Troublesome Goats and Sheepish Sheep

Every year when this feast rolls around, I resist it a bit. I don’t experience Christ sitting on a throne, mighty and distant, so when I see Christ described this way in the Gospel, I balk a little. I’m also not fond of the way he describes separating the sheep from the goats. I mean, doesn’t he love all kinds of caprines?

What’s the difference between sheep and goats anyway? I brought that question to Google, because that’s what one does, and the answer came from a website called Treehugger: “The main difference between the two is how they forage. Sheep are grazers . . . [and] goats are browsers . . .” The website also claims differences in personality, and links to a bunch of pictures of goats in trees. “Because of a goat’s natural curiosity and independence, they can tend to get into more trouble than sheep.” This might be true. In fact, on the very day I drafted this, my neighbor’s goat got loose, and I hung out with it while another neighbor and I tried to bring it home. In just a few minutes, I came to love that adorable troublemaker. So, I don’t understand Jesus’s beef with goats, so to speak. Maybe he was just using an image his audience could understand? It remains a mystery to me.

While I don’t know many sheep or goats personally, I have had the experience of being judged and separated into groups of pass or fail. When I was in graduate school, there was a class I had to pass in order to continue in my program. It didn’t sound that hard, and I was doing well in my other classes, but it nearly did me in. The professor’s expectations were hard and fast to her but mystifyingly unclear to us students. I couldn’t discern a strategy to be successful, so I felt discouraged, anxious, and powerless. My classmates felt the same way. We worried together after every class, and more than once, one of us fully grown adults broke down crying. At one point I said, “I feel like we’re being separated into sheep and goats, and I don’t know how to be a sheep, and so I might be a goat.” They were all churcy people like me, so they caught the reference. It turns out that most of us were sheep, but we all had our share of weeping and gnashing of teeth until our sheepness was confirmed.

That experience was hard because we didn’t know the criteria for success. However, when I look back at this reading, I realize that the standards are clear. They’re the same criteria that Jesus demonstrated: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and visit the imprisoned. The expectations of Christ the King are no mystery; in fact, this reading literally repeats them four times. All along Jesus told his followers to love and care for vulnerable people, and in this reading he tells us how. Christ the King is not cold and distant. In the person of Jesus, he was as near to people as he could be. When he healed, he touched people. When he taught, he was as close as the crowd would allow, and he was often sitting at a dinner table. When he spent time with people, he visited them in their homes.

In the First Reading, we meet a similarly intimate image of God, not a king but a shepherd, and one who likely smells like the sheep.

As a shepherd tends his flock when he finds himself among his scattered sheep, so will I tend my sheep. I will rescue them from every place where they were scattered when it was cloudy and dark. I myself will pasture my sheep; I myself will give them rest, says the Lord GOD. The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal . . .

The shepherd will draw close to the neediest sheep. He will care for them, particularly the lost ones and those in need of healing. He’s not too fond of the self-sufficient sheep, but for the ones who need him, he will do whatever it takes to care for them. This shepherd is so loving that I personally think he would also bring ornery goats into his care.

It seems that Christ the King is not your average king, and he may even be a better shepherd than he is a king. He is near to all in need and tells us to move toward them as well. In fact, he tells us that we will find him when we move to the margins and encounter vulnerable people. We may even meet Christ when we ourselves feel vulnerable.

I can be kind of a troublemaker, possibly even a goat, but if I lose my way or climb a tree, Christ will still come after me. My call is show up for others too.

By Sister Leslie Keener, CDP

Sister Leslie Keener, CDP is the director of God Space, a community-building spirituality ministry in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She’s a Sister of Divine Providence with a Masters in Ministry and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction and Retreats from Creighton University. She directs retreats, meets with people for spiritual direction, and serves as the vocation director for her community. She also serves on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International. She enjoys music, dancing, and meaningful conversations.