Ephesians 1:15-23 | Matthew 25:31-46
Jeremy Richards
Have you ever run into a famous person in a normal, everyday setting? There are places we expect to see famous people: a popular author at a book signing, a movie star at a premier, a musician at one of their concerts. But every now and then, you hear about someone running into a famous person in the most mundane places.
I once heard a story, and I’m pretty sure it’s not true, but I hope it is true, that a friend of a friend randomly found himself in an elevator with Bill Murray. He, understandably, didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. He got out of the elevator and was walking away when he heard someone running behind him. He turned just in time to see Bill Murray running right at him, tackle him, and land in the bushes along the sidewalk. Then Bill Murray whispered in his ear, “No one will believe this ever happened,” then got up and walked away. This probably isn’t true, but I really hope it is. It sounds like something Bill Murray might actually do.
Personally, I’ve had two experiences where I ran into people who were kind of famous in pretty ordinary circumstances. They weren’t really famous in wider society, but in my niche, little circles they were. Both took place when I was a teenager. The first was when I went with three friends to Bend to snowboard at Mt. Bachelor. After a day of snowboarding, we were at a local skate and snowboard shop. We were all sitting on this bench when we noticed a guy buying new wheels for his skateboard, and putting them on using the shop’s tools. We looked at each other. Is that Kevin Jones?
Most of you don’t know who Kevin Jones is. Maybe none of you know who Kevin Jones is. But we knew who Kevin Jones was. Kevin Jones won Snowboarder Magazine’s Rider of the Year award three years in a row, and has 9 X Games medals. He’s considered the first super-pro snowboarder: one of the people who launched snowboarding into the mainstream (which, by the way, is not something he’s proud of).
The four of us sat there and stared, mouths open. Apparently, we were pretty obvious, because he saw us, walked over, and said, “Hey you guys want these old wheels.” Obviously it wasn’t about the wheels, it was 4 skateboard wheels for 4 kids who idolized him getting a momento. It was like giving us an autograph but more subtle, less cocky. “Yeah” we all kind of stammered. I was the last one to get a wheel, and I asked without thinking, “Are you Kevin Jones?”
“Yeah,” he said.
It was like I broke the spell. There had been a quiet recognition, a mutual recognition that didn’t need to be said aloud, but I ruined it. As he walked off, my three friends laid into me “Are you Kevin Jones?!?! Of course it’s Kevin Jones!”
The second time I met someone famous -- in my world anyway -- wasn’t a person but a group. As a freshman in high school, my friends and I went to see Blink 182 and New Found Glory play a concert in Boise, which was a 2 hour drive from where we grew up. My friend Matt’s dad drove us. Our friend Beau, who was a big football player got the front seat, and Matt and I, to our delight, were crammed in the back with 2 cute girls from the next town over, who we were just getting to know. We got to Boise early, so we did what any normal teenager would do with our free time: we went to the mall. We went from store to store, hitting our favorite teenage spots, eventually making it to Hot Topic (of course!), and as we walked in, there they were: 4 of the 5 members of New Found Glory. We didn’t know what to say, so, like the guy in the Bill Murray story, we didn’t say anything. We just pretended to look at items in the store, all the time staring at them.
Eventually we left, or they left, and it was time to meet Matt’s dad back at the car. As we were driving out of the mall parking lot, we looked back, and the band was right behind us in a red taxi van. Someone in the car said, “They’re going to the show, we should see if we can ride with them.” They said it just as the light in front of us turned red, and we came to a stop. Without thinking (and maybe to impress the girls), I opened the door and jumped out of the car. I ran up to the passenger side of the taxi and the lead singer, Jordan, rolled down the window. “Are you going to your show?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said. “Can we ride with you?” I asked. “No,” he said. “Ok,” I said, then ran and got back in the car.
There’s something about seeing famous people in normal circumstances, in places you don’t expect to see them -- to be going about your day and suddenly, there Kevin Jones is, there New Found Glory is, occupying the same space you occupy, shopping at the same skateshop, or the same Hot Topic that you shop at. The ordinary-ness of it, in a way, makes it more extraordinary. You expect to see them on stage, or at a snowboard competition, but to see them in everyday, unexciting places is even more exciting.
In Jesus’ parable from Matthew 25, he presents himself as a king, who sits on a throne, who will judge the nations. Kings are, by all accounts, famous. All these people who are coming to him -- both the righteous and the unrighteous, the sheep and the goats -- have perhaps been waiting to meet him. Maybe they’ve longed for this day, just as I longed for the New Found Glory/Blink 182 concert, counting down the days ever since I bought my ticket. But then, when they get there, the king tells them, to their surprise, that they’ve already met him in the ordinary, everyday world. Only, unlike my friends and I, they didn’t recognize the king when they saw him. They never thought to stop and ask, “Are you Kevin Jones?” “Are you Jesus?” Because the king had been in the last place they expected him to be: in the poor, the imprisoned, the stranger, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick. And since they didn’t know it was him, they just did what they always did -- and that’s the key to this passage: they did what they always did, they were who they were. The “righteous” gave of themselves to help those in need, never considering that anyone was watching.
The “unrighteous,” likewise, did what they always did, also never considering that anyone was watching. They just ignored those in need. Maybe they thought those needy people should work harder. Maybe they thought they were just alcoholics or drug addicts who brought this on themselves. Maybe they thought they were criminals, so it’s okay that they were locked up and denied basic human rights. Maybe, if they’re sick, they believed it was on them to get good insurance. Maybe they hated these people because they were a drain on society. Or maybe, more likely, they didn’t hate them, they just didn’t notice them. They had trained themselves not to see the suffering of others. They had too much on their own plate. They had their own problems.
This passage from Matthew is a challenging one. Christians like us, who are justice-minded, often quote some selective parts of this passage. It’s one of the passages I quote the most. In fact, it might be the passage I quote the most: about Jesus being found in the down and out, the marginalized in our society, that how we treat those society has labelled the “least of these” is how we treat Christ himself.
The problem, of course, is the bits about eternal punishment, eternal fire. A few months back, I preached on universal salvation, and my conviction that, in the end, God will be all in all, which means no one will remain in hell, that one day all things and all people will be redeemed and restored, everything created will find its home in the Creator. This passage seems to say the opposite: that there are some who never make it home, who remain in the outer darkness, the eternal fire, that place with weeping and gnashing of teeth. And I don’t have a clever way to resolve this tension. Some scriptures seem to point toward universal salvation, some seem to point to a future where some are rewarded for eternity while others are punished for eternity. (But, I will say again, that the number of scriptures that point to universal salvation far outweigh the passages that promote eternal punishment for some). Ultimately, I still believe God’s justice is always restorative and not retributive, so whatever punishment awaits some of us or all of us, it won’t be the last word, it won’t be eternal.
I don’t want to get hung up on the “eternal part,” but I do think we need to take this topic of judgment seriously. This is the 4th parable in a row that ends with a judgment between the righteous and the unrighteous. I know we don’t like talking about judgment. One of the top complaints against Christians is that they’re “judgmental.” Many of us love Grant Park because we do our best to not be judgmental here. We say that everyone belongs, and we mean it.
But to speak of God’s judgment is different than speaking of our judgment. When we say people are judgmental, we mean that they think they’re better than others. They hold themselves above others, and look down on those who don’t think, act, speak, believe, or live like them. They’re self-righteous. We associate these people with narrow mindedness, maybe even bigotry. We think of people who never even attempt to imagine what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. We think of people whose judgments are unfounded and often self-serving.
But when we talk about God’s judgment, we mean something different, because God is perfect and good. When we talk about God’s judgment, we’re talking about justice. The theologian Anna Case-Winters says that God’s judgment is “ordered toward redemption” and that it is finally about setting things right. The world will never be as it should be if there is never any judgment, if those who do evil, who at worse oppress and at best neglect those in need are never brought to account and never change their ways. Scripture’s promise, again and again, is that, while no one is beyond the grace, forgiveness, and love of God, what we do in this life matters, and we will all be held accountable. If there is no judgment, then God does not take evil seriously. And if that’s true, we cannot say that God is good or that God is love.
In the wake of racial atrocities that have really always existed in our country, but are only now, finally, being recognized by mainstream America, there are continued calls for justice: justice for Ahmaud Arbery, justice for George Floyd, justice for Breonna Taylor, justice for Rayshard Brooks, justice for Daniel Prude, justice for so many other innocent black folx murdered. Unfortunately, that is not the end of the names who need justice.
All of these cries for justice are cries for judgment. We want racist police officers, racist vigilants, and racist institutions and systems to be held to account. We want judgment. Not because we enjoy punishing other people, not because it makes us feel better-than (at least I hope that’s not why), but because judgment is needed if the world is ever going to change. Justice requires judgment. There’s no way around it. It’s interesting that so often the people most concerned with social justice are the people who hate to hear about God’s judgment, and those who love to talk about God’s judgment are so often uninterested in social justice. It makes no sense. The two go hand in hand.
There are people whose lives are running the wrong way, running against God. All of our lives do this at times. And to change course is difficult, even painful, but it is the way to eternal life, not in the next life, but today. Eternal life is a quality of life that’s eternal, which means it not only stretches out ahead of us, but also behind us. Eternal life is the life of God which exists in the past, present, and future, which we are invited into now. That’s why God -- through the prophets and apostles, through Jesus himself -- continually calls us to repentance. It’s a call to turn from destructive ways of life that hurt us and hurt others, and to turn towards beauty, goodness, wholeness…justice -- today, tomorrow, and into eternity.
But, if we fail to respond, scripture tells us that, at some point, we will run aground on the righteousness of God. We will be judged. God will not let injustice go unchecked for eternity. If God is to be all and all, if everything is to one day be restored, evil, greed, violence, and oppression must be confronted and overcome. They must be judged.
This sounds harsh. It sounds all doom-and-gloom, and hellfire and brimstone, but we must admit that the alternative would be far worse. Do we really want a God who doesn’t judge evil? Who’s too nice to confront the unrighteous, who lets them continually trample on the innocent? No, we can’t possibly want that. The good news is that God is the one who judges, and God alone knows who we really are.
And, again, that’s ultimately what this scripture is about: who we really are. Remember, both the sheep and the goats are surprised to learn that their service or lack thereof was done to Christ. They were just living their lives. They were just being themselves. And it revealed who they really are.
Lindsay Armstrong, a Presbyterian minister, says that this passage from Matthew 25 is the spiritual equivalent to an annual physical, when we visit a doctor to see how our physical health is doing. She says, “In many ways, Matthews depiction of the last judgment is like a wellness check. Its purpose is not to condemn or scare but to provide a snapshot of our overall health, development, learning, and growth that should lead to new habits and ways of life. After all, our doctor wants us to flourish, so does our Creator, Redeemer, Judge, and King.”[1]
As Rev. Armstrong says, this passage should cause us to stop and ask, “What kind of life am I living? How am I doing? How’s my overall spiritual health?” It should lead us to introspection.
A theme that I keep coming back to these past few weeks is my conviction that goodness always works from the inside out. Only two chapters earlier, in Matthew 23, Jesus criticizes the scribes and Pharisees who “clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence...First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean” (Matt. 23:25-26). It’s a process that starts inside and works its way out. A clean inside leads to a clean outside.
Our reading this morning from Matthew 25 should not cause us to run outside and start serving here, there, and everywhere in a frantic attempt to gain eternal life, to make sure we’re sheep and not goats. This passage should instead lead us to “clean the inside of the cup.” If we are not inclined to notice or care for the sick, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the imprisoned...the houseless, the queer, BIPOC, the mentally ill, this passage should hopefully cause us to stop and ask ourselves, to ask God, why? Why don’t I care more? And then to ask God to lead us into deeper compassion, deeper mercy, deeper love, and deeper courage.
Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, a Christian Humanitarian organization that serves in over 100 countries today, repeatedly prayed, “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.” This is a risky prayer, but a powerful prayer, a necessary prayer. It’s a prayer that will lead us to be the kind of people who feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, care for the sick, visit the prisoners, not because we’re afraid of some eternal damnation, but because it’s simply who we are.
[1] Lindsay P. Armstrong, “Matthew 25:31-46: Homiletical Perspective”, Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 4, 333.