We Sheep and Goats: Homily for the Sunday of the Last Judgement, at the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, Meatfare Sunday, 11 February 2018

The goats in today’s Gospel make you think immediately of how sharp the distinction is between being good and being bad. No grey areas; just right and wrong; and we can’t be the ones in the wrong! Thus we identify ourselves as the good sheep of the Good Shepherd, the Christlike lambs, and the others as the accursed scapegoats (Matthew 25.31-46).

Hearing Jesus’ list, most of us will be mentally checking off our attitudes and actions – “Was I so absorbed in myself that I was failing in compassion and generosity?” Others will congratulate themselves on being kind to the poor who deserve it, but tough on those who “have only themselves to blame”. I reckon, too, that there are whole swaths of Christians saying to themselves, “God is on our side, not the side of heretics and schismatics, or immoral people. First they must repent, and return. Then we will help them.” Most Christian Churches have people who think like this; let us avoid this easy and unspiritual trap.

Still others will realise that Christ is not reeling off a list of things to complete in order to be worthy of Him. Instead, he is talking about acts of humanity that, if they are genuinely godly, just come like second nature to us. He does not want us to collect good deeds like badges of virtue; and He certainly does not want us to do them as a favour to Him - regardless of the favour needed from us by the people before our very eyes. Many of us will feel guilty about our shortcomings and selfishness. But God wants us do all these things not out of shame or duty, but out of sheer love for being just naturally part of His Kingdom. So a change of heart is what today’s Gospel asks of us: “Yes” to repentance from heartless attitudes; “Yes” to compassion for sinners, because we are sinners ourselves no different; “Yes” to growth in honest goodness, so that virtue within - and generosity with the gifts God has given us – arise not from what we do, but from who we are becoming in the great scheme of God’s Kingdom, as it constantly draws up close to the people in the world. To become like that, would it not be magnificent? Well, it already is, and it is how we are being remade, even now, to be fitting for the purposes of the Kingdom, and bringing it closer.

So it is in the midst of the process of becoming - even now - what we are not yet, that we see what Jesus is really laying before us. It is the same as the question over Caesar’s currency in the Temple (Matthew 22.15-22), the wise and the unprepared virgins at the wedding (Matthew 25.1-13), and the sower’s wheat and tares (Matthew 13.1-23): the answer is not the obvious explanation, and He is making you think it through more profoundly, with just a little more self-awareness than is comfortable for us. The contrast between sheep and goats is not between them and us: but the irony of two similar things that are both true of us. Both lists are things we do and won’t do. We are sheep and goat alike. If we condemn the others, we condemn ourselves. If we count ourselves into the Kingdom, we have no ground to show people the door to the other way.

In the religion of the Hebrew Temple, sheep and goats were both sacrificial animals, so one is not pure and the other unclean. They are both offerings that avail for reconciling human beings to God. But the most famous Lamb and the most famous goat were not sacrifices for sin at all. The Paschal Lamb was a slain innocent, and his blood brought protection and blessing; but it was not a sacrifice for sin. Moreover, while the Scapegoat was chosen each year to take away the sins of the world, he was never slain or sacrificed. The High Priest, in the Name of the Lord Most High whose very presence he represented, would assume upon himself the sins of all the people - and then touch the Goat to transfer their sins onto it instead. The animal laden with sin thus became impure; it could not be offered as a sacrifice. It was sent into the wilderness. It was not banished and rejected: it was relied upon, to take the guilt far away, never to come back on us. Only then could a pure atonement sacrifice be offered. (Leviticus 16.10, 15)

In other words, the significance of the goats in Our Lord’s striking story and the symbolism of the sheep are inseparable. Christ, who will come to be the Judge of us all, looks on the whole of us, not just the presentable bits, or the side we would like Him to find. He wants to see the blemishes, the shortcomings, the deliberate wickedness that in the former dispensation no sacrifice could guarantee to take away - the side that our forebears cast onto the back of a goat to get rid of. In the new dispensation, St John the Baptist revealed that this unacceptable side of us would no longer be packed off, beyond redemption. From then on no Scapegoat, but only the Lamb of God Himself, would take away the sins of the world (John 1.29). Nothing about us need be lost, nothing of us would lie beyond redemption, everything could be turned round, the totality of us could become acceptable (Romans 12.1), and find forgiveness.

For it is in contrast with the shadows in us, the facets that are so starkly true of us, that the light at work in us is seen outshining all else, and bringing it out of darkness into His own marvellous light (I Peter 2.9). St John the Theologian told us of a light shining in the darkness that the darkness did not overwhelm. He said that that it was the light of our life - “The Light of all Humans” (John 1.4). Christ spoke of Himself as the Light of the World - not so much shining down on it, but illuminating what He intended human living to be from within (John 8.12) – like a city set on a hill, or a light shining from out under a bucket (Matthew 5.14-15), or bridesmaids lighting the path at night for the bridegroom on his way to meet his bride (Matthew 25.1-13). It is all hints, glints, gleams that Christ has seen the whole of us; and, from within, it is His Light that is overwhelming our darkness, it is His light that is becoming ever more the life of us, as we become in turn the lights of the world.

St Paul, talking today of fasting (I Corinthians 8.8-13; 9.1-2), says something intriguing: “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” I rather think that this is the point of our discussion of the sheep, which the Good Shepherd knows through and through (John 10.14), and the goats – all that we do, how we act, good and evil, shedding light or casting shadow, what we believe and how we think. For, as St Paul realises, it all comes down to the question he himself faced on the road to Damascus: “Who am I, what am I in relation to this One Person, Jesus Christ? Is He everything that is the Truth of all that I mean about God? Is He the Truth of everything of what it is to be human?” For we see just as we are seen, and we recognise just as we are recognised (I Corinthians 13.12). Or, as the old man of the country explained to the priest, who enquired why he came to Church when there was no service, for hours every day: “I looks at Him, and He looks at me.” I draw Him into me, to make my darkness into His light, so I will be drawn into Him. I can look nowhere else, nothing accounts for anything, unless it is Christ.

The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey used to say, when people asked him what God, the Infinite, the Transcendent, the Almighty was like, “In Him there is no unChristlikeness at all.” Our point of union with God is the same. It is not about our being special lambs at the expense of rejected goats; for the Judgment is not about condemnation, but identifying where to shine the visible Image of the invisible God (Colossians 1.15 ff.), where to stitch the reconciling of all things, making peace by the blood of the Cross. “One you were alienated and did evil deeds,” says Paul, “but now you are presented holy and blameless, if you continue steadfast in faith.” (Colossians 1.21-22)

So the Judgement upon us is this: that God sees the whole person, good and bad. Nevertheless, our being sheep and goat alike, we look back not one way to the dark and another way to the light, but to none other than Christ. In the face of this Person, we see ourselves as we are seen. We see that the Light which is the very life of us insists that what is true of God is true of us too: “In you and me, there is to be no unChristlikeness at all.” Thus Divine Judgement is both true and awesome in its blessedness and its inescapable sentence upon us with the insistent demand that will never be lifted from: “You are the Light of the World!” (Matthew 5.14)