Paupers and the Prince

Sunday, Nov 20 2011

Speakers: Rev. James M. Rand

Scripture: Ezekiel 34:1-4, 11-16, Matthew 25:31-46

Today’s sermon title is meant to be reminiscent of a book by Mark Twain.  I hadn’t read it since childhood.  (To give you an idea how long ago I’m talking, my version had line drawings on some pages, which means I hadn’t quite graduated from picture books.)  To refresh my memory of the story, I went online.

I typed in the name of the book on my computer.  The first thing Google brought up was a restaurant in Vermont.  It must be good – the kind of place you arrive a princess or prince, and go home a pauper.

But about the book: the main characters are Edward and Tom – lookalike boys, with little else in common.

Edward lives in the royal court; Tom, on a street called Offal Court.  That’s O-F-F-A-L – a lightly sanitized name for animal guts.  So Tom’s neighborhood was really A-W-F-U-L.

The alley he lives on connects to Pudding Lane – Twain’s way of saying rich and poor are forever united.  People who dine on plum pudding and figgy pudding and Yorkshire pudding and bread pudding, with crystal and china and silver and linen are never far removed from those who eat scraps unfit for a cat.  Their paths inevitably cross.  The people who live in those two places ultimately face and see one another.

Or, do they?  Now the plot thickens.  Edward sneaks out of his palace and bumps into Tom.  The two become friends, and swap clothes as a lark.  One is newly embraced by power and wealth, the other left on the street to fend for himself.  And no one notices.  Or cares.  Or believes them about the switch.  No one looks below the surface to see who really is there.

That’s the Gospel story too, isn’t it?  A rich and powerful noble goes into the world incognito.  And no one has a clue – neither the sheep … nor the goats.

* *

Barbara Brown Taylor is one of the most gifted preachers in the U.S.  Regarding today’s Gospel, she says something few of us would even dare to think.  She says, “Matthew gives me a pain … He seems so sure about what is right and what is wrong – about who is blessed and who is cursed (The Preaching Life, p. 135-6).

She points out that Matthew always divides the world into two camps: Wheat and tares, good soil and bad, wise maidens with enough oil for their lamps and foolish who don’t, slaves who invest their master’s money … and others who bury the treasure.

Of the four Gospels, only Matthew draws that distinction over and over. Today, he does it again, separating the world and its inhabitants into faithful sheep and cantankerous goats.

The good thing about that is that it makes easy to choose which side to be on. Right?  All I have to do is go out every day and find a hungry person, and offer some food.  Then a thirsty soul, bringing water … a stranger, somebody naked, or sick, or in prison.  Right?

I start the day with a list and check them off one by one until I’m finished.  By nightfall, I’m good as gold, nestled snug in a blanket of lambs wool.  Right?

* *

No.  It’s not that easy.  For one thing, the goats aren’t exactly evil.  They don’t bully the weak or butt them with their horns.  They don’t commit terrible crimes or do things we church-folk call sin.  It’s not as though they play favorites, acting nicely to some people and cruel to others.  The goats’ problem isn’t that they do evil, but that they do nothing – nothing at all.

The other problem is that neither the sheep nor the goats realize in advance what separates them from each other.  It’s not like one sees Jesus in everyone, and the others don’t.  As in the Twain story, everyone is blind to what’s below the surface.  Sheep and goat alike wonder, “Lord, when did we see you …?”

**

What’s more – according to Jesus – there isn’t just one prince among dozens or hundreds or millions of paupers.  For Jesus, every pauper is a prince – especially the hungry and thirsty, and sick and prisoner, the naked and stranger.

I’ll put it another way: Ancient Greeks and Romans mythologized that the gods live far away – on Mt. Olympus.  The idea of God putting on human flesh, being born in a manger, lying on a bed of straw, soiling swaddling cloths, crying in hunger, and living among us was a scandal.

But if God becoming human in one single person was a scandal to them, how much more is it a scandal to imagine Jesus dwelling in all people – particularly in the vulnerable, needy and weak?

What Twain did a little – and Jesus does more – is to shrink the distance between sacred and common, pauper and prince.  Twain and Jesus remind us how close Pudding Lane and Offal Court are to each other.  They suggest that the best treasures and wisest wisdom are in the least likely places.  Instead of shooting us off in a rocket ship to heaven, they bring the high and holy down here.  To us.  They put an arrow on a map from the proud to the profane; and tell us, if we want to see Jesus and live in a kingdom where his justice prevails, that’s the direction we need to go – the same way our shepherd and king and Savior is already going.

Faith doesn’t take us “up there,” they inform us.  It sends us outward, “down here.”

Dudley Riggle had a good line about the earthiness of faith last week when he talked about grieving and living with hope.  He suggested that …

Neurotics are people who build castles in the air.

Psychotics are people who move in to those castles.

And psychotherapists are people who collect rent from us all.

There’s something to be said for staying grounded, and close to our neighbors.

* *

You can imagine it is hard to find something fresh in a story as familiar as today’s Gospel.  But I did see something this past week that I never noticed before.  All the sheep – and only the sheep – are on one side in the great sorting out.  And all the goats – but only goats – are on the other.

It isn’t as though some goats get to be with some sheep, or vice versa.  It’s all of one, and all of the other.  There’s a herd mentality.  Each group learns from itself.  Each group takes on particular patterns and culture and practice.

A way of life is instilled in each.  And it isn’t the same between the sheep and the goats.  Sheep learn from sheep, and goats from goats.

I wonder how that translates to the church.  My hunch is, it’s a clue about knowing which flock we run in, whose paths we follow, and which pastures we will go to … to frolic and play and graze and be with each other.

Sheep do it one way, goats another.  So the question isn’t what we do individually, but which culture we belong to.  And which culture we’ll work to pass along.

Coming to church on Sunday morning for a few hours is one way we transmit the culture of Jesus.  It’s one way we remember which “herd” we belong to.  We come in every week to be told who we are, and to practice it a while.  Then we go out to live in a particular manner, before coming back to hear and rehearse a little more.

You see, the sheep and goat thing isn’t just about me.  Or you.  It’s all of us, gathered on one side or the other of the Shepherd-King.  It’s about the core values that rub off on us and from us, telling us which herd we belong to.  Sheep do it one way, goats another.

* *

Those who are on the side of the sheep won’t always know they’re doing something for Jesus Christ, any more than the goats know they aren’t.  But at least the sheep will know that their pastures are closer to hospitals and prisons and resale clothing stores and food pantries than to palace gardens.

Our meadows aren’t in Pudding Lane, among the rich or the powerful elites, or with the shepherd-kings Ezekiel described, who use violence and intrigue for personal gain.  Our pastures are closer to Offal Court, where the lowly, ordinary, and overlooked people of the earth live – not the royal courts.

We get a little of that sense not only from Jesus but also from Twain.  The Prince and the Pauper was his first stab at historical fiction.  And he wrote it to expose injustice in the world between the haves and have-nots.

Jesus told his story of the sheep and the goats for the same reason – so we’d see the world as it really is.  But also (and this goes deeper), also he told it so we would decide which flock we belong to, and how (by working together, not alone) we can change the world from “how it is” to the way God intends it to be.

* *

What would a flock of faithful sheep look like at Wauwatosa Presbyterian?  Barbara Brown Taylor says they wouldn’t just make rules for everyone to obey.  And – get this – they wouldn’t spend time figuring out whether or not Jesus is watching, as if they could do the right thing only when he is looking, and be off the hook the rest of the day.

No.  The flock would do the thing flocks always do, banding together, traveling as one, and making time to be with each other.  They’d spend time learning from each other, getting tips from the old timers about where the good pasture is, and how to distinguish the call of the Shepherd from all other voices.

The flock would do another thing too.  They’d use a good bit of their time for the sick and the hungry, strangers and prisoners, the naked and thirsty.

They – by which I mean “we” – might not even know we do it for Jesus.  It’ll come as a total surprise.

We’ll stammer and stutter and say, “B-b-but it’s just what we do. It’s who we are. It comes naturally to us.  It’s the only way we know how!”

And he’ll say, “True.  But as you did it for the least of them, you did it for me.”

To the glory of God.