In this sermon on a well known, and much abused text about the so-called Great Judgment, I challenge the conventional reading of the text and invite us to listen to it’s message, stripped of the literalism that has caused too many of us to miss its message and misunderstand God, the future, and Christian ethics. The sermon was preached on November 28, 2021 and was based on Matthew 25.31-40 and a reading from Barbara Brown Taylor.

Advent is a uniquely Christian holiday season. It begins with scripture readings that announce the Second Coming of Christ. The purpose of those readings is to awaken us to the spiritual fact that Christ needs to come a second time to us personally; if we are to live a life that is robust and flourishing, Christ needs to be born in us. The language is symbolic of this truth: we are all spiritual beings, we all have a deep and intimate connection with the Divine, whether we are aware of that truth or not. The symbolism of the Second Coming of Christ is designed to help us become nativities, birth places, nurturing spaces, hosting God’s presence.

The problem is that for much of our history, we haven’t known how to handle these scripture texts symbolically, or better, we’ve failed to appreciate them poetically and artistically. Too often taking them literally has distorted their meaning and deformed us as spiritual beings.

Take our text today. Matthew paints a picture of Jesus telling a story to his disciples. It would be much better for us if we listened to Matthew’s Jesus tell us a story in the way we listened to fairy tales as a child. Those fairy tales were often frightening. Take Hansel and Gretel, for example. In many ways it’s an awful story about a starving family and their desperation. It’s about the courage and resourcefulness of a child. It’s about the dangers of trusting strangers. It’s not designed to be read literally. It is to entertain children, educate them morally, and, as Bruno Bettelheim, the psychologist tells us, provide them with the images that help them deal with their fears and live in spite of them.

If we listened to our story today in the way we listen to a fairy tale, we’d actually be able to benefit from it spiritually. But too often its imagery has been taken literally to refer to some day in the future when Jesus comes again, sits on a great throne with all the angels around him, and then separates the human "goats" from the human "sheep," condemning the goats and rewarding the sheep. It’s a terrifying scene if you focus on those images. But the images are designed only to get you to the spiritual truth the story intends to convey. The sheep, the righteous ones, are those who went about their lives compassionately tending the most basic needs of everyone around them, no matter who they are. And they did it because they simply wanted to, not because they were doing so for some reward or because they were coerced into doing so or because they were frightened into compliance. What’s more, they were astonished to find out that behind the face of each person they cared for was the face of God, inside the body of each person they tended was the presence of God.

There is an ethical focus to the story—that is, the person who wrote it long ago wanted his Christian congregation to care for those around them. But the ethical vision is driven by a theology and a spirituality.

What and where is God? Matthew's Jesus says, God is not a God who is up and out and in some distant heaven waiting to return as a great judge. God is a God who is in the person you’ll bake cookies for this holiday season. God is in the family member you weren’t thrilled to see at Thanksgiving. God is in the homeless person you walk by on your way into the grocery store.

The problem with reading this parable called the Great Judgment is that we can too easily get all tangled up in the weeds of reading the text literally, and dismissing it as factually absurd or feeling afraid of the future because the Second Coming of Christ was presented when you were younger as a scary event, and that God was to be feared, and you needed to have your life put together—sinless and righteous and obedient—if you were to go to heaven rather than hell.

Such a vision is not worthy of the ultimate reality we call “God.”

What’s more, this kind of a vision leads to fear, and fear leads to suspicion, and suspicion leads to scarcity, and scarcity leads to exclusion—all sources of the problems we're facing today in the world.

This way of envisioning God is, in fact, a misreading of the text.

The meaning of a parable of Jesus is not found in the detailed images, but in the meaning they convey. In this case, the point of the tale is the astonishment of the so-called sheep who are amazed to learn that God is not on a throne or in a faraway heaven, but in each and every person they encounter. They are amazed to learn that when they do good to the people around them, they are doing good to God.

This parable of Jesus is theological: it wants us to know that God is a God who is here now. God is not up and out and far away, but down and in among us, within us. And this parable also teaches us an earthy spirituality. It wants to say that unless we find God here and now, in the ordinary people and things and tasks of daily life, we won’t find God at all. It urges us to live incarnationally—that is, alive to the divine presence at the heart of every person, at the core of each created thing. The symbolism of the Second Coming of Christ is designed to urge us make room for God, to realize that we are each a nativity, a birthplace, a nurturing space, a host of the Divine presence.

Our second reading today, makes the truth of Advent and us as hosts and tenders of God’s presence, even more concrete for our daily lives.

Barbara Brown Taylor was an Episcopalian priest in Georgia for fifteen years. In 1996, she was named one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English-speaking world. Later, she became a professor of religion at Piedmont College and taught spirituality at Columbia Theological Seminary. She’s still a priest and lives on a working farm in rural north Georgia with her husband. She writes and speaks on an earthy spirituality, gleaning from science and other spiritual traditions to help shape a Christianity worthy of God in the twenty-first century.

In her book Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, she writes about the spiritual practices that can not only help us encounter God in everyday life, but also about the ways those practices can help us tend the divinity that’s all around us always and help us do good, to heal, to create beauty, and to work for what is just. Dr. Taylor was once asked the question: “What is saving your life right now?”

“What is saving my life now,” writes Dr. Taylor, “is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”

This is what it means to live the vision of Advent, to make room for God, to realize that we are each a nativity, a birth place, a nurturing space, a host of the Divine presence. And if we are, then so is each and every other person we meet. No one excluded. To live this way is to resist the visions of fear that lead to suspicion, and suspicion that leads to scarcity, and scarcity that leads to exclusion. To live this way is to move instead in the direction of hope, of abundance, of embrace and compassion and inclusion—toward the healing of the world.

On Thanksgiving, one of our poets, Mike Coleman, posted the poem, Gratitude by Mary Oliver. I think he posted it on social media because it spoke to him of just the kinds of things we’re talking about. Mary Oliver understood the vision of Advent. In this poem, I want you to notice the way she asks questions and then answers them. She is deeply encountering the sacredness of the world around her, testifying to the truth that unless we find God here and now, in the ordinariness of daily life, we won’t find God at all. Listen:

What did you notice?

The dew-snail;
the low-flying sparrow;
the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;
the sweet-hungry ants;
the uproar of mice in the empty house;
the tin music of the cricket’s body;
the blouse of the goldenrod.

What did you hear?

The thrush greeting the morning;
the little bluebirds in their hot box;
the salty talk of the wren,
then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

What did you admire?

The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;
the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;
the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale green wand;
at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers;
then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

What astonished you?

The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

What would you like to see again?

My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue,
her recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness,
her strong legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

What was most tender?

Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;
the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;
the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;
the tall, blank banks of sand;
the clam, clamped down.

What was most wonderful?

The sea, and its wide shoulders;
the sea and its triangles;
the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

What did you think was happening?

The green beast of the hummingbird;
the eye of the pond;
the wet face of the lily;
the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;
the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;
the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow—

so the gods shake us from our sleep.

Yesterday, I went to social media myself and gathered crowd-sourced insights for us today. I asked people, “can you briefly describe one thing you do, or try to do, that helps to keep you rooted in the present, engaged in life right now, feeling spiritually alive.”

Here are a few of the dozens of answers people offered from around the world. May they inspire you to experience God here and now, to do good, create beauty, to heal and inspire and most of all, include everyone and everything in the wonder of living.

Cindy Correia says: I try to remember that it’s the small, everyday moments that make up my life and be fully present to them. Yesterday I held my long-awaited month-old grandson as he slept, with his head nestled against my heart. He’s already growing quickly, so that exact moment won’t repeat itself.

Sherri Goss says: Being outside keeps me rooted in the now and spiritually connected. Whether I am running, walking, doing yard work or just sitting outside, I feel at peace in the present.

Phil-Rici Skei: Taking time to observe nature in the moment. Leaves blowing in the wind, a bird flying through the sky. A caterpillar crawling across the soil.

Katie Georgely: Being in nature reminds me how small I am in this world and how even the small moments (a leaf falling on water, a bird landing on a tree or clouds moving in the sky) are so beautiful/magical. It helps me become more engaged when returning to the to do lists and appreciate the little things that happen in my life amongst the chaos.

Roy Marchbanks: Spending time playing make-believe with my granddaughter.

Heather Chu: For me it’s late at night when most of the world is quiet, looking up and seeing the stars. I feel more spiritually connected when the glare and noise of the world has died down. Also, being in my garden.

It’s Advent, and, to use Mary Oliver’s words, God is trying to shake us from our sleep, to awaken us to the wonder all around us, to make room in and among us for more hope, abundance, compassion, and inclusion.