Saint Matthew 25: 31-46
Second Last Sunday: 17 November Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
By Jesus keeping you IN + The NAME of Jesus you are judged innocent and have no fear!
The name Jesus means savior—He Who saves, the saving One. You are saved from being cast out of His presence with the goats. You are placed into His sheepfold by Him, through your + Holy Baptisms. You are kept close to this Good Shepherd, here in time, and hereafter in eternity, by His Word of absolution and by His meal of forgiveness and strength. The Everlasting Word gives you His words from His mouth through paper and then through the preached words of His under-shepherds. These same words come also by being attached by His Holy Spirit to humble earthly elements. Grounded in water and in bread and in wine, you have the God Who is grounded forever in Flesh and Blood to be with you!
That is what the last judgment is all about. By Christ constantly turning your head to look at His Crucifix on Calvary, and then re-focusing your attention, your ears, to where that Grace is given you in time, at a place, you see the judgment already unfold. You are innocent. You are peace. You only await His joyous arrival.
The Lord tells a marvelous parable. But we don’t want to get bogged down in farming, ranching, livestock minutiae. The point is simply that at a young age, 1st century Palestinian sheep and goats are virtually indistinguishable: they look alike!
People look alike. No one can “see” from a glance at a human shape and frame whether one is a believer or a non-believer; a Christian or an heathen.
But Jesus knows. He knows who belongs to Him because He has baptized + them. He has called them by name, His own Name He has given them. He has searched you out and carried you in His bosom all the way here to the green pastures where the water flows constantly to cool, refresh, and sustain you. The sheep, YOU, are those whom God has foreordained to be here; predestinated, elected, chose before the world began, to be gifted, free—By Grace, through Faith—to be saved, to be “Jesussed” i.e. “in Jesus.”
Of course, The Lord will place you at His right, with a loving sign of Peace with His own right hand, still bearing the ugly—the truly beautiful pierced wound! Has He not had that same gesture placed upon you in your + signing at the font, in your absolution in The Mass and in Private Confession, and in your own reverential makings of the sign of the cross? Yes!
And then there is the troubling, to some, delineation of the good deeds done without remembering them. Know and understand that you don’t visit the sick and imprisoned in a perfect obedient to God kind of way. You may never have made any visits. You do not clothe, feed, and comfort the impoverished brother or sister perfectly, as you are commanded. You may never have done so in the particular way the parable recounts. And, perhaps, the Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim has done many more visible and public acts of civic charity. But the point is that neither the goat nor the sheep, the unbelieving rejector and the believing confessor has any remembrance of these various activities.
Those “in Christ” are little Christians. Those whom He has saved, Christened, redeemed, and justified; He has sanctified. You are Holy. You do Holy works because you are Holy. The fact that you can’t remember them is actually good. Don’t look to yourself or your own heart but rather keep you gaze upon The + Tree of Life that you might always eat and drink of its fruit. Jesus the Judge has Paul speak on your behalf for all you sheep: “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of The Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
That is your Judge. That is The God/Man Who can’t wait to embrace you and kiss you at the Second Coming. Fear not.
The final revealing picture, the tableau, the vision of the vindicating verdict which will be before your sheep eyes and ears, will not be that of this parable, beautiful as it is, but rather The Cross lifted high. Your courtroom will rather be the festive nuptial hall. The Lamb of God enthroned upon His bloody throne, crucified in awful glory to please His Father and to give you glory is your judgment, is your separation from the goats; IT IS FINISHED! Stand now with Saint John and Saint Mary the Blessed Virgin, at the foot of another hill, and behold The Son of Man come in the glory of His Sacrament, and all the holy angels with Him.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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