REFLECTION
EZEKIEL 34: 11-12. 1 CORINTHIANS 15: 20-26 MATTHEW 25: 31-46
“The great shofar is sounded, and a still small voice is heard. The angels tremble. Fear and dread seize them, and they exclaim: The Day of Judgment is here! All created beings pass before You, one by one, like a flock of sheep. As a shepherd examines his flock, making his sheep pass under his staff, so do You cause every living soul to pass before You. “(From a prayer recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur)
Jesus uses the imagery of the sheep passing under the shepherd’s crook from this wellknown prayer as the basis of his teaching on the Last Judgment. He paints a picture of “the Son of Man” separating humankind the way a shepherd separates sheep from the goats. The sheep enter eternal life, the goats, eternal punishment.
What’s so interesting about this teaching is Jesus’ criteria for judgment. It isn’t what immediately comes to mind. When I think of the great judgment day, I think of God judging sins like pride, greed, murder, theft, adultery, deception, pride, anger. But Jesus doesn’t go that way at all. Instead he, as judge, intimately links himself to suffering humanity. “I was ill. I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was a stranger. I was in prison. I was naked. You didn’t care for me. You didn’t feed me. You didn’t give me something to drink. You didn’t welcome me. You didn’t visit me. You didn’t clothe me.”
What he seems to be teaching is that the primary commandment that the human family is expected to adhere to is to care for one another’s basic needs. Maybe he’s saying that what we think of as sins are actually symptoms of a more profound sinfulness humanity’s disregard of the
suffering poor.
Jesus presents this commandment that calls us to care for one another in a very personal and intimate way. I was hungry. YOU didn’t give me something to eat. He’s not condemning us for not setting up a welfare state to assure that everyone has enough to eat. He’s commissioning ME and YOU to reach out, to touch the lives of our suffering brothers and sisters.
The welfare systems we’ve constructed are dehumanizing and humiliating. My mother, a teenager during the great depression, told me of the times she wept because her family was forced to beg for food stamps. Is the situation any better today? Our welfare system has no compassion, no humanity, no heart.
On this Feast of Christ the King each of us stands in judgment before Christ. Each of us are being asked the same question. “When I was hungry, did you feed me?” Standing before him and hearing that question, how do you think you’ll be judged?
Whatever the answer may be, hopefully, he’ll give us another chance. Hopefully, he’ll say to us what he said to the adulterous woman he saved from the condemnation of the religious leaders, “Go, and sin no more.”
