On one of my dog walks this week, while listening to my Bible reading, I heard something I hadn’t ever before noticed. In the story Jesus told in Matthew 25 where he divides the sheep from the goats, (vv. 31-46) both the sheep and the goats ask the Son of Man their own versions of the same question:

The sheep ask: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ The goats ask: “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”

Both were surprised by the judgement of God over their lives.

The people who were headed to a place of eternal blessings by the Father, the ones inheriting the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world, didn’t even realize that their action or inaction had to do with life-saving care to Jesus. They did good things without even realizing it.

The people who had not done well were equally flabbergasted by the pronounced judgment of furor. They must have somehow thought themselves worthy. So, they had to ask their own version of the question:

“Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”

Neither of the groups seemed to understand the ramifications of their actions. He had to explain it to both. There’s something about being human that makes us not get the divine perspective. All too often we take pride in the gifts God gives, mistake them as our own creations and bless others with our giftedness instead of humbly practicing, honing, serving in ways that point others not to our remarkable fingerprints on the things we touch, but pointing to the good and loving God who made us and uses us; how truly amazing that God uses his sheep to help others and turn their gaze to the Lord of heaven and earth, the Good Shepherd who tends and cares for every single one of us.

If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, God laughs.

If you are impressed with how much money you’ve amassed, or how many children you have, or your standing in the graduating class, or what school you just got admitted to, or everything else that matters to us and the thinking of culture and society, you might be surprised to hear the snickering and laughing from on high. We can’t help it; we care about these and other things and achievements society values. For the most part, even those of us who have been washed in blood still find ourselves preoccupied with the cares of this life. Can it be that we forget what matters most or do we even know what does? Both the sheep and the goats asked the same question.

God is not impressed with what impresses us, and honestly, we are not naturally impressed with what impresses him.

He seems to be suggesting that the works that mattered the most, the ones with eternal consequence and most pleasing—I daresay even beautiful to God—were not things people did for organized religion or social structures or for themselves. Jesus was the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the incarcerated and the sick. Just the thought kind of spoils the mood.

This was not a political statement. Jesus was not judging the corrupt structure of the day though it was corrupt and did deserve judgement. But the blessings of the sheep were all about people.

Just before Jesus told this story, he told of the people using or not using their talents and the virgins who did or did not have oil in their lamps.

There Jesus goes again telling these stories that don’t make us feel good about ourselves. You know, the ones that shine light in those places where we don’t want people to see, the places where we ourselves don’t want to look.

Goats and sheep—neither group fully grasps the good or the bad they’ve done.

But here’s the thing. The goats he was talking to did grasp the message. Right after this, those goat people start to plot his death. They couldn’t bear to hear him and had to stop it.

We’ve just had a primary election, and in Illinois, when we went to vote, we had to declare who we were—donkey or elephant?

Many people are tempted to make a correlative between those voting box animals and the two animals God will separate us into. I think that’s a great danger because as humans, our evaluation of ourselves and the world is so not God’s. It would be so easy and natural for us if every elephant turns out to be a sheep and every democrat a goat—or the other way round. We live with eye logs. Thinking like this—it’s just how we are.

But it doesn’t have to be. When I get to the judgement according to this story Jesus told, I won’t get to say whether I’m a sheep or a goat. No, Jesus will decide and it will be too late for any of us to change things then. So, there’s this, this naked-hungry-homeless-stranger-thing that will say something to him about the end of all things.

But today, ah, today I can live like Jesus. I can run to it, not away. It doesn’t seem possible. Can this be real? But yes, we can follow him. I don’t know what that means for you. But I’d like to figure out what it means for me in relation to the people around me I don’t even see, but somehow, those people are Jesus. Maybe there’s no figuring it out, I mean, since all the people ask the “When did I do/not do” question; maybe it’s just for us to love Jesus without even realizing that’s what we’re doing.

My actions won’t make me a sheep. Only Jesus does that. There are so many ways that he works far above and beyond our imaginations when he performs the surgery on our souls. Suddenly we find ourselves in places we never dreamed, doing things beneath and below us, just as he did when he came to rescue us.

“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” (Col.3:12) and then the garment of love wraps itself around our animal skins, slowly and gently or sometimes painfully quick and sharp. This is the grafted garment that turns and changes our skins from human to something else. We find to our surprise not the rough hair of goats but the warm and soft wool of sheep where our rough or soft skin used to be.

So, when heaven comes, even as it will come today, we don’t have to ask Jesus the question in the story. We have only to do what the Shepherd says and go where he tells us to go—little sheep, heads down to the ground, following, following, walking, doing, caring, loving, being who the Shepherd Word is making us to be. God help us.