Jesus said to his disciples: "When
the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit
upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before
him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates
the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the
goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come,
you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you
from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I
was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and
you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.' Then
the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and
feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger
and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in
prison, and visit you?' And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to
you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me.' Then
he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the
eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you
gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you
gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and
you did not care for me.' Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see
you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not
minister to your needs?' He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did
not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.' And these will go
off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
Matthew
25:31-46
Why take this story at anything but face
value? It is certainly a powerful exhortation to feed the hungry, welcome
the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the ill, and visit the prisoner. Who among
us - secular or religious - would disagree
with any of those values? Of course, no
one does. Almost as obviously, few of us
actually meet the standard set out in this passage for avoiding eternal
damnation. I, for instance, have never
visited anyone in prison, nor have I ever visited a stranger in a hospital. I give some excess cash to charity and I vote
in a manner that I think will most effectively reduce need, but I have no
illusions that I am meeting the king’s stringent standards.
Most homilists will use today’s
reading to exhort us to greater charity and, again, why fight it?
There are a few problems: First, this
implies our relationship to God is transactional: Do what He says to receive
reward and avoid punishment. Love one another as He loves us - or else. This vision of God is ultimately stultifying.
It reduces God to a cosmic enforcer taken
to fits of rage and disproportionate punishment we’d label as signs of immaturity
in an earthly judge. It makes faith and
morality virtually synonymous, and makes faith insipid.
For me, the larger problem is philosophical. Science and philosophy indicate we don’t have
free will. Whether we are inclined to visit a stranger in a prison or do (or
fail to do) anything else for that matter is, finally, the product of our
nature and our nurture, neither of which is within our control. "A man can do what he wants, but does not want what he wants," as Arthur Schopenhauer said. If God is aware of this and is interested in fairness,
He would neither reward good behavior nor punish bad.
So, if we are to take Scripture
seriously, this story must be about something other than God commanding us to
do something and threatening us with punishment if we fail. I explored one alternate interpretation last
week (See, “The Useless Servant”).
Another possibility reveals itself in
the parallels in this parable to God’s commandment expressed to the Israelites right
after the Ten Commandments:
No widow nor orphan shall you abuse. If you indeed abuse
them, when they cry out to Me, I will surely hear their outcry. And my wrath shall flare up and I will kill
you by the sword, and your wives shall be widows and your children orphans.[i]
Our
natural impulse is to focus on the moral exhortation that we are to avoid
abusing widows and orphans. It appeals
to our reflexive desire to equate faith with morality, and it also has
colorful, dramatic language, appealing to our retributive side - if we abuse a
widow, God will make our wife a widow.
It’s also a nice, exceptionally easy moral test we can all pass if we’re
inclined to. You would almost have to be
a monster to abuse widows and orphans, so the only people who are likely to get
caught out by this command are sociopaths anyway. But what if we are not morally autonomous
beings and God is not in the business of command, reward and punishment? If this is not about the moral, what is the
transcendent message? What are we to
make of this seemingly inescapably retributivist statement?
In
recognizing that revelation is not a word-for-word dictation
by God to a prophet (and, as I have argued elsewhere, isn't verbal at all), we can recognize that we need to read between the lines
and apply science and intuition to revelation to make it whole. Our understanding of our relationship to God
must be guided by first principals. That
God is just and that He would not punish us for things outside our control is
the most fundamental assumption we can and must make about God. We need to be alert to moments when the
prophet who received the revelation, reduced it to words, and wrote it down, might have
abandoned this principle in favor of an assumption he’s made impulsively. We need to tease away what God meant from
what the prophet may have inadvertently added as a result of his cultural
expectations.
Abraham
Heschel writes:
The prophet is not a passive recipient, a recording
instrument, affected from without participation of heart and will, nor is he a
person who acquires his vision by his own strength and labor. The prophet’s
personality is rather a unity of inspiration and experience, invasion and
response. For every object outside him,
there is a feeling inside him; for every event of revelation to him, there is a
reaction by him; for every glimpse of truth he is granted, there is a
comprehension he must achieve. Even in
the moment of the event he is, we are told, an active partner in the
event. His response to what is disclosed
to him turns revelation into a dialogue.
In a sense, prophecy consists of a revelation of God and a co-revelation of man. The share of the prophet manifested itself
not only in what he was able to give but also in what he was unable to
receive. Revelation does not happen when
God is alone.[ii]
In
the ancient world, widows and orphans had no means to provide for themselves
and were quintessentially dependent on the unearned accommodation and charity
of others for their day-to-day survival.
In an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, it could be anticipated that
they would never pull their weight, produce anything, or serve any social
function. What God was saying here was not a moral exhortation, so much as
statement about the nature of His relationship to us – God’s morality. In
modern faith the idea that God cares for each of us regardless of our social
station is universally accepted. But
recall that God’s constant competition in the Old Testament is Ba’al – a
brutal, demanding family of gods with no tradition of love for anyone, let
alone social outcasts or the poor. God’s
loving concern for the widow and orphan would have been an unprecedented
message of divine concern for those who could offer nothing in return. This was the message to the prophet, and it was radical departure from the existing expectations of faith. This
message of loving the poor and the outcast rather than taking the side of the
wealthy and strong, reflects radical grace – unearned love given freely to
unfree beings. This is not selective
reading, but rather a necessary interpretation if we utilize what science tells
us about human nature to discern God’s relationship to us.
So,
the message of the parable of the sheep and the goats is not a moral code for us to follow; it is the moral code God follows. Rather than having no regard for us, or having
regard only for the triumphal heroes among us, His concern rests on us, never more so then when we feel orphaned, poor or broken. And a weary world rejoices.
