IN DEFENSE OF GOATS
Sermon by Paul R. Powell
St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, New Orleans
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Texts: Ezekiel 34:11-16, Matthew 25: 31-46
You received the sermon on sheep I preached a couple of weeks ago so
well that I thought it was only fair to preach one about goats. And, of
course, the temptation was just too great not to look for a goat joke or two.
It seems there was this young couple who invited their rather elderly
pastor for Sunday dinner. While they were in the kitchen preparing the
meal, the pastor asked their son what they were having. "Goat," the little
boy replied. "Goat?” the pastor asks. “Are you sure about that?" "Yep,"
says the little boy. "I heard Daddy say to Momma, “Today is just as good
as any to have that old goat for dinner."
There’s more—I said “or two.” One night a burglar is trying to break into a
house. He's sneaking across the lawn when he hears a voice - "Jesus is
watching you!" Startled, he turns around, but doesn't see anybody. So he
starts creeping across the lawn again. "Jesus is watching you!" he hears
again. So now the burglar is really looking around, and he sees a goat
staked to a chain by the side of the house. So he says to the goat, "Did you
say that?" The goat answers "Yes I did." So the burglar asks, "What's your
name?" The goat says "Clarence." The burglar says, "What kind of stupid
idiot would name his goat Clarence?" The goat laughs and says, "The same
stupid idiot that named his Rottweiler 'Jesus'."
I don’t know whether you would consider yourself a sheep or a goat. I’ll
leave it to you as to which category you fall into! We have come to
consider sheep as good and goats as bad, and perhaps that blinds us to
some lessons we might learn from goats. There is always value in learning
what not to do or how not to be, and in that regard goats are splendid
examples. And besides, there are bad sheep and good goats. They all
wander away at times, whether unintentionally or willfully. But what
might we learn from goats?
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Goats are Hard-Headed
First of all, goats are head-headed. Goats are well known for butting
heads. They will stand on their hind legs and come down and butt one
another. You’d think they’d knock each other out, but they don't! Know
why? It’s because they are so hard-headed. They will butt heads with
almost anything or anyone, and you never ever want to turn your back on
a goat. Butting heads seems to be what they live for. Now at this point
you might expect that I would give certain examples from the members
and activities of this church, but I know better than to go there! All I dare
say is that there is a very, very thin line between being hard-headed or
being determined. In fact being hard-headed isn’t such a bad thing as long
as it’s coupled with being soft-hearted.
Goats Eat the Wrong Things
Not only are goats hard-headed, they eat the wrong things. Goats are
supposed to eat weeds and tall grass, but don’t put one in your yard
thinking they will do anything of the sort. They will eat the flowers, the
shrubs, small trees, gnaw on the siding of the house and very nearly starve
to death before eating the weeds.
There are people outside and inside the church who are like that. They
aren’t satisfied with the simple and sincere Word of God. They’ll go after
any sort of teaching and follow any sort of spiritual guru as long as it
doesn’t originate with the church, particularly if it’s a traditional
denominational one, like ours. Or, they will blindly follow the teachings of
their own denomination, refusing to see any value in the teachings of
another. If it did not come from Rome, if it did not come from Salt Lake
City, if it did not come from Nashville … well you get the picture. Even
folks within the church act like that sometimes. They refuse to feed on
anything other than their pet doctrines. They are never content with what
is set before them, always wishing for what they don’t have instead of
appreciating what they do have. They refuse to eat anything other than
positive pop psychology; or doom and gloom; or they simply are against
any and everything that the church leadership wants to do! Oh my! Looks
like I’ve crossed over into meddling. My apologies, but I’ll be doing a lot
of that before this sermon is over!
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Goats Won’t Stay Inside the Fence
And another thing, goats just won’t stay inside the fence. They keep you
busy repairing the fence and they keep you busy all hours of the day and
night trying to get them back inside the fence. Some church folks are like
that. You just can’t keep them in the church. They'll come a while then
they get mad and go somewhere else. They leave because they’re mad at
the preacher. They leave because they don’t like the Sunday School
teachers or the materials they use or the music or the way others dress or
they leave because they’re mad at the whole church. The pastor spends all
of his time trying to round them up again and get them back inside the
fence. None of us are like that, of course!
Goats won’t just escape by jumping the fence or pushing their way through
a weak spot in the fence—if there’s not a hole in the fence, they’ll make
one! When you go out to get one of these escapees, he’ll just look at you.
He’ll just stare at you while you talk softly to him. You’re trying to be real
gentle and coax him back into the church--excuse me, I mean into the goat
pen … but the goat will stand and stare at you, then, he will either come at
you to butt you or else he will run like crazy! When you finally catch them,
they will stand and stare at you like they don’t know what you’re talking
about. Then either they get mad and throw a fit or they run away.
We’ve all been like goats at times. Some mild transgression, some missed
opportunity, some blind eye to the suffering of others, some deaf ear to the
cries of needy children. To be sure, we condemn crime and greed, abuse
and oppression, but we do little to stop them -- at home or abroad. We are
quick to condemn rogue states, dictatorships, oligarchies, and terrorists but
we do little to demand that our government help feed the hungry masses
around the world, welcome the strangers in our own land, expand access
to health care, and make our prisons more humane.
In his final sermon before his crucifixion, Jesus warns us that when the Son
of Man comes back to earth, he will separate the sheep from the goats
based on their acceptance or rejection of him. This does not mean that God
does not love both the sheep and the goats. It’s all a matter of following
like sheep who love their shepherd, or having to be rounded up after
trying so desperately to run away. But the shepherd is their shepherd
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nonetheless and only wants to keep them within the circle of his love and
protection. The prospect of standing before the judgment seat of God
would be terrifying if it were not for our faith that our judge is also our
redeemer, the Good Shepherd. In Christ, God has given us assurance of
both mercy and judgment beyond death. It sometimes surprises me how
few Christians have taken to heart the words given to us by John in the
next few verses after the famous and oft-quoted John 3:16. But John is very
clear in pointing out that those who believe in Christ are not condemned or
“judged” as some translations put it, while those who do not believe are
already condemned. “The triumphant Judge who stands at the end is none
other than the dying Jesus on the cross who has already taken the
judgment of God upon himself for the sake of the whole world” as the late
theologian Shirley Guthrie puts it.
Let us take note of the criteria Jesus will use as he establishes divine rule.
The “sheep” Jesus will draw to him will be those who have fed the hungry,
given water to the thirsty, welcomed the immigrants, clothed the needy,
provided medical care to the sick, and befriended the prisoners. And I
might add, the ones who have come to church week in and week out even
when they were too sick or too tired or too depressed—the ones who have
continued to give their tithes and offerings whether they liked the preacher
or not—the ones who have volunteered their time year after year even
though there were others who could have served but didn’t have the
time—or the ones who fed on the Word placed before them and were
content to just be in the presence of God and God’s people. The “goats”
that Jesus separates from the sheep are not so much his doing but theirs
because they have refused to accept the love the Good Shepherd provides.
But we don’t have to be that kind of goat, we can be good goats. Stephanie
gave me a wonderful little book called Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God.
Its authors say so beautifully what I have tried to say about sheep and
goats. We get so bogged down in thinking about ourselves as either good
sheep or bad goats that we miss the point of these parables and stories that
Jesus gave us. We fail to see that they are about what the Good Shepherd
is like, who our God really is. We know all too well what we are like! We
think it’s all about being good or bad about going to heaven or hell, which
are only symbols, symbols of inner realities, not specific places. “All of us
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who have felt alienated, unloved, overwhelmed by shame or helplessly
caught in an addiction know what it’s like to be in hell. And all of us who
have been welcomed home, who have seen goodness reflected in the
affirming eyes of another or who have been loved into recovery know what
it’s like to be in heaven. We all have within us … sheep and goats. The
kingdom of God is within us, and we’re all good goats.”
Maybe a better analogy for contemporary Christians would be to compare
us to dogs and cats. Call a dog and he will gladly come running happy just
to be by your side. But unless a cat hears the pop of a can or the rattle of a
box of dry food, he will just ignore you and continue his nap. You might
own a dog, but a cat owns you. But you see, whether you are a shepherd
or a pet owner, your love for your animals is not based on what kind of
behavior they exhibit but on your need to be loved in return. God created
us because he wanted fellowship with other beings like himself, or at least
somewhat so, and in order to have that kind of special relationship he had
to create us with the ability to either love him back or not. So, we can
either be sheep or goats, dogs or cats and God will love us just the same.
But we really only become what God created us to be when we love God in
return, when we listen for his voice, when we follow his way. It’s not so
much that we seek God, but that God seeks us. We love God because God
first loved us.
John 10:27 reminds us: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and
they follow me …" Or as Luke 12:32 puts it: “Fear not, little flock; for it is
your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Today as we come to the Lord’s table, we come as goats and leave as sheep
because Christ has redeemed us. We are not judged and we are not
worthy: Christ has been judged for us, Christ has made us worthy through
his sacrifice and that’s a cause for celebration. So, come, goats and sheep,
dogs and cats alike and feed on God’s grace and be nourished by his
sacrificial love. AMEN.
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