Goats in Sheep's Clothing

Ezekiel 34:11-24
11For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. 14I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 16I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

17As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: 18Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? 19And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet? 20Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, 22I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. 23I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken.

This is the Word of the LORD
Thanks be to God

Matthew 25:31-46

Rev. Bowling: 31“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 

Rev. Taber: ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

Rev. Bowling: 37Then the righteous will answer him,

ALL: ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 

Rev. Bowling: 40And the king will answer them, 

Rev. Taber: ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’

Rev. Bowling: 41Then he will say to those at his left hand, 

Rev. Taber: ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

 Rev. Bowling: 44Then they also will answer, 

ALL: ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’

Rev. Bowling: 45Then he will answer them, 

Rev. Taber: ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

Rev. Bowling: 46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” 

Rev. Taber: This is the WORD of The LORD.

ALL: Thanks be to to God!

Rev. Bowling: As you may have already figured out this morning, we are going to do something a little bit different. So Presbyterians, my fellow “Frozen Chosen,” I invite you to put on your seatbelts this morning.

Rev. Taber: That’s right. This morning we are going to present a dialogue sermon, where you get two preachers for the price of one!

Rev. Bowling: Double your preachers...Double your fun!

Rev. Taber: Seriously?

Rev. Bowling: What?

Rev. Taber: This is my friend and colleague, Pastor Adam Bowling, who currently serves First Presbyterian Church in Morganton, NC, the church where I went through confirmation and spent my formative youth group years. In fact, I was confirmed on May 28, 2000 and then 11 years, to the day, I was married to Leah in that very same sanctuary.

Rev. Bowling: And I officiated their wedding…

Rev. Taber: ...and did our premarital counseling.

Rev. Bowling: That’s right...Leah was a gem...and, I must tell you... she is a saint, but I digress. 

Rev. Taber: Pastor Adam grew up in Virginia Beach as a member of King’s Grant Presbyterian Church. He attended Hampden-Sydney College, one of the last all-male colleges in the country for undergrad, as a Biology and Religion double major.

Rev. Bowling: Double your majors...Double your fun!

Rev. Taber: Stop it! I’m trying to introduce you…

Rev. Bowling: Go on…

Rev. Taber: Adam went straight from Hampden-Sydney College to Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, now called Union Presbyterian Seminary, and graduated with two Master’s degrees...a Masters of Divinity and a Masters in Christian Education.

Rev. Bowling: (Begins to look like he is going to say…”Double your Masters...Double your fun!”

Rev. Taber: (cuts him off)Really... Adam met his lovely wife, Erin, while working at Camp Hanover, an outdoor ministry of the Presbytery of the James. She was originally his boss and staff training leader…

Rev. Bowling: That is still true!

Rev. Taber: Adam and Erin have two sons, Parker, who 10 years old and in 5th grade, and Chase, who is 8 years old and in 3rd grade.

A: Pastor Joseph, on the other hand, attended Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC for undergrad where he majored in English. He took a year off after graduation before attending Columbia Seminary in Atlanta, where he earned his Masters of Divinity. Joseph was ordained on August 8, 2014. Joseph is married to Leah, and they have 1 son, Joseph William Taber the V...who is 16 months old. (Pause…) The fifth? Really? No pressure there... 

J: It’s not about pressure, it’s about extending the dynasty. (Pause)

Adam and I met at the Montreat Youth Conference in the summer of 2008. I was working as an interim youth director at the time, and His youth invited my youth to a famous FPC Morganton freezie pop dance party. If I remember correctly, I think the cops only showed up once due to a noise complaint.

Rev. Bowling: That’s true...I just blamed Lanny, another adult leader, and we learned to not put the stereo speakers in the front window of the rental house.  

Rev. Taber: Since that time, we have been friends and colleagues. I’m a big fan of preachers wrestling with difficult passages publicly, so I jumped at the chance when Adam suggested that we do a dialogue sermon together.

Rev. Bowling: It’s challenging...but rewarding. Kind of like group projects in school.

Rev. Taber: Speaking of rewarding group efforts, and difficult bible passages...

Rev. Bowling: Yes, I just love this text in Matthew; Jesus is imploring us to do justice. To feed the hungry, to offer clean water to the thirsty, to welcome the stranger, to clothe the naked and impoverished, to take care of the sick, to visit the prisoner...to look out for the least of these in our communities. What a great message!

 Rev. Taber: Yeah...I guess, but there’s more to it than that, and the rest of it...I don’t like it so much...

Rev. Bowling: What’s not to like?

 Rev. Taber: I don’t like this passage because when I look at the descriptions Jesus gives I end up looking a lot more like a goat. And that’s not just a facial hair joke. I look back and I can remember times when I’ve driven past homeless people, or ignored those in need, or made excuses not to do what this passage implores. I have not earned my place in the sheep-fold, and Jesus says “‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Jesus is the judge in this passage, and I match the description of a goat much more closely than that of a righteous person.

Rev. Bowling: But, you’re not a goat Joseph...we’re not goats...Jesus is talking about those other people. He can’t be talking about us...the church? We do these things!

 Rev. Taber: We do...sometimes. But other times...?

Rev. Bowling: Well, when we can...I’m a very busy person you know. I have two young children. But, I participate in food drives, I give to the church, and the church helps people.  I rarely miss worship on Sundays. If I do, I’m leading a youth trip, or on a mission trip. Sometimes, I’m on vacation, but Jesus said Sabbath Rest was important. I’m a sheep, or at least I really want to be a sheep!  Bah bah bah bah!  

 Rev. Taber: Adam, we are all part of this broken and sinful world. We sin...we are part of systems that are not righteous in God’s eyes. Even if we don’t commit the sin ourselves, we benefit from the oppressions of others. This church is built on land that used to belong to the Catawba and Cherokee Indians. How much do you want to bet that they were paid a fair price? Those savings got passed on to us. We confess our sins each week to acknowledge that our sinful, goat-like tendencies infect everything we do. John Calvin once said, “...The mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God that he cannot conceive, desire, or design any thing but what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure, and iniquitous; that his heart is so thoroughly envenomed by sin that it can breathe out nothing but corruption and rottenness; that if some men occasionally make a show of goodness, their mind is ever interwoven with hypocrisy and deceit, their soul inwardly bound with the fetters of wickedness.”

Rev. Bowling: Boy, John Calvin didn’t mess around. But, we have in Ezekiel 34 another image, a powerful image and one that will perhaps serve the church better: the image of shepherd. We notice in Ezekiel 34 that God comes as a shepherd. God's shepherds have failed to do their job….true. God's shepherds have not gathered in the weak sheep. God's shepherds have not sought the lost or healed the sick or done what God called them to do. 

So God, out of great love for humanity and powerful compassion for the lost, goes forth. "I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep and I will make them lie down," says the Lord God. "I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak...." God takes off and joins the search for the least of these. 

Rev. Taber: Yes, absolutely. And all of us get lost, and have strayed, we get injured, and are weak. Yet God still comes for us, rescues and heals us. I am much more comfortable with this Ezekiel passage than the Matthew one. Ezekiel puts my salvation in God’s hands, Matthew makes me worry, because if it’s up to me, I know I’m going to have so many errors that I’ll end up sorted with the goats.

Rev. Bowling: I hear you, we all to make errors from time to time.  In fact, there was only one perfect man who ever walked the earth, and you aren’t him.  (Pause)  Speaking of errors, that reminds me about something I just read... , The Texas educational bureaucracy recently received and approved a new set of textbooks. A group of concerned parents conducted their own review. They found 231 errors, including the following: Napoleon winning the battle of Waterloo, President Truman dropping the atom bomb on Korea, and General Douglas MacArthur leading the anti-Communist campaign in the 1950s (it was actually Senator Joe McCarthy). When called to account for these errors, the bureaucrats studied the texts again and found even more errors than the parents first found. Then the parents found more. Now the tally stands at 5,200 mistakes.

How did the publishers react to this mess? One publisher's spokesperson argued that "except for the errors," everyone agreed that these were the finest textbooks they had ever seen. "Except for the errors"?

 "Except for the error," that teenage girl wouldn't be pregnant and contemplating an abortion. "Except for the error," that man's wife wouldn't be leaving him because he had an affair. "Except for the error," the young man and that young woman wouldn't have AIDS.

"Except for the errors." Except for his drinking problem, he is a pretty good guy. Except for her drug problem, she is a pretty good mother. Except for his sticky fingers, he was a pretty good banker. Except for her gossiping, she is a pretty good friend. Who are we kidding, except ourselves? We make excuses. We let ourselves off the hook. And when we do, we become lost.

Rev. Taber: Exactly, and if we pretend those issues aren’t there, we’ll look just as silly as those textbook publishers.

Rev. Bowling: So, we’re goats in sheep’s clothing. 

 Rev. Taber: What do you mean?

 Rev. Bowling: Well Joesph, we have a savior...Jesus Christ, who clothes us in righteousness.  We are goats, yes, but Christ sees us as sheep when it comes to judgement.  

I don’t worry about this Matthew passage because salvation isn’t up to us...we can’t earn it.  We don't have to go in search of our salvation. God came to us in Christ. And if we will but stretch out our arms to God through Christ, then we will become the lost who have been found. God will rescue us. And once we are found, God will lead us to good pastures. God promises to be our shepherd. 

Rev. Taber: Yes, we do have a savior in Jesus, and I’m so relieved by that because I know I need one. But there will be a judgment. Both Matthew and Ezekiel point to it. "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

Rev. Bowling: And Ezekiel: “As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats...”

Rev. Taber: Exactly. God’s going to put an end to all the suffering and wrongdoing in this world, and we’ll face that judgment too. Ezekiel talks about the selfish things we have done “Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?” Matthew, by contrast, talks about what we have left undone. “‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them,  ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’”

Rev. Bowling: True, and one might feel overwhelmed by such issues as war and terror, climate change, natural disasters, and epidemics. While you and I may not be able to sit in congress or be in a place of power, we can deal with any and all of these issues one person at a time. This vision in Matthew 25 is dealing with just such direct acts.

Rev. Taber: I love that Adam. There’s so much to be worried about in our culture right now, but Matthew points us to simple, concrete things that keep us from getting stuck in our worries. The days are surely coming when God will end war, terror, natural disasters, epidemics, and suffering of all kinds. Until then, any of us can find a way to feed the hungry, to be kind to strangers, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick or the imprisoned.

Rev. Bowling: Right, and going back to that image as Christ as judge. It reminds me of what my theology professor, Douglas Ottati, at Union Seminary used to say about the judgement. He would say in his New Jersey accent, “Remember that it’s a fixed court. Look, you’re guilty...you’ve sinned, you’ve messed up. You deserve to have the book thrown at ya. You walk into court, and look up, expecting the worse...and your best friend is Judge. There, sitting in the judge's seat is Christ...who knows your guilty, but says instead...don’t worry...I’ll take care of this for you. Case dismissed!”

Rev. Taber: Cool image! There is so much comfort in that. We may be goats, but as you said earlier, we’re goats in sheep’s clothing, and we’ll be judged as sheep because the Lamb has gone before us.

Rev. Bowling: Right, we may be goats, but that doesn’t mean God is not at work in the world, and always working within us.  The theological term for this in Sanctification.  The process of God making us more sheep-like all the time.  Back when I as a camp counselor, a little girl at Camp Hanover once asked, “If God is inside of me and is so big, why doesn't God break through?" That’s sanctification….God breaking into our world, and into our lives in unexpected and profound ways.  

Rev. Taber: Both the sheep and goats in the vision of the final judgment were surprised. I think if we watch for how God is breaking through in our lives, we’re going to be surprised how that happens. We’ll be surprised by what God is doing, and we’ll be surprised by what God is doing through us.

Rev. Bowling: Double the surprise, double the fun!

Rev. Taber: This again? I think you’re going to have to answer for this at the final judgment.

Rev. Bowling: I’m a goat in sheep’s clothing. Thanks to Jesus, I’ll be charged as a goat, but treated as a sheep.

Rev. Taber: Double the judgment, double the grace?

Rev. Bowling: Now you’re doing it too!

Rev. Taber: If God is going to treat us like sheep anyway, we may as well act like it.

Rev. Bowling: Totally agreed! As the children's camp song goes… “I just want to be a sheep! Bah Bah Bah Bah!” so we encourage you to be as sheep-like as possible in the coming days. We may be goats, but through Christ and in Christ, we can put on sheep's clothing. It says in Colossians, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience….Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.”

Rev. Taber: So as we take stock of the things we are thankful for this week. We encourage you to find ways to share.

Rev. Bowling: It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture...or something complicated.

Rev. Taber: Maybe you donate some food.

Rev. Bowling: Or volunteer at a Soup Kitchen. 

Rev. Taber Or, maybe you have an extra coat or a pair of shoes you could give to someone in need.

Rev. Bowling: Think and pray this week, about what you can do to respond to Christ’s call to help the least and the lost. And then respond like the person in need was Jesus Himself. 

Both: In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen