God in the Goats?

 

Matthew 25:31-46

I’ve worked quite a bit with folks who are experiencing homelessness. I’ve tried to feed them, to listen to their stories, to help them get social services, driven them to emergency mental health clinics. There’ve been some really beautiful moments. But there was one guy, let’s call him “Dave,” who was all the things, all at once. He was the quintessential “least of these.” He was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, practically naked, definitely sick, and he’d seen the inside of a prison cell more times than he could count. When we offered to take him to Subway, he insisted that Bob’s Subs was better. He was physically addicted to alcohol, so he always carried a Lipton Iced Tea bottle around with him, filled with some dark brown liquid that was most definitely not iced tea. He wore the same tattered jeans that drooped dangerously below his waist, he was always coughing up something, and he’d slept more nights that year in the Allegheny County Jail than he had under his preferred bridge. He was all of the least of these - hungry, thirsty, a stranger, practically naked, sick and a sometimes ex con. 

I’d never met him before, but my coworkers had, and they’d warned me - when you meet him, get ready, he’s going to show you all his scars. And sure enough, he did. He pointed out the hole in the side of his head where he’d been shot. He lifted his shirt to show me the deep gash from his Vietnam War injury. He showed me the varicose veins in his swollen ankles. And when he started to undo his pants to show me the extent of his hernia, we stopped him right there, and said, “Whoa! Thanks, Dave, that’s enough for now.” 

We held “office hours” at Wood Street Commons, the dilapidated high-rise homeless shelter in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. Every Friday, we’d sit in a storage room / office / doctor’s waiting room, and folks in varying degrees of distress would visit us. Some to see if they could scam an extra gift card out of us, some to check in on their benefit checks, some to just grab a cup of burnt coffee and sit and tell us a couple of stories from their week. Dave came every Friday. And every Friday, he’d tell us he’s hungry, he’d be carrying his bottle of iced tea, and he’d tell us once again how it happened that he was shot in the head and survived. He’d knock on his head with his knuckles and say, “See? Hear that? That’s the plate they put in there.” We’d check in to see how he was keeping up with his Suboxone appointments. And every week we’d have to remind him that no, we did not need to see the extent of his inguinal hernia. Eventually, we were able to get him a room at Wood Street, so at least he wasn’t sleeping out in the cold. We helped him turn his medical assistance back on, and he even qualified for about eighty bucks a month in food stamps, despite our local legislators doing their darnedest to cut away at that particular benefit. We gave him bus tickets every week so that he could get to his daily Suboxone appointments. He was a heroin addict, and Suboxone was a prescription given by his doctor to help him wean off of the opiates. His eyes were starting to clear. He stopped slurring so much. He was getting some sleep and getting some food and he had us to sit and listen to his same stories every week. He even started remembering our names. 

But one Friday, he didn’t show up. And then the next Friday came around, and he didn’t stop by then, either. We knocked on his door every week to check in, but he didn’t answer. So we started our detective work and we tracked him down. He was in the hospital, detoxing from his last bout of alcohol poisoning. And before that, he’d been in jail, once again, maybe for public drunkenness or indecent exposure or trespassing or some other kind of misdemeanor. When they’d admitted him into the hospital, they threw out his clothes, so when he was discharged, all he had was a papery disposable scrub suit, a paper teal v-neck with matching paper teal drawstring pants, with a tear right down his backside that grew with every move he made. He didn’t seem to really notice, or care, if he did notice. He was a mess. His pupils were so small. He’d be looking at us, telling us about his hospital stay, and then, simply nod off, only to lift his head a few seconds later and finish his thought. But he was alive. We’d been able to save his room at Wood Street, and we were working to plug him back in to all the services that he’d lost once he was incarcerated, all those services we’d already connected him to previously. His words were slurred. He told me the story of how his buddy shot him in the head in the seventies. He lifted his shirt to show us his scar. We gave him more bus tickets. We bought him Bob’s subs. Somehow he’d lost his iced tea. We bought him some clothes. 

I never saw him again. A few weeks later, they found Dave in his bed at Wood Street. He’d overdosed. Alone. Injected so much heroin into his system that he just went to sleep, and never woke up.

Not many would miss Dave. Some were actually relieved. It wasn’t like he was an asset to society, or helpful, or in any way anything other than a burden. If he could steal to get another hit, he would. If his neighbor left his drink unattended, he’d snag it. If he could frame his buddy so he wouldn’t see the bars of a prison cell, he would. He’d cough all over us and never cover his mouth. If he could gain something from our sympathy, he’d take advantage. If he could scam us, he would. 

Sometimes there’s no saving people, no matter how many cups of water, how many bagged lunches, how many boxes we fill at the food pantry. Sometimes people don’t make great choices. Sometimes people experience such need themselves that they walk right past the needs of others. So was Dave a “least of these?” Or was Dave a “goat”?

Yup. Probably both. Sometimes “the least of these” are the ones who would never provide a cup of cold water, or clothe the naked. If Dave ever visited someone in prison it was because he was his neighbor in the cell next door. When he visited the sick, he just got them more sick. 

Sometimes the least of these are also the goats. What if the goats are the least of these? What happens then? 

So often we look at the sheep and the goats passage as a kind of to-do list. It’s a laundry list of things to check off so that we can get in to heaven. Did we feed the hungry? Check. Did we clothe the naked? Check? Did we give water to the thirsty or tend to the sick or visit the imprisoned? Check Check Check. 

We’re so busy checking boxes to make sure that we’re in that we totally miss it. We completely miss that Jesus is telling us exactly how to connect with God, right here, right now, right on this earth. We don’t have to wait for some far off culling of the sheep and the goats to encounter the Holy. Jesus is telling us that the Holy is right in front of us. When we tend to the least of these, we tend to him, we tend to the Holy, there God is, right in our midst. 

I don’t know about you, but the “least of these” that I have had the privilege to tend to have been far from perfect. They aren’t complete victims. Many of them are even partially responsible for their own predicaments. Lots and lots of them are sheep, willing to give the coat off their backs to help their neighbor in need, but more than a few of them are just plain goats. They look out for themselves, when they’re able. When they’re lucky. 

What if the goats and the “least of these” are the same people? What if we could find God in the goats?

What if God is standing there, right in front of us, asking us for our spare change? What if God is standing there, right in front of us, overdosing on heroin, or taking out a payday loan, or hoarding his money, or ignoring the needs of his neighbor? What if God is right here, among us, but is hidden behind soiled clothes and alcohol breath? What if God is right here, among us, but hidden behind the bad decision, or the reckless behavior, or the imperfect record? What if God is in the goats?

Would that change how we treat the goats? Would that change how we see the goats? Would it change whether they’re “goats” at all?  Maybe we’re all just sheep in goats’ clothing? Maybe we need someone to look us in the eye, to learn our names, to listen to our stories long enough for us to see the identity hidden beneath our selfishness and our hoarding and our laziness. Maybe God is in the goats.

Dave was kind of a jerk. And he was in so much pain. Dave thought only about himself. And he was burdened with trauma. Dave was a goat. And he was one of the least of these. Dave was an image of God, right in front of us. He is buried in some unmarked grave somewhere. No one felt his loss. 

Except a few of us, a few of us who realize that there isn’t much difference between the sheep and the goats, between us and the people we’re called to serve. We’ll miss him. One less face of Christ among us. 

What we do to the least of these goats, we do to Jesus. 

If we can see Christ in the goats, then maybe we can see Christ in ourselves, too. 

God is in the goats.

Thanks be to God. 

A Stewardship Sermon?

Matthew 25:14-30

 This is a tough one, y’all. Well, most of them are tough, especially the ones that end with the weeping and gnashing of teeth. But this one feels extra tough. I think it’s because this passage is always used for Stewardship Sunday - you know the whole giving of your talents thing, and what you give will come back to you, and the prosperity gospel, and good stewards of their money always invest in the stock market. But I think this passage needs a little updating. 

Imagine an owner of a major corporation, say, Amazon, or Apple, or Google, it doesn’t matter, really, but it has to be a guy, and he has to be rich, like, dripping with money gabajillionaire, and make him famous, maybe a little selfish, definitely self-centered, maybe a little narcissistic and wrap him up into one guy, let’s call him “lord,” 

and he sends out his hedge fund managers to make even more cash to fill what I imagine to be their chinchilla fur lined and diamond encrusted pockets, all the while oppressing the poor tenant farmers whose land will be snagged out from under them when they can’t keep up with the 200% interest rates. 

This is the first thing I think of when I read this passage. A wealthy landowner, out to get more of what he already has. A couple of sycophantic servants, out to please the landowner so that they can get some share of the cash. And the poor guy who’s terrified and doesn’t double the investment like some payday lending scheme gets thrown out with all the weepers and the gnashers.

It’s not an easy passage. Especially when we consider that Jesus wasn’t talking to the hedge fund managers. He was talking to the peasants and the poor. To the disciples. The ones at the mercy of those managers. 

One “talent” was equivalent to 15 years’ wages for a day laborer. 15 years of sweat and sacrifice and calluses and coming in late for dinner.

And yay, hedge fund manager #1, you doubled your money! You took the equivalent of 75 years of wages of a laborer and doubled it! C’mon in! 

And well done, hedge fund manager #2, you’ve doubled yours, too! Now we’ve got 30 more years of wages to roll around in! Let’s go buy a yacht in the Cayman Islands so we can escape all those taxes! 

But to the guy who didn’t play the game, who didn’t go and invest the money in some sketchy pyramid scheme, “you are now banished to the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 

And somehow this is supposed to be a description of what it’s going to be like at the end of all this? At the end of time? At the end of all this struggle and bill paying and time juggling and people arguing and accusing and hurting each other, after all the mourning and the tears, and after all this feeding of the hungry and loving the lost and forgiving the broken - this is all we get? A broken system where the richest 1% in the world own half of the world’s wealth? Just more of the status quo? 

After all the healing and the parables and the forgiving and the multiplying of the loaves and the fishes and all the sermons on the mounts, this is all we get? Is this it? A terrifying absentee landowner who rewards the moneymakers and throws out the subsistence farmers?

If we don’t put this passage where it belongs, surrounded by other passages where they belong, this parable can easily be used to support the same broken social and economic system that we are all living in and with today. 

See, on the surface, all this Jesusy talk about the end times just doesn’t jive with the Jesus we’ve come to know in the previous 24 chapters in Matthew. I mean, just 12 chapters earlier, we have a description of the kingdom of heaven that is like a treasure hidden in a field - maybe even a talent perhaps? - and the merchant buries the treasure, and then goes, sells all that he has and buys the field. 

So just a few chapters earlier the treasure - the talent - is buried, and that’s a good thing.

What gives, Jesus? First, the kingdom is like a guy who buries some really amazing treasure. And then, the kingdom is like a guy who gets his rear end handed to him for burying some really amazing treasure. 

First, folks who are poor in spirit will inherit the kingdom. And then, those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. Seriously. What gives?

Unless. Well. Unless this passage is not about doubling one’s wealth, but rather about how we think about treasure, and how we think about God.

The merchant who buries his treasure and then buys his field does so out of the thrill of his find. He does so because his life will never be the same. He does what he does - he sells everything, risks everything - because he has been transformed. He takes the risk. He bets it all. He doesn’t let fear stop him.

The hedge fund manager in our story today hides his treasure out of fear. He is terrified of Mr. Bajillionaire, and so, in his fear, he sticks his head in the sand, along with all that cash and all his insecurity and all his doubt and his insistence that the Lord is a terrifying money grubbing billionaire. All of it, buried in the dirt. He isn’t just burying his money so that he can claim it later; he’s not selling off his certificates of deposit and his savings bonds to get this land; he’s not risking everything he has for this treasure. This guy is consumed by fear. Frozen by fear. Overwhelmed into stagnation because of his fear. He might as well stick his head down in the sand where he’s buried that talent.

But I wonder if his fear is really warranted?

What would happen to those other hedge fund managers if they came back and said, “well, Lord, I spent your money, I put it towards this thing that I really thought was going to work, but um, I kinda blew my church’s endowment." Or, "I went to the school, and the degree didn’t pan out like I thought it would, so now I have a PhD and a bunch of loans and I’m living on food stamps." Or, "the charity I thought was a good one turned out to be corrupt." "I signed on to the mortgage with the interest rate that I thought I could handle, but it turns out I can’t." "I gave my heart to someone, and it turned out to be pretty painful, and now I’ve got three kids and a defaulted mortgage and a little PTSD.”

What would happen if the third servant came to the Lord and said,  “I screwed up. I took the risk. And it failed.”? I invested all this money on this thing I really believed in, this thing that I thought would really pan out, and, well, it didn’t. I risked it all for you, but now all I’ve got is five bucks and a couple of gum wrappers left in my pocket. 

Would The Lord have been angry? Would he have given his servant a sentence worse than being thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? 

Would the burier of the talent been right about the consequences of his failed risk? Probably, if we’re talking about the lords of today.

But not if The Lord in this parable is supposed to represent God. Not if the previous 24 chapters of the book of Matthew are any indication of who God is and what God loves. Not if the testimonies of the prophets, of Moses and Miriam, of Elijah and Aaron, of Eli and Solomon and David and Paul and Peter and Thomas and all the other failures are any indication. No. God is the God of risk. God is the God of failures. 

God is the God of the one who became the ultimate failure — who, at least in theory, could have jumped off of that cross and blasted all those Romans and corrupt politicians and murderous crowds to smithereens - but instead, didn’t. Jesus suffered the ultimate price. The ultimate humiliation. That of death - even death on a cross. What a risk. And he lost it all. What a failure. 

And this passage was written in the middle of all that failure. Just a generation after Jesus was supposed to come in with his insurgency and his army and his new world order, after he was supposed to free the Jews and give them their own land and their own sovereignty, the Temple is destroyed, and Jesus’ followers are huddling together in their mud houses shaking in fear. 

No. Our God is a God who takes the risk of living. Our God is a God who transforms failures. Who transforms sin and grief and pain and brokenness into freedom and joy and peace and healing. God takes risks that don’t pan out and ultimate failures that devastate us all and turns them into resurrection. 

Our talent-burier is dead wrong about who the wealthy landowner really is. That’s where he goes astray. That’s where he falters. 

Our anti-hero in our story only functions out of an intense, paralyzing fear - a fear that isn’t grounded in the true identity of our Lord. He thinks he’s serving Warren Buffett or Michael Bloomberg or the Koch brothers or Mark Zuckerberg, and not the God of risks who entered in to the messiness and failure and fragility of human life and then embraced the ultimate failure - the rejection of his people and a humiliating death, even death on a cross. The servant doesn’t really know the one he serves. He thinks he does. He assumes he knows what his lord is like. But he gets it dead wrong. 

He is terrified, so he plants his talents in the ground. As if I could go outside this building, put a dollar in the ground and wait for a money tree to sprout come Springtime. 

I

nstead of planting things that can be transformed with time and nourishment and sun and rain, things like mustard seeds and crocus bulbs and compost and love and forgiveness and terrifying things like hope, and even our very selves, he plants something that is plastic, unchanging, that will never break down in a landfill or grow into a tree. 

It makes me think of those fake grass door mats with the daisies on them - makes me wonder, did they even try to make it look real? 

Or is that the point? To make it fake and plastic so that it never changes. It never dies. I never grows. It never surprises or fails. It never requires a chemical reaction or a decomposition or a risk of any kind. Stuff that grows is alive, and things that are alive, eventually, die. Living takes risk. And failure. And forgiveness. Live stuff changes and grows and rots and dies. Life takes risk. Sometimes it doesn’t pan out how we’d like. But it’s ok. God is not a harsh man who reaps where he does not sow or gather where he does not scatter seed. God’s the one who takes the dying seed and transforms it into nourishing life.

This terrified servant doesn’t take the risk of life; he missed out on who God really is, and instead, plants silk flowers and plastic trees because he’s afraid that if he plants the real things - the real seeds, the real flowers, the real trees - one day they’re going to shrivel up and die. One day they’re not going to look the same or be the same. And yeah. That’s so hard. Dealing with the death. Dealing with the change. Dealing with life. 

And he doesn’t realize that the one who made all this real stuff, all this flesh and breath and compost and soil, the one who made the seed that must die in order to become something bigger, greater, more alive, this is the wealthy landowner. This is God. God transforms, God renews, God breaks down in order to create something new.

I think we’re so afraid of living, of being transformed, so afraid of God, that we form little walls around ourselves, we put our heads in the sand, we refuse to change, we refuse to let the soil and the earth break down our carbon and water and iron and potassium that make up our bodies. 

We plant fruitless plastic trees into the ground because we are afraid that if we plant the real thing, we might get some rotten fruit, or we might have to deal with blight, or we might even have to chop the dying tree down and start over. We put our talents in the ground because we’re terrified of who we think God is.

Heck. Maybe we aren’t really even planting anything. We’re burying. 

Can you see the difference?

Let’s plant. Not bury. I guess this is a stewardship sermon after all.

Take the risk. Embrace the change. It might work out. It might not. But either way, God will transform it. Either way, it’ll be ok. Because God is God. God is the God of life and of love so that even our failures, even our stock market losses, even our bankruptcies are transformed into a kind of resurrection. God doesn’t punish the broken. God doesn’t castigate the risk takers. So let’s not be afraid to plant something. 

But that’s it. That’s what it’s all about. The seed that dies so that it can become a tree. The transformation of our lives that may look like we’ve doubled our investment, or it may look like we’ve failed and lost it all. But either way, we took the risk. We put it all on the line. We planted something living that will change and grow and eventually die. That’s what it’s about. The transformation. The changing and growing and getting dirty and maybe even failing. Maybe even dying. Because we know our landowner. We know what our landowner does with death.

Let’s be transformed.

Let’s live. 

Let’s not be afraid.

Thanks be to God.