The Sheep, the Goats, and David | S4 E8

In this episode of The Extraordinary Story, the veil drops and we see the kingdom of Christ for what it is.

Angels and thrones and icons all around us.

And we ourselves, for what we are, are the sheep seeing the true worth of our neighbor or goats.

We also get to see some sweet payback when Jesus, tired of the Pharisees, trying to trap him verbally, traps them instead.

This is The Extraordinary Story, a podcast that tells the story of the life of Jesus Christ.

God himself entered the confusing maze that is our world to transform it into a path that leads to him today and always.

The Extraordinary Story is brought to you by Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

I’m Tom Hoopes.

I’m a writer in residence here at Benedictine College.

In this episode, I wanted to focus on the shortest gospel so far in The Extraordinary Story and then the longest gospel reading so far in The Extraordinary Story, but I don’t think I will.

If I did, though, this would have been the shortest.

It’s in Mark chapter 11 and it goes like this.

Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come.

That’s it.

That’s the whole thing.

Then the longest would have been the last judgment from Matthew, when the king comes and separates the sheep and the goats.

But the truth is, I’ll talk about more than just that brief passage, and I won’t read that entire long passage.

But this first brief passage about the kingdom of David is fascinating.

And it’s actually from a gospel we already read.

It is one of the accolades that is shouted out when Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem, and it says something bizarre.

It celebrates a past kingdom, David’s, but says that David’s kingdom is in the future, not the past.

So, let’s unpack that.

We talked about the quiet power of Jesus compared to other kings who conquered Jerusalem, but we left out one king who conquered Jerusalem, King David.

Jerusalem was an ancient city even by the time David got there.

It had been associated with Melchizedek and with the sight of Abraham’s would-be sacrifice of Isaac.

Joshua came close, but didn’t capture it, and it seems that a portion of the city fell to the tribe of Benjamin, according to the Book of Judges, but it took David to capture the entire city.

Remember, Alexander entered on a giant horse, Pompey brought catapults and ladders to breach its high walls, and Jesus entered on a donkey.

Well, how did David enter?

2 Samuel shares the details.

First, it says that the Jebusites were so certain David couldn’t defeat Jerusalem that they put blind and lame soldiers on the ramparts to taunt him.

The message, even severely handicapped soldiers were all they needed to keep him out.

But then it says David entered by going up the water shaft.

Archaeologists now think they know what that means.

In the 19th century, an ancient water system was discovered, including a shaft that an adult man could use to crawl up into the heart of the city.

David likely sent a trusted man to climb up through the water system of the city.

And then simply opened the doors for David’s armory to enter in.

I love the Christian overtones of that story, the blind and the lame and the waterway that saves.

But it is clear that what David did with the water shaft is what he did with Goliath.

He finds the weakness of the enemy and exploits it.

This is a great representation of the multi-talented leader David was.

He was a man of the mind, a writer.

He was also an artist with an imaginative vision.

And at the same time, he was a fearless warrior.

He has been loved for millennia now for these attributes.

He was a man after God’s own heart, according to scripture, and a righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlit streams, according to Bob Dylan.

David wasn’t perfect, but he was repentant and refused to lead his people in a direction contrary to God.

To understand Jesus’ story, it is necessary to understand David’s story and to understand what Jesus demands as a king, it is necessary to understand why the people cried out, Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come.

David’s kingdom has been in the background of The Extraordinary Story all along, but we haven’t focused on it exclusively.

In 2 Samuel 7, two chapters after conquering Jerusalem, David has gotten the Ark of God’s presence and delivered it through the hill country of Judea and into the capital city to a united kingdom in Jerusalem.

Now that he is secure in his new kingdom, his mind turns to God, and he promises that he will build a house for the Ark, a house for God.

But Nathan the prophet says the Lord has other plans.

Quote, The Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.

I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

I will be his father, and he shall be my son.

He even refers to the son receiving punishment for sins.

And in one of the Psalms attributed to David, Psalm 110, he writes out the promise of victory that accompanies this promise to David.

Quote, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.

End quote.

This forever kingdom promised to David has been there throughout the Extraordinary Story, but always with a twist.

The Gospel of Luke begins with an angel being sent to announce the coming kingdom, but he doesn’t go to a Jewish leader.

He goes to a simple woman in Nazareth, betrothed to a man of the house of David.

Nonetheless, the angel promises her Jesus will ascend to the throne of his father, David.

Mary immediately goes into the hill country of Judea, just like the Ark did.

The Gospel goes to great pains to associate these two events.

But when she announces what’s happening there, Mary starts to describe a very different reality from the conquering ways of David.

In the kingdom she announces, God scatters the proud, exalts the lowly, fills the hungry, and sends the rich empty away.

Then the king comes, but not in shining armor, but as a baby, born in David’s city.

And he’s very soon after, hailed in Jerusalem as a light to the nations, set for the rise and fall of many.

When he begins to preach his message as an adult, he says, the kingdom of God is at hand.

In a synagogue, he reads a passage about the covenant of David and says, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

He starts to describe this kingdom he is coming with, first with the Beatitudes praising the meek and the poor, and peacemakers instead of warriors.

Then he compares his kingdom to fishing nets, farms, yeast, and buried treasure, everything except military conquest.

Jesus is called son of David 18 times in the Gospels, and son of man dozens of times.

That’s a phrase popularized by the Book of Daniel to refer to the coming Messiah in the line of David.

In Daniel, he is a conquering figure who will crush the Romans.

And he is that, indeed, but in a way no one expects.

When he gives Peter the keys to his kingdom, he says he is going to Jerusalem to suffer and die.

And now, here he is.

He entered to cries of Hosanna in the highest heaven, and, as I pointed out, to this bizarre shout that bends time, blessed is the future manifestation of a thing which is long in our past.

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David.

And in the past several episodes of The Extraordinary Story, we have been hearing him describing this new kingdom, this new Eden.

But today, we meet him back in the temple courtyard teaching, and it is worth noting that this whole situation seems to have bended to his will already.

He cleansed the temple, and the temple remained cleansed.

Here, he is preaching, and they are letting him preach.

And here he has been playing great defense as the Pharisees tried to trip him up.

But today, he goes on offense and tries to trip them up.

Matthew 21 tells us, When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching and said, By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?

Jesus answered them, I will ask you a question.

And if you tell me the answer, I will also tell you, By what authority I do these things.

The baptism of John, whence was it?

From heaven or from men?

That stumps them.

They realize if they say anything unflattering about John the Baptist, the people will be angry.

They say, We do not know.

And Jesus said to them, Neither will I tell you, By what authority I do these things.

So score one for Jesus.

Jesus isn’t quite ready to offer himself up to death, so he is still answering very carefully.

But he also legitimately wants these men to realize the folly of their ways and repent.

In fact, he takes the advantage he has and presses it further.

He basically answers the question about authority when he says in Matthew 22, What do you think of the Christ?

Whose son is he?

They said to him, The son of David.

He said to him, How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I put your enemies under my feet.

If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?

And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

So Jesus is making a very clever point here.

He is quoting King David in an inspired scripture, Psalm 110, calling the son of David, who is to come, his Lord.

In Semitic culture and every other culture, for that matter, sons respect their fathers.

It doesn’t go the other direction in quite the same way, but it does here.

Jesus is telling them that he is the son of God and the Lord of David, the son of David and the son of God, and they have no answer.

Most of them won’t have it though, and we will see how that plays out in the rest of the Extraordinary Story.

But after this verbal spar with the Pharisees, Jesus makes a number of dark predictions about the future.

Today, I want to focus on the one that is the clearest indication of what kind of kingdom our son of David intends to build, and that’s the one about the sheep and the goats.

We won’t read the whole thing.

But Jesus’ other stories about the kingdom of God start out, The kingdom of heaven is like.

But in this one, he says, When the son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon a glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him.

So the veil is gone.

This is not like the kingdom.

This is the king coming in splendor.

And Jesus here is not the newborn king, who is so helpless that he has to flee from the petty tyrant Herod.

Here he is the king on his throne, before whom the nations must gather at the culmination of time.

Will he be on a literal throne?

Maybe.

Or maybe it’s an analogy like the sheep and the goats, which he’ll talk about in a moment.

And what it really means is that his majesty and universal sovereignty will be obvious to all at last.

The word all is important in his description of his coming to judge us.

All the nations means no one will escape his judgment.

And all the angels with him means that the heavens will be opened.

The veil between this world and the next will be dropped.

The gospel goes on to say, All the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate them one from the other.

As a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, he will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to the blessed, Come, you who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry, and you gave me food.

I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.

A stranger, and you welcomed me.

Naked, and you clothed me.

Ill, and you cared for me.

In prison, and you visited me.

Jesus then goes on to have a surprising dialogue with the blessed.

Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you?

Or thirsty, and give you drink?

Etc.

And the king will answer them, Truly, I say to you, As you did it to one of the least one of my brethren, you did it to me.

End quote.

Truly, these are people who did not see the world for what it was, a place filled with and surrounded by God, its people made in the image of Jesus, loved by Jesus, sought by Jesus, blessed by Jesus.

For most of us, there are maybe only two people who fully see our beauty and worth.

One is God himself.

God sees us for who we are, and he loves us, and he loves himself, and he loves us as he loves himself, giving us everything he can, as he would for a member of the Trinity.

And the only other person who possibly sees our real value is our spouse, at least at one critical juncture in our spouse’s life.

Our spouse said, You are not just worthy everything I have, I will give you that, plus everything I ever will get.

You are worth not just all I have prepared my whole life to be, but all I will ever become until death do us part.

At the last judgment, God reveals that everyone we ever meet is also worth everything we could possibly give them.

Everyone is a living icon of Christ.

Jesus has been trying to tell us for weeks what we would see when the veil drops.

Two episodes ago, Jesus said, The greatest and first commandment is to love the Lord your God with everything in you.

The second greatest commandment is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself, because every woman, child, and man you meet is made in God’s image and likeness.

Before that, we had to render under Caesar what was in his likeness, a coin, and render to God what was in God’s likeness, our bodies.

Now we learn what we are meant to render to the real king.

Mother Teresa condensed this long gospel to her gospel on five fingers, counting out with her hand, You did it to me.

Whatever you did or didn’t do for the hungry or thirsty, the stranger and the vulnerable, the sick and imprisoned, he says, you did it to me.

Of course, in the story, there are the goats who fail to follow the gospel on five fingers.

They do the opposite.

They grasp with five fingers.

I did nothing for you.

Jesus says to them, Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry and you gave me no food.

I was thirsty and you gave me no drink.

A stranger and you gave me no welcome.

Naked and you gave me no clothing.

Ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.

Ouch.

That’s harsh.

St.

Augustine explains that what we give to the poor, we give to Christ.

He imagines Jesus, the head of the mystical body of Christ, saying, Quote, If you gave anything to my members, what you gave would reach their head.

Would that you had known that my little ones were in need when I placed them on earth for you and appointed them your stewards to bring your good works into my treasury.

But you have placed nothing in their hands.

Therefore, you have found nothing in my presence.

End quote.

I developed my own little parable about this reading that I wanted to share.

I tried it out on at least one theologian, so I guess it’s okay.

It tries to make sense of the great blessing Jesus gives to those who serve the least ones without even knowing it, and the terrible fate of those who don’t.

All right, so it goes like this.

Imagine you are waiting to be interviewed for a new job, and because she’s getting sick, the secretary asks you to wait on the bench under the tree outside, where another candidate is waiting.

You do, but soon a strange child comes and starts talking to you in a too loud, overly familiar way, rudely demanding that you move from the bench.

When you don’t, he pushes you aside and stands on the bench right where you were sitting, and then climbs into the tree.

You curse out loud and keep your distance.

Then when he falls out of the tree and starts crying, again a little bit too loud, you feel he got what he deserved.

Exasperated, you head back inside to avoid the whole situation.

But as you go, you notice that the other candidate is rushing to the side of the fallen obnoxious child.

Inside you find your potential boss standing by the secretary.

Your interview is canceled, says the boss.

I’m going to hire the other candidate, the one caring for my severely autistic child, not the one who swore at him and left him lying on the sidewalk, injured.

Well, that’s the situation we’re in.

We’re waiting for that interview with the king of the world right now, and the result will be the same.

King Jesus cannot be fooled or flattered.

He sees right through you.

He isn’t impressed with your style, your expertise, or your worldview.

All of that matters only if you have served those he made in his image and likeness and surrounded you with.

The rationalizations you have worked out in your mind mean nothing to him.

He’s a king, and all that matters is, have you been a loyal subject?

Have you lived according to his kingdom?

When you refuse to serve his children, he recognizes the spirit of the devil, who rejected human worth from the beginning.

When Satan saw the image of a woman and realized that serving God meant treating human beings as his betters, he refused.

He was cast out of heaven and now spends his time trying to implicate others in his predicament to justify his ego.

When you die, Jesus won’t ask, did you feel heartfelt concern about humanity?

He will ask, what did you do for this old man, that lonely child, and this single mother?

He won’t ask, were you good to your friends and family?

He will ask, were you good to my friends and my family, the strangers I sent to receive your help?

In the end, his burning question won’t be, what does the catechism teach about mercy?

It will be, what did your actions teach about my mercy?

We call our failures sins of omission.

He calls them neglecting the Lord in his need.

We tend to feel guilty about bad things we did, but shouldn’t have done.

He’s focused on the good things we should have done, but didn’t do.

When Christ the King comes on his throne, he will judge by this new set of values.

But it’s time to work on them now.

Origin of Alexandria said, the wicked are called goats because they climb rough and rugged rocks and walk in dangerous places.

They that are saved are called sheep by reason of that mildness by which they have learnt of him who said, Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly, and because they are ready to go even to death in imitation of Christ, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter.

We have all been made for the kingdom of Christ and given the virtues we need to thrive there.

Some are better suited for the spiritual works of mercy.

Instructing, advising, consoling, comforting, admonishing the sinner, forgiving, and bearing wrongs patiently.

These are natural teachers, thoughtful friends, loving confidants, life coaches, compassionate peacemakers, offering their discomfort without complaint.

If you have those qualities, your job is to prepare wisely.

You will need to think with the mind of Christ through study and contemplation to instruct others more effectively and advise them more prudently.

If this is you, unite with Christ in his encounter with the Samaritan woman and his interactions with the rich young man and Zacchaeus.

Learn from him to console and comfort people you don’t naturally like.

Ask him to share his listening skills, his broad vision, and his deep patience.

Others are better suited for the corporeal works of mercy.

Feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, bringing drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead.

These are the organizers, the mobilizers of resources.

These are the doers of the word and not hearers only.

If this is you, then you have to unite with Mary at the visitation, or with Christ as he tours the land, healing and nourishing.

You need to be willing to serve people who don’t deserve it, accept people you deem unacceptable, and give what you feel you can’t part with.

No matter which is your gift, spiritual works of mercy or corporal works of mercy, or most likely plenty of both, you need the great soul of magnanimity and the burning heart of charity and the eyes of Christ that look past sins to see the person.

This is the way of the King on the donkey.

King David entered a city guarded by the lame and blind, but when Jesus came, the Gospel of Matthew tells us, the blind and the lame came to him at the temple and he healed them.

King David sent his man up the water shaft and through the front door.

Jesus comes to us in the waters of baptism and opens the doors of our life to his grace.

In the episodes to come, we will see how a king goes to his death with dignity and grace as we continue to tell Jesus Christ’s extraordinary story.

The Extraordinary Story is written by Tom Hoopes and produced by Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

Benedictine College is transforming culture in America through our mission of community, faith, and scholarship.

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