Thirty-fourth Sunday Ordinary

Thirty-fourth Sunday Ordinary
November 20, 2005

"The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy," (Exodus 34:11-17). The last enemy to be destroyed is death... so that God may be all in all" (I Corinthians 15: 20-28). "... When the Son of Man comes... he will separate them... the sheep on his right, the goats on his left" (Matthew 25:31-46).

This week's passages offer a contrast between God's gentle nurturance of the weak and vulnerable and harshness toward the "sleek and strong". What are we to make of Jesus' repeated references to punishment for "the goats"? Sheep had a reputation for vulnerability, goats for aggressiveness and independence. We have often taken the image of the smoldering trash dump (gahenna) as a literal description of a physical place of eternal punishment. Not even the poet Dante believed that the Inferno was anything more than creative license to describe the world he lived in. We have a tradition that eternal life can be achieved simply by fear of this punishment. It does not seem to have done much over the centuries to dissuade us from all manner of personal and corporate evil. Perhaps because it is not really believable. Could it be that there is something worse than unending physical pain? There are other ways to understand the ultimate consequence of pursuing a life devoted to power and self advancement.

It is very difficult to put ourselves in the place of others consistently enough to imagine what their lives of weakness and privation must be like. In many cases this inability to empathize derives from not wanting to confront our own emptiness and powerlessness. Gahenna is not a punishment, anymore than eternal life is a reward. Both are consequences of decisions we make to accept, rather than fend off, our own diminishment The separation of sheep and goats is happening as we speak. Gahenna, like the kingdom of God, is right here where we live. What could be worse than living with alienation from ourselves, other people and God as a permanent condition which we have created for ourselves? The question is how long we want it to continue. There is a surprisingly short period of time in which to decide.

St. Paul is reflecting on our destiny when the final enemy, death, will be destroyed and God will be "all in all". I have been blessed with a continual loss of capacity for independent functioning, forcing me to embrace my own insignificance in the great sea of humanity and creation. My life is more full than I could have possibly imagined it could be when I was "independent". We are all atoms of God's life, extraordinarily important to the whole but not by ourselves. Diminishment of our sense of self-importance is the central focus of a spiritual life. The only thing that can separate us from each other and God's love is a decision not to accept that we belong with the lost, strayed and injured.