Sermon, November 24, 2002
Last Pentecost -- Proper 29, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Gospel – Matthew 25:31-46 The Sheep & the Goats 

It’s pretty easy to tell the sheep from the goats, isn’t it? The sheep are the ones that are right; the goats are the ones that are wrong. It’s not that hard to pick them out, is it? The ones that see things the way I see them are sheep, of course. The ones on the other side are goats. Nothing to it.

According to election results and Gallup polls, our country has been divided for most of my adult life almost evenly, 50/50, between sheep and goats, only we call them donkeys and elephants; or should I say elephants and donkeys. For awhile the donkeys will prevail and then the elephants will win. And at each victory party the triumphant says in more or less politically correct language, "Depart from me you goats into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" and they prepare to rule in righteousness. But which one is right? And which one is wrong? It’s always pretty easy to tell. The one that see it the way I see it is right, of course.

I was visiting with an old friend a couple of weekends ago – another one of those former Mississippi priests. He’s just returned from a six-month sabbatical studying community in places of profound conflict. He visited Syria, the Gaza strip, and South Africa among other places. At a retreat in Syria at a monastery for Christian-Moslem dialogue, he listened to a Dharma talk by a Buddhist master of the Aikido school of martial arts. The master demonstrated the Aikido techniques for protecting one’s enemy. "We need our enemies," the teacher said. "They help us move into a fuller understanding of truth." Therefore, he said, we must create our victory in such a way that our adversary wins also, otherwise a defeated enemy will merely wait until a more opportune time later to return stronger to the attack, and your peace will not be everlasting.

The Buddhist teacher’s wisdom is compatible with the teachings of some of the great leaders in conflict. Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu are all leaders who fought courageously against powerful evils but always emphasized that the oppressors were as trapped by their oppressive system as their victims. Oppressors need liberation too – liberation from blindness and fear.

During part of his sabbatical, my friend went to South Africa where he visited briefly with Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and at more length with three people who had been close to Mandela. He came away with a new understanding of leadership for a community in conflict.

There is an important core belief in Africa expressed by the word ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Zulu concept which asserts that each individual’s humanity is expressed through our relationship with others. Ubuntu means that people are people only through other people. There’s a popular Zulu maxim that can be translated, "I am what I am because of you."

In Africa they believe that there are no evil people, but rather, that evil is contextual. Good people put in an immoral situation are likely to act immorally. Maybe you remember a west coast university’s experiment that placed volunteer college students into a mock-penitentiary environment. The experiment had to be aborted because the students became so abusive and violent toward one another. In that hostile environment, they went crazy. During the days of apartheid Nelson Mandela said that he believed most of the white people of South Africa were temporarily insane. That is why his fight to overthrow apartheid was also a fight to liberate white South Africans from their insanity.

My friend on his sabbatical got to visit the Robin Island prison where Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years of incarceration. Guided by one of Mandela’s fellow prisoners, he saw the single, solitary jail cells. He went to the lime quarry where every morning the black prisoners would go to chip the white gleaming marble in the tropical sunshine. The brightness of the sun on the white marble damaged their eyes, and Mandela like most of his fellows is partially blinded.

While imprisoned on Robin Island, Mandela organized the inmates into small groups. As they chipped marble, they took turns teaching one another whatever they knew – political science, biology, accounting, and so forth. Some prisoners became concerned that the white Afrikaner guards were eavesdropping on them. Good, said Mandela. They are learning also. One day they will be our colleagues and they will need to know these things we are learning. Mandela himself learned the Afrikaner language and read their poetry, history and theater. When criticized for studying the oppressors culture he responded, "I am learning the language of my future colleagues."

Nelson Mandela insisted that his people see their adversary as their future colleagues for the rebuilding of their nation. When apartheid fell and the black majority was ready to go to war and claim a total victory, Mandela unplugged the energy for violence with the words, "I have fought all my live against white domination. I will fight all my life against black domination." With Desmond Tutu he formed the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" to create a means for facing boldly the injustice of South Africa’s past within a context of forgiveness and reconciliation. Their story is one of the political miracles of the twentieth century. Sheep and goats now work together as colleagues.

In some ways it really is easy to tell the sheep from the goats. The sheep are the ones that are compassionate toward the least of these – feeding the hungry, watering the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and those in prison. The sheep need to be bold in promoting their values. Martin Luther King said from the Birmingham jail, "Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men [and women] willing to be co-workers with God." But that work needs to be done with an eye to liberating the goats as well. Those who are so blinded by their power or their fear, by their selfishness or their certainty, that they are temporarily insane. (And from time to time, even the most sheepish of us will display some goat-like behavior.)

Those of us who would like to be part of what God is doing to help reconcile the world will not help the situation simply by attacking and defeating goats. Were we to win, the goats would just go underground for a time planning and waiting for a better opportunity to renew the battle, maybe in more destructive ways than we can imagine. Instead, we must discover the values that our adversaries fight for and find a way to help them win too, but without perpetuating their injustice.

It takes great faith in God to believe that you can help educate and liberate your adversary. It requires that you take the community of humanity seriously, ubuntu – we are all necessary to each other. It helps if you do not regard others as evil, but recognize that evil systems can corrupt even the best people. And it is essential that you live in the house of love and refuse to enter the house of fear, for it is fear as much as power that causes good people to do bad things.

It takes vision like Paul’s from the great resurrection chapter 15 of first Corinthians that we read from today. "For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ." I believe in a God who will not only gather all of the scattered sheep, but will also have the wisdom and power to turn us goats into sheep as well. It is the mysterious work of the one who was willing to become the scapegoat for the liberation of all. "So all will be made alive in Christ, ...so that God may be all in all."

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