Delivered Sunday, November 26, 2017 at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Arlington, Virginia.
Texts: Ezekiel 34:11-24, Matthew 25:31-46
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I was less than thrilled when I first looked at these texts with the thought of this sermon. These texts appear decidedly, emphatically, NOT Presbyterian, especially the passage from Matthew.
This is not to say that we don’t like, at least, in theory, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, or visiting the sick and imprisoned. I mean, just look in your bulletin: we’re recruiting people to help feed the hungry next Saturday. Trinity helps to support a family of refugees from Iraq. We recently concluded a coat drive. I understand that on Christmas morning, people from Trinity will go to sing carols at Virginia Hospital Center. These are the things I could quickly come up with, and it’s only been about three months since I first walked through Trinity’s doors, so I’m certain there is more. Trinity is, at least, taken as a whole, checking these boxes.
But checking boxes is not what we’re supposed to be doing. A few weeks ago, we marked the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, a period of theological, civil, and military upheaval premised at least on part on Luther’s insistence that salvation was not a matter of earning points or checking boxes, but rather one of human faith and Divine Grace.
Our own John Calvin went a little further, and, without giving up entirely on human or divine judgment (we’ll get to that), put the whole question of salvation on divine Grace. If we are saved, it is because God has chosen us…
But today’s text gives us none of that.
For which we should be thankful.
A common temptation for many Christians is the desire to engage in “proof-texting.” Proof-texting is the process of citing select verses or passages, often out of context, in order to prove a point or shut down an argument, possibly in a self-serving way. I’m sure many of you can think of examples of this from your own lives, and the rest of you can probably think of one or many examples from both fictive and non-fiction media. If any of you are struggling, imagine someone citing “an eye for an eye” from Exodus 21 as justification for a violent act…forgetting that, in Matthew 5, Jesus says “You have heard ‘an eye for an eye’ …but I say turn the other cheek.” And yes, what I just did could also count as proof-texting.
It’s good that today’s texts can’t be used as Presbyterian proof-texts because it forces us to think more deeply.
Now, I could stand here and give an academic lecture about Calvin’s Three Uses of the Law, and how these criteria for judgment fit into the great whole, but I will restrain myself.
Instead, I’d like to talk about some context, and, eventually, cats.
I’d like to talk about the fact that the image employed by both Ezekiel and Jesus is that of a Shepherd.
I noticed, sometime within the past few weeks, that someone in one of the classrooms had written something like “A good king is like a shepherd” on the whiteboard. I wish I knew more about what that class was covering because it might have been one of these texts, or one of several others. The theme of the Shepherd-Leader is a consistent one throughout Scripture, (and the wider ancient world) and includes many familiar names, including Jacob, Moses, and David, each of whom were literal shepherds at some point in their lives, and, of course, Jesus, though he is more of a metaphorical shepherd.
Shepherds are, of course, individuals responsible for herding and caring for groups of animals—usually sheep, rams, goats, and the like. To a large degree, the job of the shepherd is facilitated, if not made possible, by the natural desire of herd animals to stay together. Remember that, because, as I said, in a bit, I’m going to be talking about cats.
Our reading from Ezekiel offers up some of the reasons why a shepherd is a good model for a king: a good shepherd seeks out lost members of the flock, ensures access to good food and clean water. A good shepherd would provide special attention to the weak animals that they might become stronger, and would ensure that stronger species in a mixed-flock, like rams and goats, don’t beat up on the weaker members, like sheep.
Ezekiel, in chapter 34, is speaking from Babylon to his fellow captives from Judah, an audience who would certainly like the first part of what we heard today. They likely would have heard Ezekiel promising that God would bring them, as well as the Israelites scattered after the fall of the Northern Kingdom sometime before, back into the Holy Land. That Jerusalem would be restored, and the temple rebuilt…this is happy news, and news timely delivered, since Ezekiel had just told them that the Jerusalem had fallen and Temple was destroyed…and then opened Chapter 34 by blaming the very people he was addressing, calling the leaders of Judah (who made up the bulk of the exiles) as bad shepherds whose harsh treatment scattered the animals and left them defenseless. It was their failures that were forcing God to intervene by directly acting as shepherd before appointing a single designated shepherd who Ezekiel identifies as being in the model of David.
It is this mantel that Jesus is claiming in, among other places, our reading from Matthew, but with some twists. Jesus, and many of the people listening to him would have known this text from Ezekiel, and certainly would have noticed the differences. Ezekiel spoke of gathering the sheep from amongst the nations. Jesus speaks of gathering the nations together. Ezekiel spoke of the responsibilities of leaders, while Jesus speaks of the responsibilities everyone.
Ezekiel spoke of a coming shepherd for the Hebrews. Jesus claims to be a shepherd for all people.
Both Jesus and Ezekiel speak of shepherds separating sheep and goats – animals often kept by shepherds, and as familiar, if not more familiar to their audiences than to us today. In the case of Jesus, shepherds appear at the very beginning of his story as the first to hear of his birth. Both Jesus and Ezekiel use this metaphor to describe ideal leadership. It is, for the reasons I’ve discussed already, an apt and well-known metaphor.
But I think it has a key flaw.
We are neither sheep nor goats.
I’ve already said a shepherd’s job is largely rendered possible by the fact that sheep, and goats, basically want to stay together.
Humans, not so much…
We may like to come together in smaller groups from time to time, but if we really look at humanity as a whole, we are, and always (or since the Fall) have been, desperate to find reasons to maintain distance from each other.
We are cats. (I told you I’d get here.)
Cats are so notoriously averse to herding that the idiom “It’s as hard as herding cats” was tested by MythBusters. I wish I could say it went about as well as you’d expect, but it was worse.
Humans are so averse to herding that we created the pejorative “Sheeple.”
Sheep generally want to know what the shepherd wants them to do so they can do it.
Cats want to know what their person wants of them, so they can do…anything else.
Don’t raise your hands, but how many of us have, in the past week, knowingly made a less than healthy decision? Don’t lie to yourself, we all know what Thursday was.
A flock of sheep left alone for a time will require some re-gathering but will be grateful.
A cat will punish you for having left.
We, well, there are so many places I could go that I’ll leave this one to you.
Sheep are reasonably constant animals, but cats are fickle, appearing grateful for attention right up to the moment they decide to sink their claws and/or teeth into your hand.
The stories of the Bible, of all human history, are stories of cats.
But there is hope. Despite, despite all the scorn, punishment, moodiness, sneak attacks, and indifference cats show their people, people still love their cats.
The internet, at this point, could be not unreasonably described, as a place where people go to either stoke rage or look at pictures of cats.
Herding cats is difficult, but not impossible. I have heard that Cat Café’s are becoming a thing and that there is sort of one in Georgetown. I’ve never been to one, at least not to one that was deliberately created as such.
But I have been to Ahlan Café, in Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom. Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom is a village about halfway between Haifa and Tel-Aviv. The village’s name consists of the Arabic and Hebrew phrases translating to “Oasis of Peace.” This is a village founded by Jewish and Palestinian Citizens of Israel which seeks to, among other things, provide a model for Jewish and Palestinians living together.
Ahlan Café sits at the entrance to the village and is run by Dyana and Rayek Rizek. I didn’t have much opportunity to speak with Dyana, but my group did get to speak with Rayek, a founding member of the community. There is much in Rayek’s story that is worth telling, but right now, I want to focus on just one thing. The dozen or so cats who roamed the café while we ate and talked. Neither Rayek nor Dyana had set out with the intent of having so much as one cat, much less the, if I remember correctly, more than twenty they had somehow come to care for. Rayek simply came to open the café one morning, and there was a cat, weak, and hungry. So Rayek set out some food from the café’s stock. Over time, additional cats found their way to the café, whose name, Ahlan, means “welcome.” Even as they accumulated, Dyana and Rayek kept putting out food to make sure they all were fed. Eventually, they arrived one morning to find one of the cats was injured, so they took it to the vet, thus tacitly agreeing to add veterinary care to the food they provided their growing flock of cats, many of whom no longer just show up in the mornings, but now spend their days lounging with the customers in the outdoor dining area.
Without ever trying, or even so much as wanting to, Dyana and Rayek Rizek, are herding cats.
Despite all our human flaws, all our pettiness, intransigence, our fickle feelings toward ourselves, each other, and even toward God, we live in a world with Dyana and Rayek Rizek.
We have a God who cares for us as they care for those cats.
We have not just a Shepherd, capable of herding sheep, but a Shepherd-King.