Here's the rest of what I found:
- It looks like a parable, but it's not. It's an apocolyptic image tht puts the capstone on the previous six parables
- It's not about saving our own souls, not about "becoming a sheep." It's about doing justice and bringing peace because that's where God is.
- It's not about separating the sheep from the goats. That's not our job, it's God's. Any judgement we make is provisional.
In the liturgical calendar we celebrate Christ the King Sunday this weekend. This passage is about Christ's reign where we are the humble subjects. We best serve when we serve where Christ is, in the lives of the poor, neglected, and down-trodden. As people, we will behave like both sheep and goats, that's the nature of sin. But the judge of which we are is the Lord, not us.
Don't celebrate being a sheep, that's not what the sheep do.
I like this. Curiously, I found my way to the same understanding, all by my uneducated self. What I thought was, we are Not God. I get mixed up about that sometimes. Anyway, nice work.
ReplyDeletePS: Dodgeball? Vince Flynn is so sleazy! (I suppose that is his charm.)
; - )
Neither trying to paint myself as an "expert" nor you as "uneducated," I think "experts" have an ability to overcomplicate things, and that's certainly what I was doing looking at this passage.
ReplyDeleteIn "Palm Sunday" Vonnegut said that anyone who cannot say what they do so a second grader can understand it is a charlatan. I need to remember that when I try to make anything too complicated.
I agree Vince is sleazy--and that was surely his appeal in "Wedding Crashers."