“For
thus says the Lord GOD:

I
myself will search for my sheep” Ezekiel 34: 11

a
sermon by Pastor Sonja Dalglish for Weslaco FPC

Ezekiel
34:11-16, 20-24, Psalm 100:1-5, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-40

November
20, 2011

focus:  Scripture tells us that what we do to those
who are weaker and poorer is important eternally.

function:  To encourage people to order their lives to
care for their neighbors.

Introduction

What do you know about sheep and
goats?  Even though I’m from the hill
country where sheep and goats are raised, I don’t know much.  What did Jesus and the Israelites have
against goats?

One of my brothers-in-law had a goat
once.  He took it to help eat the grass
in his grandmother’s back yard so that he wouldn’t have to mow as often.  The goat had a great appetite and did a
wonderful job of eating the grandmother’s grass, but must have gotten tired of
eating only grass all day.  The goat got
loose and walked a block or two, stepped on a mat for an automatic door, and
found a wonderful buffet of all kinds of vegetables.  Goat heaven!

The police were called.  The Humane Society was called.  The goat was dispatched to a petting
zoo.  That is what happens when a goat
does not live by society’s laws.  But,
what about when people go against God’s laws?
The results are even worse, as both passages tell us.

These two scriptures have both love and
reassurances as well as warnings.  Come
with open ears to hear the scriptures today.
They may surprise you.

The OT Passage — God’s Love for
All

In Ezekiel, the prophet is telling us
that God loves us – God loves all people, even those who seem to get the short
end of the stick in this world.  God
loves those that are poor, those that are needy, those that are lost.  This is similar to the parable that Jesus
tells about the shepherd going after the lost sheep or the woman searching
for   a lost coin.  All people are important to God.

Listen again beginning at verse 16, “I
will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured,
and I will strengthen the weak…”

No matter who we are and no matter how
happy we are most of the time, any one of us can feel as if we are unimportant
to friends or family or even to God.
When this happens to you — remember this scripture.  God loves you and will seek you out to care
for you and make sure you are in God’s fold.

There is another side to the coin,
however, a side we also need to hold onto.
Continuing where we left off, “but the fat and the strong I will
destroy. I will feed them with justice.
Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between
the fat sheep and the lean sheep. ²¹Because you pushed with flank
and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you
scattered them far and wide, ²²I will save my flock, and they shall
no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.”

Because God loves everyone, we need to
be careful of how we treat other people.
It can be easy to run roughshod over the weak and the poor.  God clearly does not want this.

The Sheep and the Goats of Matthew
25

Turning to the New Testament, Jesus is
teaching again that what we do in our lives has eternal significance.  He is separating the sheep from the
goats.  The sheep have great monetary
rewards for their owner.  The goats have
not only gotten into the supermarket and grazed, they have done it without
doing anything worthwhile with their time.
Both groups of people, the sheep and the goats did what they did without
regard for the final judgement and got very different rewards.

Combined Witness of Old and New
Testaments

We see both in Ezekiel and in Jesus
teachings that God cares for everyone and wants justice for all.  What we do matters – as individuals and as a
society.  Anyone who tells you that God
does not care about what we do – only about what we believe, has not been
reading the Bible.  Anyone who claims
that Christians and churches should not be part of any social justice movement,
have not been reading their Bible, or perhaps they have no Bible.  God loves justice and hates injustice.

It is clear that God cares what we do
individually and also about how we order our society.  We are meant to care for one another and
create a society where we can all live – where all are free to pursue life,
liberty and happiness, fulfilling their purposes in life.  We are meant to care for each other.

Do you want to work for and lean into a
society like that envisioned by the Reign of Christ?  A place where we have excellent health care,
support for those who are disabled, care for children so that none are abused,
no one goes hungry, everyone who is able to work has work that is valuable,
where no one lives in a place that damages their health or puts them in danger?

Or do we want to encourage those who
have to take all they can from everyone else?
Do we want a society where the strongest person or the one with the
biggest gun wins?  That would be a land
of no laws, no morals, a hellish place.

Thoughts Contained in Modern
Literature

There is a philosophy prevalent today
that says it is all the same.  There is
no difference between people or philosophies, no real truths, that just as all
roads led to Rome in the ancient world, so all roads lead to God and heaven.

C S Lewis wrote a book on just this issue.  It is called The
Great Divorce.
In it, a man is given a chance to visit both heaven and hell and talk to
people who end up there.  He is surprised
that people from hell are given a chance to take an excursion to heaven – but
surprisingly most do not want to stay.

The interesting thing about this story
is Lewis’ comment that when people looked back from this vantage point of their
final destination, they would see that heaven and hell began even while they
were alive.  The choices that people made
went back and back into their lives so that those who wind up in heaven see
that they were in a part of heaven all along.

That is what this story about separating
the sheep and the goats reminds me of. People make many, many choices every
day.  And the accumulation of these

choices is then seen at the end of life – as to whether they chose to heaven’s
citizens by practicing God’s love and laws on earth or whether they wanted to
turn their eyes primarily on themselves, looking out for number one.

Conclusion

Some people might be shocked once again
that Jesus is saying such a thing.  How
can you get away from the understanding of works righteousness?  What does it mean that three weeks after we
have celebrated Reformation Sunday, saying that one of the gifts of the
Reformation was the central passage from Ephesians that says that we are saved
by grace through faith?

So, is it Faith or is it Works that
saves us?  I’d say the answer is Yes.

Yes – and no.  Ultimately, it is God who saves us – and we
have been told how to live.  God
saves.  That is what the name ‘Jesus’
means — ‘God saves.’  It is Grace – but
not a Grace that says anything you do is all right.  That would be a cheap grace, as Dietrich
Bonhoeffer called it.  We receive a grace
that demands a response.  It is a Grace
that calls for justice, a grace that says that we must love our neighbor and
care for them.  And how do we do that?

In so many different ways – by praying
for each other, by taking food when someone is ill, by mowing someone’s lawn when
they cannot, by donating food to the Su Casa baskets and children’s garments to
the baby shower, by donating to our Power of Hope fund, by visiting in the
hospital, by telling our office when people are sick or need visits, by
providing Sunday School for all ages, by working for equal rights for all
people, by making sure that every person has good health care, by making sure
that no company can work people to death or take away their retirement pay, by
making sure that one person cannot get rich by stealing from others, even if it
is legal.

We move together into the future, loving
each other and showing love to the communities around us, working for a better
world, and worshiping a loving God.  We
are not perfect.  We will stumble.  We will make mistakes, but the biggest
mistake would be to think that nothing is required of us.  God requires kindness, justice and humility.

We are the sheep of God’s pasture.  When we are lost God will come looking for
us.  Let us respond in gratitude and love
for God and for others.

Revised
Common Lectionary Readings for Sunday

November
20, 2011

Christ
the King (Reign of Christ) Sunday (Year A)

First Reading
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

¹¹For
thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.
¹²As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their
scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the
places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness.
¹³I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the
countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the
mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the
land. ¹⁴I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights
of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing
land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. ¹⁵I
myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says
the Lord GOD.¹⁶I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the
strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but
the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.

²⁰Therefore,
thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and
the lean sheep. ²¹Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and
butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and
wide, ²²I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged;
and I will judge between sheep and sheep.

²³I
will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them:
he shall feed them and be their shepherd. ²⁴And I, the LORD, will be
their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have
spoken.

Psalm Psalm
100:1-5

¹   Make
a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth.

²        Worship
the LORD with gladness;

come
into his presence with singing.

³   Know
that the LORD is God.

It
is he that made us, and we are his;

we
are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

⁴   Enter
his gates with thanksgiving,

and
his courts with praise.

Give
thanks to him, bless his name.

⁵   For
the LORD is good;

his
steadfast love endures for ever,

and
his faithfulness to all generations.

Second Reading
Ephesians 1:15-23

¹⁵I
have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints,
and for this reason ¹⁶I do not cease to give thanks for you as I
remember you in my prayers. ¹⁷I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as
you come to know him, ¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart
enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are
the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what
is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the
working of his great power. ²⁰God put this power to work in Christ
when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the
heavenly places, ²¹far above all rule and authority and power and
dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in
the age to come. ²²And he has put all things under his feet and has
made him the head over all things for the church, ²³which is his
body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Gospel Matthew
25:31-46

³¹“When
the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will
sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered
before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd
separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at
his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say
to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you
gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you
visited me.’ ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was
it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something
to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed
you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw
you sick or in prison and visited you?’ ⁴⁰And the king will answer
them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who
are members of my family, you did it to me.’ ⁴¹Then he will say to
those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal
fire prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴²for I was hungry and
you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I
was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me
clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ ⁴⁴Then they
also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger
or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ ⁴⁵Then
he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the
least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ⁴⁶And these will go away
into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”