“LAMBS IN THE LAMB”
Saint Matthew 25: 31-46
2nd Last Sunday: 13 November Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
You sing along with King David the Psalm introit “Save me, O God” for you are in dire need of salvation.
You need Christ not to be awesome, powerful and magnificent, because none of that does the guilty man any good, but to be merciful. “The day is surely drawing near when God’s Son, the Anointed shall with great majesty appear as Judge of all appointed. All mirth and laughter then shall cease when flames on flames will still increase, as Scripture truly teacheth.” Nothing wrong with being joyful. Nothing wrong with laughter born of love and fellowship. But maybe you’re spending too much time smirking, guffawing, and cackling like an inane jackdaw on Satan’s alluring mammon.
Do not sin in mocking God with daily trespasses thinking He is indulgent, soft-hearted to the point of being soft-headed, or permissive as most American, indeed all modern, parents (Fathers) tend to be. The Lord is neither to be mocked or taken for granted for He is dangerous—a consuming fire. And when Christ returns at the Second Advent, He will come with fire to burn up the chaff—the Goats.
The prophetic vision that Jesus shares with His Disciples, and you, in Saint Matthew’s Gospel is a great poetic metaphor for The End of all things. Jesus will return to judge the quick and the dead. All will rise from their earthly tombs and stand before Him, before His judgment throne to have their eternal sentence pronounced from the lips of The Pierced God/Man!
There will be no lion, tiger, or bear before His throne. No stallion or other regal creature will await awards for winning. There will be only two categories that will being culled out and separated: sheep and goats.
When these two animals are born, they look virtually identical to the untrained eye; the city dweller with no animal husbandry experience will see them as the same. This too is metaphor for the invisibility of true faith before the eyes of man. Only The Lord can look into the souls of His children to see whether they fear, love, and trust, i.e. believe, in Him above all things. The trusting in God, in Jesus, is the way the Holy Ghost converts goats into sheep, and the way He covers them in their lambskins. Sheep don’t chose to be born sheep. In the animal world, an animal is what it is. God makes a tree a tree and a sheep a sheep. In the human world God made Adam in His own image and when Adam stripped this holiness away in disobedience and murderous hatred, only God could re-clothe Adam in imputed righteousness, even as only God could clothe him and his wife in animal skins…blood bringing deliverance. All men are born goats and only those that God selects for His pasture are transformed into sheep.
The sheep don’t make themselves sheep by doing anything. What they actually do is the result of being in the Shepherd’s flock.
All the things that the Lambs, the Sheep, are credited for, with “doing,” are things that they don’t remember doing. They are all examples of loving one’s neighbor…fulfilling the second table of the Law. We know that even the most sincere and genuine Christian does not satisfy the Law. No individual is going to be called a sheep by Christ because that person clothed the naked, fed the hungry, or visited the sick. And yet, you are to do all these things. Do them! I’m serious. Repent and ask for forgiveness if you aren’t doing acts of love and service like them… and then do them. But the acts as acts, the deeds as deeds, the accomplishments as accomplishments don’t make the creature a Sheep. Jesus rescues His own and carries them to His “holding pen,” His Church Militant, to await their transference at the end of time to His permanent green-grass fields, the Heavenly mansions of the Church Triumphant. By being “in” this sheepfold, this Body, This Jesus, they do what sheep do. Sheep follow their Master, are taken care of by their Shepherd, and fed and protected by their Lord. Sheep do sheep things and disciples do disciple things. Those who are loved and forgiven will love and forgive. What “The Head” does so too the “body” will do. What He has done, won, bought, you receive. By staying in, with, and under, your Lord, you are His and have His. Jesus is “THE” Lamb of God and those that abide in Him by faith are the Lambs of God.
Jesus hungered for your righteousness, for you to receive Him and His absolving love, won at the tree and distributed at the Supper. He went without nourishment at Cavalry that you might eat and drink Him. Jesus wants you to be plucked out of the anonymous mass crowd of hellish sameness and to be adopted + into a family where all the Saints know your name. Jesus became a stranger to His own people, yea, more than a stranger (whom they called a Samaritan) He became their adversary and enemy. They treated Him as a criminal and He treated them with love and forgiveness even from the Cross. He did this so that His Father would know your name as His own dearly beloved Son’s Name…for your name is engraved in Jesus’ own palms. Jesus became sick unto death with your sin that you might be well and healthy…yea, immortal. Jesus became naked for you that you would be wearing His own High Priestly Garb in your Baptism.
Inasmuch as you receive Christ by faith in His Word and in His Eucharist, you have done all His work of love to all other Saints who are your neighbors now in time and hereafter in eternity.
Sheep of The Christ’s “right hand” come inherit your kingdom of Grace and Peace.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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