without
some sense of compassion, without any sense of mercy or grace. And that is the imagery we get here. We see the king upon the throne separating
the people into two groups, the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his
left. You can almost see him raising his
right arm and calling to the first person he sees saying, “You, go over there,”
and then he raises his left arm and says to the next person he sees, “You, go
over there.”
Now I don’t know about you, but
anytime I hear anyone talk about separating sheep and goats, I begin to get a
little nervous, because I know what is coming.
It’s like watching a suspense thriller or scary movie, and you know what
is behind the door at the end of the hallway or around the corner, and you also
know there is nothing you can do about it.
So sure enough, as you guessed it, the sheep get to inherit the kingdom
that is prepared for them, and the goats…well…you know
what the goats get…eternal punishment.
This is not quite what the imagery of Jesus that I had in mind. After all, I kind of hoped that the Jesus I
want would be the king upon the throne, the one who will not be so cut and dry,
so either/or, so pass or fail. I kind of
thought and hoped that the Jesus I want would grade on a curve. I know that I’m not going to get an “A,” but
I don’t think I should get an “F” either.
We know that we don’t always do as well as we would like to, but come
on. A text like this makes me wonder
whether in the end I’m going to be in or out, whether in the end I get to go
over there to the right with the sheep, or go over there to the left with the
goats. Certainly this can’t be the image
of the Jesus we want and need, surely, this can’t be
the correct image of the king of glory, the one who is the judge of the living
and dead.
But if we base our imagery of the king simply by our own standards of
kingship, simply by how we think or believe the king should be, then we will have
missed much of who this king is to us and who he is for us. This text is less about the sheep and the
goats and more about the one who is the king upon the throne, the king upon the
throne who judges according to the standards of the kingdom, the king who has
already showed us how he will judge on the last day – by what he did among
us.
Here we are given a new revelation
of kingship. Jesus is king because he is
the one who lived the life worthy of the kingdom, because he demonstrated and
lived by and embodied the kingdom throughout his life, because he perfectly
showed to everyone what it means to be a part of his kingdom. What Jesus wants from his disciples is for
them to be like him in every way, with the same heart and mind that he
has. What Jesus wants from his disciples
is for them to identity themselves with those who are the hungry and the
thirsty, the poor and the needy, the stranger and the lonely, because that is
what he did. What Jesus wants from his
disciples is for them to follow him so completely and faithfully that his
mission, calling, and purpose becomes their mission, calling, and purpose, a
natural extension of who they are and of their whole being.
As Christ’s disciples we won’t
always get it right. Sometimes our goat
side will show up more than our sheep side when we become judgmental about how
someone looks, dresses, or acts, when we pass by a stranger without saying
hello, or turn away from a person in need, or concern ourselves with our own
status at Judgment Day as we worry about how many goat points we have versus
how many sheep points we have.
But thanks be to God that the good
news of the gospel is good news and not bad news, that the one who sits upon
the throne is the one who came to all of those who didn’t get it right all the
time, to all of those who knew that in the great economy of God they were
paupers, to all of those who knew they were the least, the lost, and the left
out.
Thanks be to God that the one who
sits upon the throne of grace, is the living Christ who calls us to go over
there to the most unlikely places, who opens our eyes to see the face of the
other, and who teaches us that “just as you did it to one the least of these
who are members of my family, you did it unto me.” For it is in the most unlikely place, in the
face of the other, and in the least of these, that we will see the glory of God
and find our Lord and Savior at work in the world and come to know the true
identity, the true revelation of the one who is the Lord of lords, and the King
of kings. Amen.