Dear Friends,
Would you be surprised if I told you that sometimes it’s hard to tell sheep and goats apart? If your images of each of these are cartoonish or even just out of your local petting zoo, then this may seem a little silly. Just the other day, though, my wife showed me a picture of an animal that sure looked like a goat… and then informed me that it was a sheep.
To be fair, she knew this picture was going to trip me up. The animal seemed to structurally resemble a goat and was groomed in a way that resembled one, but the shape and position of the tail was (apparently) the giveaway that it was a sheep. Of course, there are also many types of sheep and goats, but this is a generalizable element. I will, however, undoubtedly confuse them again.
It’s not just that in the right picture it’s easy to mix up sheep and goats. In smaller numbers, when both animals have had their horns removed, they’re also safe to raise together. Pasturing sheep and goats together is often considered sound pasture management (they prefer to eat different types of plants) and both animals are rather sociable, making them fine compatriots. As with any living arrangement, there are potential concerns (how was your relationship with your first college roommate?), but with smart management, mixing sheep and goat together can work well. So, while just about all this information is news to me (shoutout to this article from a homesteading website for these insights on shared pasturing), it seems like intermingling sheep and goats is well-established – a bit of context that makes this week’s Gospel make more sense.
Goats & Sheep, Wheat & Weeds
When speaking about judgment, Jesus often talks about the intermixing of different things. There is the Parable of the Weeds, in which the weeds are allowed to grow alongside the wheat before being gathered and burned. The Parable of the Sower turns to the many different types of ground that all exist side by side to differentiate between some kind of ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ Even the Parable of the Foolish Bridesmaids that we heard so recently sets a scene in which the wise and foolish bridesmaids are waiting together – but only some will get to leave with the bridegroom as reward for their preparedness.
This week, as we mark Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday in the season of Pentecost, before we begin the new Liturgical Year with Advent, Jesus says that the second coming, the day of judgment, will be marked by the sorting of sheep and goats. The sheep will be saved, the goats cast into darkness. But the need to sort them only makes sense if we know that they can live happily together.
There’s nothing wrong with a sheep or goats, but these friendly herbivores are doing heavy lifting in this story, one of the few stories that seem to reflect popular notions of hell. As Jesus puts it here, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” – but what does that mean?
These details about hell are tied up in the worst case questions, the stuff most of us don’t want to grapple with, that we hope children won’t ask us about. But this is the secret about those questions: they’re the ones we need to spend time with for ourselves, rather than jumping ahead to worry about how we’ll explain this passage to children. And so, I wonder…
What do you think Jesus means when he speaks about an eternal fire prepared for the devil?
Do you think it’s real?
What do we mean by real?
And what does the “realness” of this place mean when we profess that Jesus descends to the dead in the words of the Creed?
Week in an week out we profess a belief in this place of damnation, but we do it without, in many cases, really contending with the unknowability of that. And maybe that’s the most important part, that our absolute inability to understand many of our core beliefs is part of how Christ makes all things new. Our words and concepts slip from our grasp.
A New Beginning
This Sunday is an ending, but remember that it is also leading us to a beginning. That is the lesson of the Church Year, the thing the great big capital C Church knows about our lives – that endings and beginnings are tied together. It makes it feel like the biggest endings, eternal endings, even the “bad” or scary ones, might mean something else is still around the corner.
The King whose coming we celebrate on Christ the King Sunday was “not that kind of King” and the stories of our faith are not the same as other stories that we hear. Nothing is as it seems. Like our minds turning over what we see, reversing the work of biology, we are untangling the mystery together.
Christ the King Sunday often gets short shrift because of its proximity to Thanksgiving her in the United States, as well as because it’s the Sunday immediately before Advent and all the festivities (and work!) that come with that. But I want to encourage you to embrace this Other New Year’s Eve, of sorts. You may even find there are some traditions that can help ground your family as you prepare to enter Advent.
Wear Gold! Though Christ the King is technically the last Sunday in Ordinary Time, it’s a special day when church hangings and vestments are usually white and gold. Get a little fancy this Sunday or, in keeping with the unexpectedness of the King who is coming, choose some unusual gold & white accoutrements (my mind immediately went to the New Orleans’ Saints jersey, please don’t ask me why). The season is about to change, but make sure to enjoy these last moments.
Buy A New Calendar: I confess, my household already has at least two wall calendars for 2024, but if you haven’t picked one up yet, consider making this an annual Christ the King Sunday post-church tradition. Choose a calendar for the family or let the kids each pick their own special calendars for the coming year, and prepare them using a liturgical calendar. You might outline each Sunday with the appropriate color, add in important feast days, and take other steps to align the regular calendar with the church’s calendar.
Set An Intention: One of my favorite recommendations from Traci Smith’s Faithful Families books is her note that not only are you not meant to use all of the things in her books, you should find other ways of pulling back and staying focused, particularly during Advent and Christmas. Rather than waiting until the start of Advent to set some limits on what you’'ll do, prioritize your Advent practices now and decide what really matters.
Prepare A Sacred Space: I confess, my office altar isn’t looking great after all these many weeks. It held on for a while, but eventually succumbed to my office use needs. This is a good time to reflect on what may have made it to your altar space in the previous months, to return things to where they belong, and to prepare to start again as you reset for Advent the next week. What memories are now mixed in with your typical altar elements and what do you hope to do with this space in the coming weeks and months?
We are at the end of this particular curve of the spiral. We are entering a new revolution. Be present to it. In our end is our beginning. In our beginning is our end.
Peace,
Bird