RoboPreacher

or the flame lit by a spark A Sermon on the   Parable of the Sheep and the Goats : Here at the end of his teaching, Jesus turns to a topic we’re all interested in; The End ; the Final J udgement… Our fascination with The End shows up everywhere .   From the popularity of doomsday bunkers, to survival shows, zombie movies, and even the mega-popular marvel films, where the fate of the world hangs in the balance; we’re always reckoning with The End . Aren’t we? The wild thing, though, is that although we’re always working out our fascination with The End ; we always seem to come to the same conclusion! Whether it is through strength , like in the super-hero films. Tenacity , in zombie movies. Resourcefulness, in survival shows. Or hoarding, in doomsday-bunkers; the conclusion we come to over and over about The End is that you must BE prepared for it! It’s no great surprise this message gets such mileage. After all, being prepared is how...

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew! Well; there you have it … You have to admit, though, it is a little ironic… I mean here we are, going through all the trouble of showing up when we could be anywhere else; hoping maybe God would show up too, hoping we would see God today. Only to hear that God isn’t here. God has already beat us to the door, apparently. God is outside these walls; albeit amongst those folks who are hardest to be around, maybe even the ones we try to avoid. Isn’t that always how it goes, though ??? But; there you have it anyway … If nothing else at least this parable is straight-forward. When we care for ‘the least of these,’ we take care of Jesus himself; and conversely when we fail to take care of the least of these we ignore the Son of God. Yes, although it is only a small consolation at least this parable is easy to understand; hard to do , but easy to understand…  I suppose it goes without saying, though, that u...