The G.O.A.T. Parable

The Biggest Eternal Surprise Party of All Time

The Orthodox Church places the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46) in the Pre-lenten services after two Sundays of “who’s in and who’s out” Gospel readings. The Church is masterful at setting us up for Lent, which is probably one of the most judgmental seasons of the Church year. We judge plates, prostrations, prayers, participation, preciseness, priests, penitence, piety, potlucks. And ourselves.

The contexts of the readings are Jesus speaking to seriously religious people, people who were seriously concerned about salvation, much like people who seriously participate in Lent. So the Church gets right up into our Lenten business: “You think doing all your pious church stuff to the max and by the letter of the Canons correctly is what gets you spiritual? There was a Pharisee who thought so too….” The Pharisee judged himself “in” and the Publican “out”. And the Publican judged himself and agreed with him, “Yeah, I’m out…”.

The next Sunday the Church says, “You think being a member of the 20% faithful, hard working, there every time the door is open and staying until after it is closed, bringing a main dish to every Agape Meal, chanter, flower committee member, priest’s right hand man, parish council member that keeps the church running for the benefit of the nominal, uncommitted, Christmas and Pascha, once in a while candle lighters is a feather in your salvation cap (or a jewel in your crown, as we used to say in my Protestant church)? Welllll… when that “Pascha Person” shows up after the Rush Service to get a candle, the glory of the fullness of the Feast of Feasts is thrown for him too, without reservations, without one restriction just because he showed up, even empty handed and stinking of the world.”

If we’ve been paying attention we should have gotten the idea the Church is telling us to be very, very careful how and who we judge, even ourselves. Now that we have THAT clear, we can talk about the Real Deal: The Last Judgment, the one everyone fears and is preparing for by trying to “get it right”. The Parable that Jesus tells affirms what some people believe (and many people fear): there’s going to be people who are going to be in and some who will be out. Which, of course, now returns us to the question that was answered in the previous two Sundays: How do I be sure I’m doing what it takes to be “in” or, what’s the stuff that’s going to keep me out, even if I was down the wrong religiosity rabbit hole there for a while.

Unfortunately, even though the prior two Sundays were meant to be a comfort to us by telling us “rightness is not necessarily righteousness”, God’s not looking at the same stuff we are in others or ourselves, and God’s not out to scare the hell out of us as much as He’s trying to instill His love and mercy into us, we still take this Sunday as the Church’s last warning to “scare the hell out of us” and motivate us to “do Lent right or else”, which scrupulously includes judging ourselves whether or not we got rightly humbled enough by doing it wrong so we can be a Publican or Returning Prodigal. Sigh.

Anyway…, back to the fear of judgment and hell which, I think, this parable is NOT about. Fear drives a BIG bus full of a LOT of people. But if the parable is not intended to sell us a ticket to get ON that bus by telling us about Sheep and Goats and eternal pastures or damnation, then why is it here so near the beginning of the most demanding of all seasons of the Church and what is it trying to say to us that is an encouragement to engage the disciplines rather than a threat of damnation if we don’t?

Before we talk about “The Message” I think there’s a couple things we need to understand about the parables in general that frames the message of The Sheep and the Goats. This parable begins like all the other parables: The default status of everyone at the start of all the parables is that they are “included”. The Publican and Pharisee were both in the Temple praying before God. The Elder Brother and Younger Brother were both sons of the Father in His household. The wheat and the tares grew up together in one field. “All manner of things” were drawn up from one lake in the Fisherman’s net. The wise and un-wise virgins were both invited to the wedding feast. The faithful and bad stewards were all in the household of the Master and all were given gifts. The King’s friends and strangers and outcast beggars were all invited to the great banquet. The loitering, lazy, and diligent were all given jobs in the field and all were paid the same. The renters of the vineyard had complete control and access to the Landowner’s fields and property. ALL were “included” in whatever place the parables took place prior to the surprise separations at the ends of the parables.

So we see this parable is like all the others: The Sheep and the Goats were one flock: both shepherded by the same Good Shepherd. They both heard His voice and knew His face, and Jesus explains the meaning: “all the nations were brought before the King”. ALL the nations were under one King and citizens of one Kingdom just as there was one Shepherd and one flock.

So, of course your mind jumps immediately to “The Separation”… who gets booted and why?! But wait! Come to a FULL STOP before turning down that street! Before we can know that, we HAVE to understand what Jesus is telling us about God: The default is, He includes EVERYONE. You are simply IN because you are God’s beloved creation.

Did you catch that? EVERYONE IS IN! Inclusion was NOT BASED ON GOODNESS AND RIGHTEOUSNESS AND CORRECTNESS. You weren’t “out” and then got in because He thought you were finally worthy somehow by your goodness, performance, or even your great humility and repentance. You are “in” simply because Christ “drew all men to Himself” as He promised he would. There are no qualifications to be included except that you exist as a beloved child of God to be embraced by Him, just as both Brothers were sons even though both of them had a wrong-headed understanding of being a son and who their Father was. (An important corollary to this is the intrinsic goodness of creation. ALL things are good, evil has no objective substance but is the deprivation and disfigurement of the good, but that’s another blog post.)

So… now that we have that down, here comes the Judgment. If inclusion is the default and EVERYONE is already “IN”, how and why does someone get excluded and what does that mean?

In the Parables, exclusion is based on “non-comformity” to being “IN”. You are not included because you KNOW you are in by some measure of doing the stuff that you think it takes to GET IN. The Wheat and Tares were both in the field and both did what came naturally: They grew in the same sunshine, rain and soil. The “stuff” was caught up in the big net all swam and floated in the same lake. ALL were “in the wedding parties”. ALL could eat freely to their fill from the King’s banquet table. All were hired regardless of qualifications and all were given equal wages regardless of performance.

Special knowledge or performance was not required be INCLUDED in the first place. But the kicker of the Sheep and the Goats is this: “knowledge” was not the basis of being EXCLUDED. The Sheep were clueless about being “righteous” or doing righteous things (“when did we see you…?”). But so were the Goats (“when did we see you…?”). Neither were asked to hand in a time-card of services attended, a spreadsheet of prayer rules kept, nor were subjected to a dogmatic exam to test the precision of their theological knowledge. SURPRISE!!! There was one question on the final exam. No one prepared for it because they weren’t really paying attention during the Teacher’s lectures nor had they read the textbook carefully. They didn’t even read the synopsis of the entire course: Love God. Love your neighbor.

The “exclusion” in judgment, it turns out, isn’t getting an “F” on the dogmatics final: describe and identify your Teacher. Exclusion is a lack of similarity to and identification WITH the Teacher. The “test” of the goodness of a creation is, “does it look like and reflect its Creator?” The test of the Parables is: Do you act like a citizen of the King? Which servant acts like the Generous Master? Which flock follows the voice of the Shepherd? Which plant actually becomes the Wheat/Bread of Life? What is a real, live Fish and not just a piece of dead, rotting flotsam in the lake? Who does “naturally” what one does in a flock, in a field, in a lake, in a wedding party, at a banquet, as son? There is no “merit” or qualification for reward for just growing if you’re a plant, swimming if you’re a fish, rejoicing if you’re at a wedding, eating and drinking if you’re a guest at a banquet. You’re just “being” as you were created to be in the world created for you.

So, the separation is based on this: Who was paying attention to life itself? Who sees God in everything (after all, He is everywhere present and fills all things), including all your fellow human beings? Who was just “being human” and lived intuitively in the image of God in which they are created (even if they don’t know His real name): You know… that “God” who visits the prisoner, heals the sick, feeds the hungry, and clothes the naked, is kind to strangers, not because they were instructed by a law handed down from on high, but were merely living by the intuitive goodness of their created nature?

For back-to-back Sundays we heard Gospel stories of two visions of God. The Pharisee “knew” God as a judge who rewards correct devotion. The Elder Brother knew the Father as an employer who rewards hard work and duty. The irony is, the Publican and The Prodigal Son knew the same things: But the Publican is driven to humility by his failure to live up to the Law adequately, and the hungry Prodigal makes his father an employment offer He can’t refuse to get a meal because he “knew” his Father just might sign the contract and take him up on it. But the Publican and the Prodigal found a God they didn’t know, and so did the Pharisee and the Elder Brother. God did not include any of them for their service, attitude, devotion, morality, piety or knowledge. They were all “one” in Him by virtue of who HE is. The divisions among them were not of His work but by the lack of theirs whether they were in the House, the Temple, the narthex or the Far Country.

So, you ask… who then is the “goat”? It is interesting that St. John Chrysostom notes that the word for “goats” indicates they were “kids”, young goats: not fully matured, like children who are easily distracted and inattentive. The Sheep and the Goats both lived in the same flock, the same fields, just as we all live on the same earth in the same Kingdom. Both encountered the sick, the naked, the hungry, the poor, the imprisoned. The Sheep saw them. The Goats? Well… Perhaps they saw, but not with the eyes of the Shepherd/King. The Sheep saw what the King saw: “If you did this to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to Me.” They were all related. Brothers bear the likeness to one another because they have the same Father. As St. John and the Fathers say, “if we see our brother clearly, we see God.” And the God we see is one who bore all the infirmities, imprisonment, nakedness and hunger of His brethren, and so the Sheep do likewise.

But we can miss all that if we don’t pay attention. The Goats were distracted, inattentive, immature. They paid attention to all the “stuff” that Jesus preached about in His other parables: Legal exactitude, fastidious ritualism, scrupulous correctness, perfect performance: religiosity that mercilessly obscured the outrageous un-naturalness of human suffering, failure and need. They were distracted by everything that was “shiny” in the carnival of religion and paid attention to “the carney” who said the cheap rewards were easily attainable and they bought the tickets to play a rigged ring toss. In their immaturity they loved the lights and sounds and smells (and even the rigors, deprivations, hardships, and fasts). They admired the reflection of themselves in the mirror of “religiousness” instead of the holy image that exists in themselves and their brothers, the very image of their Shepherd and King and God.

The moral of the pre-Lenten Gospels (and all the Parables) is: We indeed have a Father and a Judge, but mercy triumphs over judgment. Listen to the still small voice in you that is your Shepherd speaking to your Goat-self. Pay attention! Don’t get distracted! Don’t go running after self-affirming damnation!

Look. See. Act. And when we stand in judgment with love on our hands and not blood, even if we are ignorant of the Name of the one whose we bear, we will be told of, and then know, our original inclusion in Him… even if we counted ourselves as excluded, because we included His brothers and comforted them.

I pray that I will stand before God in judgment, not in expectation of, but in surprise at my salvation.

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So, now… of course our mind goes down this rabbit hole so I may as well tack this on here and now: What does all this have to do with the hope for or possibility of universal salvation?

Let’s being with universal inclusion. That is God’s default setting. And let’s also begin with judgment, because all the Parables and doctrines of the Second Coming and the Kingdom to come DO say there will be a separation, an accounting for, or revelation of our sins before the judgment seat of Christ. The issue is not whether there is inclusion or separation, there will be one. The issue in a nutshell is this: Is the separation a willful, calculated torment by God as a retributive punishment on the sinner for his offenses, and is it eternal?

First, I would like to take “eternity” off the table before I address my specific issues with Matthew 25 and judgment. I will only say that the translation of “aiónios” as “eternal” is an interpretation, not necessarily a translation in certain contexts. It CAN refer to eternity, but it can also mean a specific period of time that is finite. I will simply give this link to Al Kimel’s excellent article HERE that covers that issue very well.

So what about the Judgment scene in Matthew 25? God condemns those who did not visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the captives or give drink to the thirsty because “if you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to Me.” God eternally, infinitely and intimately, to the point of the Incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection identifies with “the least of these”. It is impossible for God to turn His back on or NOT identify with them. God cannot be separated from the sick, needy, hungry, naked and imprisoned.

Here is my question and issue: Are we to believe that God sends sick people into fiery captivity, stripped of their wedding garment, who will hunger and thirst after His righteousness eternally, and then He willfully does NOT, as punishment, ever visit them in prison, clothe them in His wedding garment, give them the Bread and Water of Life, and heal their infirmity and restore them to their original created health and wholeness? Am I to believe God is capable of doing that as God after He sends people TO hell for NOT doing those things in His image and Name to “the least of these”? If so, then it seems to me that God expects human beings to be a better God than He is capable of being.

So that’s my issue in a sentence. It’s not proof of the possibility of universal salvation, but if I have to choose between a hope for eternal hell for “the least of these” and the hope that God will eventually do what He demands of even us imperfect sinners to be saved, I’ll choose the latter.

And in the end (literally and figuratively) I suppose I have all eternity to hash that out with Him whether I end up in the eternal Sheep or Goat pen, and He has all eternity to make good on being the God who says He truly loves the least of these more than He demands that I do.