WHAT'S WRONG WITH GOATS ANYWAY?

My cat Billie is taking an unaccustomed interest in what I’m writing because the gospel for the last Sunday of the church’s liturgical year talks about animals.

Here she is, learning at the feet of St. Ignatius of Loyola……………………………………

Well, it’s officially the feast of “Christ the King” but that leaves me pretty cold.

It’s a feast invented by Pope Pius XI in 1925 who wanted to rally the forces of his church against communism and behind European fascists like Franco and Mussolini. The idea of the feast stuck and it was moved by Pope Paul VI in 1969 from October to the end of the Church year, where it could act as a celebration of all the achievements of Christ over His life and through His death and beyond. Not a bad idea but king??

For our spiritual health, we need to hold on to the image of God in His humble, raggedy human persona, not all dolled up in regal robes sitting in pomp on a golden throne somewhere in the sky.

The gospel is the famous story of the sheep and the goats.

Matthew draws it out. He deliberately goes through the whole list of ways in which people can suffer and need help twice. First from the point of view of those who did their bit and then from the point of view of those who didn’t do their bit. To hammer home the point.

The point being that we fail to do God’s will if we do not recognize Christ Himself in the persons and bodies of those human beings who need our practical help. i.e. Don’t waste your time fantasizing about an imaginary figure preening and strutting like a king. He’s right in front of our noses and He’s hungry, He’s homeless, He has no clothes or possessions, He’s sick, He’s been banged up.

Right. Got it. And as a follower of Christ, I will try to do my bit but I may backslide sometimes and not do as good a job as I might or ought to have done. At the end of my life, there will inevitably be things that I regret and am ashamed of.

So where does that leave me in terms of the final verse of the gospel? Can it really be true that, if you don’t score 10/10, you “go away into eternal punishment” instead of “into eternal life”?

Well I should jolly well hope not!

Let’s go back for a moment to the metaphor in the story of the sheep and the goats. Yes, a shepherd in ancient Israel would often allow his sheep and his goats to graze together but he would pen them up separately when day is done. But that doesn’t mean the goats are like “black sheep”!

What’s wrong with the poor old goats anyway? I can see Billie (billygoat – ha! ha!) pricking up her ears.

They got a rough deal in ancient folklore. Sheep and lambs were docile, soft and cuddly. Goats had HORNS and CLOVEN FEET (shock horror) and so had something of the Devil in them.

The Jewish religion had a ritual of sending a hapless goat out into the wilderness as a “scape”goat to bear the sins of the people so the people could be let off the hook.

Goats have better uses than that. They can also be loveable.

I’ll never forget one called Julie. Years ago, when my daughters (now in their forties) were young children, I used to take them on holiday to a manor house in Brittany where the owner had this old goat Julie to keep down the grass and undergrowth in his paddock. My girls eagerly volunteered to take turns to go out and re-tether her. Each time without fail, she would greet them with a gentle, friendly horn butt, whinny with pleasure and then quite decorously and unself-consciously void her bowels………….

Now I have one problem with the rather majestic and solemn gospel of Matthew’s. It’s too black and white. Good guys and bad guys. Heaven and Hell. Either/or.

If you think about it, many of the parables in Matthew are based on the idea of separation.

· The baddies = the priest and the Levite// the goody = the “good” Samaritan.

· The baddies = the foolish bridesmaids who ran out of oil//the goodies=the wise bridesmaids who didn’t

· The baddies are the weeds or tares in the field//the goodies are the wheat.

It’s a zero-sum game. You either win or you lose. So why does Matthew have this mindset? I think it must be because the early Christians in 70-80a.d. were fixated on the idea of an imminent Second Coming and needed some kind of stick (hell) and carrot (heaven) to buck their ideas up.

But come on! LIFE’S NOT LIKE THAT!

Nobody’s perfect. Nobody’s wholly rotten. Some are more nasty than others. Some are nicer than others. But we’re all a mixture of sheep and goat (groans offstage from Billie). There is some good in everybody. We don’t only have a tendency to selfishness. We also have a tendency to altruism - to showing kindness for no reward. Just notice how surprised the “righteous” were in this parable when they were praised at the Last Judgment.

“Lord, when was it that we gave you food?” In feeding the hungry etc, they had acted simply according to their natural generous instincts. Is that not a beautiful illustration of the beatitude Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God?

The truth is that the sifting of good and evil (the separation of sheep and goats or wheat and weeds if you must) has to take place WITHIN OURSELVES, INSIDE EACH HUMAN BEING.

We are “fearfully and wonderfully made”, as Psalm 139 says. We are “knit together” in our mothers’ wombs - complex characters. And the more we can do, with God’s help, to become better persons, the more God will be pleased. The parable of the sheep and the goats reminds us forcefully that what God wants is action, compassionate, merciful, loving action.

And I think we are entitled to reflect that, if God demands compassion of us in our dealings with others, then He is likely to show it towards us as well.

If you don’t believe that, if you still think some of us are going to be penned up when day is done in hell for eternity, then please go and read the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke.

Well, what did you make of that, Billie?