2023.11.26 | Be the Sheep
“Be the Sheep”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring, Senior Minister & Executive Director
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Reign of Christ Sunday; November 26, 2023
Matthew 25:31-46 (NRSVue)
On the face of it, “The Great Judgment” in Matthew 25 suggests that there are two kinds of people in the world: sheep and goats. The sheep take care of the vulnerable and are going to heaven. The goats do not, so they are destined to hell.
I confess, on my less charitable days, I feel drawn to this literal interpretation of Matthew 25 even though I don’t think it’s correct. I’m drawn to it because I'm sick and tired of watching vulnerable people suffer.
While I do think that God sides with the vulnerable, I think that taking a literal interpretation of The Great Judgment is wrong. It’s wrong because the larger heuristic of the New Testament teaches that we are saved by grace, not by works.
New Testament scholar Douglas R. A. Hare, who is an expert on Matthew, has helped me understand that The Great Judgment is an apocalyptic vision in which the visionary imagines “all nations” gathered on the last day, and that “all means all”—not just people who were affiliated with Israel. [Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew in Interpretation: A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1993) pp. 288-291.]
If all means all, and Matthew says it does, then the “sheep” include Roman pagans who care for the most vulnerable, and the “goats” includes anyone who doesn’t care for the vulnerable—including self-avowed followers of Christ. So the parable of The Great Judgment prompts hearers to a life of self-assessment, a witness in which “walk” is aligned with “talk,” and faith affiliation with sheep rather than goats.
II
It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out who the vulnerable are in Matthew 25. The author gives us a list: the hungry, the thirsty, foreigners, the naked, the sick, and those who are in prison.
But who are the sheep? Who, exactly, are the sheep?
Have you seen any sheep lately?
I have.
The fall before the pandemic unfolded (2019), I met a school psychologist whose name is Hait Selah, while accompanying one of our families for an IEP conversation. An IEP (Individual Educational Plan) is a legally binding document for a student with disabilities that describes their disability and the supports and accommodations offered to improve a student’s capacity to succeed in school.
Let’s just say that I’ve been to several IEPs over the years. Some have gone far better than others. The IEPs that have gone well and the occasions in which I’ve seen a student make great progress, not surprisingly, have been IEPs in which everyone at the table was aligned on the challenges and opportunities before the student and aligned on doing their part to contribute to a nurturing environment for the student.
The greatest success stories of all have unfolded when parents are engaged with their children’s school, and when school leaders are engaged--at school and in their particular school’s larger community.
Consider, for example, the way that one of our HUSD school psychologists has shown up--not only at school for an IEP--but also in the community for their students and their families. I’m thinking in particular of Hiat Saleh, whom I met about four years ago. At the time, she was supporting three school sites, including Cherryland Elementary School.
Through a variety of conversations over the first few months after we met, I learned that Hiat was born in Detroit, Michigan, and that she was the daughter of Yemeni immigrants. She was raised Muslim, which like Christianity and Judaism, is one of the Abrahamic faith traditions.
In addition to sharing a common forebear in the faith, “father Abraham,” Muslims, like Jews and Christians, share common values, such as the values of offering hospitality to foreigners, and caring for vulnerable people. When Hiat learned that Eden Church operated a food pantry and a computer cafe that served the children at one of the school sites that she supported, she was moved to help us provide tutoring on Wednesday afternoons, for the children of parents who volunteered at the food pantry.
When Hiat learned that we also ran a computer cafe on Thursday evenings during Spanish Bible study, she also rearranged her schedule so that she could help tutor students whose parents were at Bible Study.
The following spring, when the pandemic unfurled, Hiat called me and said that she was on her way over to the church with face masks, because she knew that people in our neighborhood would need N-95 face masks. She acknowledged that families who needed PPE the most should not be leaving their homes, and that they might not have money to buy masks. So she was keeping a mask for herself and entrusting Eden Church to share the rest with those who needed them the most.
So there you have it—a real live sheep in the person of Hiat Saleh—a second generation Muslim Yemeni immigrant from Detroit, Michigan, who is working as a school psychologist in the HUSD which is primarily populated by first and second generation Spanish-speakers whose religious tradition is Christian.
Josefina Garcia, who is now on the Newcomer Staff at the Parent Hub, is another sheep. I first met Josefina when she was serving as the Attendance Clerk at Fairview Elementary School. She reached out to me asking for diapers on behalf of families in her school who were needing diapers for the younger siblings of students enrolled in her school. We later worked together to obtain school supplies for Fairview.
Josefina told me that she’d heard about our backpack giveaways in August and wondered if we could provide school supplies for Fairview, too. I acknowledged how we were pretty good at procuring supplies for our Comida clients, but that we weren’t sure we could even meet the needs of the Cherryland school population much less that of another school’s students. So I suggested that “we” (OK, “I”) try to indemnify another sponsor for Fairview Elementary School.
True confessions, I made that suggestion without having any idea of who to call. As a first step, I hung up the phone, opened Google Maps on my Internet browser, and started looking for institutional partners situated within close proximity to Fairview School. I quickly landed on Gurdwara Sahib of Hayward. This is our local Sikh temple, which is located near San Felipe Park on D Street, just up the hill from All Saints Church.
I knew some of the Sikh leaders through our congregation’s participation in the Eden Area Interfaith Council. I reached out to Gurmeet Beasley, a software engineer, and a leader in the Sikh Temple.
Gurmeet responded immediately to my school supply appeal for Fairview. I introduced him to Josefina and they, in turn, introduced other leaders from their respective groups. One of the amazing things about this collaboration is that the Gurdwara Sahib not only met the needs of the families in crisis at Fairview, they also provided backpacks and school supplies for the entire elementary school.
There you have it. More sheep.
A few weeks later, a woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Shah called the church office and spoke with our office manager, and later with me. Mrs. Shah explained that she had recently retired from her position of office manager at Fairview Elementary School, and that she was a member of the Jain Society of Northern California and part of a group within her faith community that was striving to make a difference in the mindset of the pandemic.
The Jains, for the unitiated, are a religious tradition that grew out of Buddhism in the Punjab region of India in the 15th Century AD. The Jain Temple where Mrs. Shah’s community worships is located in San Jose.
Mrs. Shah explained to me that her people had learned of the high incidence of COVID-19 in the unincorporated communities here in Alameda County, and they wanted to help out. We chatted for a while about her perceived needs and the Jain Society’s capacity to address these needs. Eventually, we settled on the plan that they would provide personal hygiene kits for Eden’s Comida staff to share with families who frequented our drive-through food pantry.
I passed the plan along to Javier Orea, who was then the Director of our Food Ministries. (He’s now our Director of Operations.) Javier and his team and Mrs. Shah and her friends went to work implementing the plan. In the end, over 300 families received personal hygiene kits at the peak of the pandemic when jobs, money, and the basic necessities of life were hard to come by.
Sheep. There you have it. Three sheep. A small herd. The message of Matthew 25 is simple--be the sheep!
III
I confess, I grew up in a mono culture composed primarily of descendants from Northern European Protestants who migrated to the US in the late 19th and early 20th century. I didn’t know many Catholics growing up, much less Eastern Orthodox or Coptic Christians.
My world religions class in college was very broad, and not very deep, and it was offered a long time ago. I was in college when I first met a Jew. I was in graduate school when I first met a Muslim. It wasn’t until I worked in the UCC National Offices before I met a Buddhist. And, it wasn’t until I came to work for Eden Church that I met a Sikh, a Hindu, a Jain, or a member of the Baha'i tradition. So I have a lot to learn about the world's living religions.
But, thankfully, I’m off to a good start. I know Hiat Selah, Gurmeet Beasley, and Mrs. Shah. I know that they are the kind of people who Matthew would define as “sheep,” and I know that Jesus’ fondest hope is for us to be the sheep. And that may be all we need to know to forge world peace in our little corner of the universe. Amen.