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Matthew 25:31-46 · The Sheep and the Goats
Surprise! Surprise!
Matthew 25:31-46
Sermon
by Michael L. Sherer
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A wealthy architect, whose self-designed rambling lake home was the envy of the entire city, was given to hosting lavish dinner parties. They were always the event of the social season, and the folks who were invited always knew they were on a special list.

One year the architect changed tactics. Instead of mailing special invitations, he simply ran an advertisement in the personals column of the Sunday classifieds in the metropolitan newspaper. "Masquerade Party!" the heading read, in type no larger - and no more eye-catching - than surrounding ads for "Help for Unwed Mothers" and "Blood Donors Needed." Underneath the heading for his party invitation, the architect explained that guests should wear something to conceal their identity or they would not get in. As usual, the event would conclude with a sumptuous banquet.

The ad concluded with a listing of the date, time and street address, but no mention was made of his name or telephone number. Nevertheless, within hours after the newspaper hit the doorsteps of subscribers’ homes, the architect began receiving phone calls. Wealthy friends and socialites began reacting to his new tactics. One of them said, "We’ve been coming to these affairs for years. And we’ll be there again, as usual. But I think this is a darned cockeyed way to set a party up. Good Lord, can you imagine what would happen if too many people read that ad? How would you feed them all? And just suppose somebody actually turned up you wouldn’t normally have invited!"

Others of his friends, however, praised him for his daring and his ingenuity. "I just think this is the cleverest, most avant garde approach to getting us to dinner!" gushed the woman who chaired the volunteer committee for the municipal art center’s annual membership drive. Her reaction was echoed by the great majority of those who phoned. And those among his friends who didn’t read the ad soon heard about it.

The night for the great event arrived. It was a mild evening and, as often was the case, the great lake house was opened to the patio and the sweeping green lawn which extended to the shore. An orchestra was playing in the sitting room. The architect’s hired servants greeted the guests and served them hors d’ouevres as they arrived.

Car after car rolled in. The house and grounds filled up with people, and the guessing games began. Was that George Murdock, president of the computer corporation, wearing that gorilla suit? And who was that behind the metal armor? Could it be James Browne, the gynecologist? The ballerina looked a lot like Cheryl Larch, the wife of Center Bank’s vice president, John Larch, who might be the one in the football player’s costume.

And, who was that hobo over there? And that one? And that other one? In fact, there were quite a few tramp types on hand. Perhaps the wealthy of the city had decided this would be their chance to dress, for once, the way they never ordinarily could. Too bad so many of them had the same idea.

There was a generous number of female cast-offs as well. Some were dressed as waitresses, others as cleaning women, and some even looked like ladies of the evening. Clever! That was what it was. Nobody had the slightest notion who any of them might be.

In the midst of everything, nobody seemed to know just where the host was. Was he here? Was he in costume? If so, which one? Some close friends of the architect began to locate one another and to guess each others’ true identity. Their conversation turned to speculation about the host and where he was and what his motives were. "I’ll bet," one of them said, "he plans to win the prize for best disguise himself!" Someone else replied, "I hate to mention this, but I think we’ve been set up. I think he’s been circulating all night, unbeknownst to any of us, listening to everything we say, so he can find out what we’re really like, and what we really think of him." Somebody else said, "Good Lord, do you think so? I’ve said all sorts of things already that I wouldn’t want him hearing."

Someone else chimed in, "Let me tell you something spooky. I was just down in the ladies’ room. That woman who came as a withered hag was in there. I was dying to see who was hidden behind the mask. You’ll never believe what happened. When she washed her hands she also washed her face - she didn’t have a mask on! That’s the way she really looks! I think she just sneaked in here for the meal."

"Good heavens!" gasped a friend. "What will the host say when he finds out! That could throw a kink into things when it comes to seating us for dinner."

"Well," another volunteered, "it serves the host right. After all, he asked for it. What sort of idiot sets up a dinner party and announces it in Sunday’s classifieds!"

At nine o-clock the butler rang a bell and gathered everyone around. It was a massive crowd that spilled out of the house, collecting on the lawn beyond the patio. When everyone was silent, a grimy, drunken looking man with filthy hair and cast-off clothes jumped on a low stone wall and announced in a loud voice, "Time to take the masks off!"

There were gasps and protests everywhere. What business had this opportunist - probably half-drunk and having wandered in to get a handout - taking over like this?

"I’ll go first," the down-and-outer said. He peeled his life-like mask away. It was the host. A hush fell over everyone - then murmurs, then laughter, then applause and shouts of congratulation. He should win the prize, there was no doubt about that.

The masks came off. The surprise lasted about three minutes. Then something became hauntingly clear. Over half the guests had not removed their masks. The host said, "Some of my old friends will not recognize a lot of those who are here tonight. These people are not used to going to fine parties. I had a terrible time convincing them to come. I promised them I’d dress just like them, and that they would fit right in. They told me, some of them, they worried that my regular friends and guests would look down at them and ridicule them. I assured them those were not the kinds of friends I had. Of course, I wasn’t positive. In fact, I wanted to find out. You see, my parties had begun to get a little boring. Conversation was beginning to go stale. Besides, I got involved with some of these poor folk not long ago. One of our city’s tenements was due to be torn down. The residents would not have had a place to live. The city engineer asked me to work with him to see if we could remedy the structure, shore it up, and save it, rather than demolish it. I volunteered my services without a fee. And as we worked on the project, I discovered that there is a whole world of forgotten people in our city. I began to make good friends with some of them.

"Then I realized that some of you, my good friends, probably would benefit from meeting them as well. That’s why I had all of you come to the same dinner party. Now, I realize some of you may not be quite ready to accept some of these folks. In fact, I’ve circulated among all of you all night. I’ve heard the things you’ve said, and if you can’t identify with these newcomers, please feel free to leave. I won’t make you uncomfortable by making you sit down with them. But if you want to get to know them better and to learn some ways to become better friends with them and help them after they go home tonight, then you can stay for dinner. You decide."

With that, the meal was served. The dirty, poor folk who had not come wearing masks sat down first. Then the friends of the host were invited to find seats. But while some of them did, a lot of them simply slipped out the door and drove away. But those who stayed enjoyed a sumptuous banquet.

1. God Turns up in the Strangest Places

What a lucky accident that we are good friends of the architect of all creation. Or to be more accurate, what stupendous good fortune to be on his guest list for banquets. It’s an honor and high privilege to be included in his company. He didn’t have to include us. But he speaks a cosmic "Yes!" to us and ratifies it time and time again.

Still, he is not content to behave like an ordinary architect. He gets involved with the people who inhabit what he designs - all sorts of people with all sorts of costumes and smells and habits and misfortunes and unmet needs. And the striking thing is that the architect disguises himself and moves about among the poorest and the most vulnerable of all of them. It serves his purposes to do so. In that way he can identify with them and what their needs are. He can suffer with them, as he did supremely for the planet, as we all know.

But such behavior on the part of the architect, his tendency to turn up in such strange and unexpected places, means that we are set in jeopardy, particularly if we let the lines solidify between ourselves and those unlike us.

An issue (February, 1982) of U.S. Catholic, a publication of the Claretian Fathers centered in Chicago, carries a lively article, appended with pages and pages of quotes from Christians who were interviewed, concerning the effect of ministry and gospel living when congregations are defined sharply by ethnic barriers. Does a 90% Polish-background congregation find it more difficult to embrace and love Christians (and castoff non-Christians) who are not Polish? Can an Irish-background parish feel and show compassion for people not from Irish stock? Is the "church catholic" less catholic (universal-minded) for the members of a congregation where German traditions have held sway?

The concensus among those who responded to the question was heavily in favor of escaping "ethnic ghetto mentality" although the feelings were by no means unanimous. It seemed clear, however, that those who thought about it were aware of the need to expand the boundaries of the church’s ministry by lowering the walls that creep up, sometimes accidentally and imperceptibly.

The architect perceived that his guest list had become too narrowly defined. Too many of the people on the other side of the invisible wall found it impossible to attend his dinners. So he stretched the boundaries.

It can be a frightening thing to redefine your borders. You never can tell exactly what will happen, or with whom you’ll be cast into the same net. But the pattern has been set. The architect, who hosts the dinners, has gone first. He’s pushed the borders so far out that anybody who is hungry, hurting, or needing friendship, healing, or comfort is invited to participate. It’s not as though he doesn’t give us warning. We could have guessed it would be his style. He’s had a reputation for such open-handedness from the beginning.

But it can catch us by surprise when we get comfortable in the narrowly-defined groups which feel the best to us. It can shock us and completely fool us when the architect puts on a mask and dirty clothes and moves among the least-provided-for among us, living out in powerful symbolism what he has in mind for us as well.

2. We Should Turn up in the Same Strange Places

That’s our call, then. We are urged to fellowship with those with whom the architect has shared his invitation. The text in Matthew calls them "the least." It also calls them the host’s relatives, "My brothers ... my sisters."

None of us who breathe the pure air of the gospel and enjoy its healing power can debate the issue. We know the architect is right. Intellectually we don’t have any difficulty with it. Perhaps we have no problems with it emotionally either. But that might be saying more to our credit than we have a right. It may well be a terrible emotional hurdle for us to leap across, to push our boundaries out to match those of the architect.

It’s not hard to understand how and why it happens. All God’s children have a ghetto mentality, one way or another. The upper-crust of any society is as much ghetto minded - maybe more severely - as any other segment. The natural tendency is toward exclusivism. Everybody wants to find a warm niche, a smooth rut, and a comfortable slot where things fit well and don’t need to be unlearned and relearned. We teach ourselves complex habitual patterns so that we don’t have to keep relearning routine things. We memorize ways to drive to work so that we don’t have to take maps or study street signs. We learn it all by routine, and it forms a pleasant rut.

We organize our family life - the way we do things with our spouse and children, how and when and where we eat, and what rooms get used in what ways, and where the dirty clothes belong, and dozens of other details, so that we can manage things without pain and surprise. It makes life easier.

We organize our worship life in the same way. Ordinary patterns come to be preferred. We are open-minded enough to tolerate experimentation and change in the liturgy, but for the most part we want to be able to memorize the liturgy so that we can sing it with the book shut. To change the words of the Lord’s Prayer or a favorite hymn is unsettling, because we have to start over with something we already went to the trouble of learning a different and, by now, more comfortable way.

So it comes as no surprise to us that we are guilty, constantly, of drawing boundaries around ourselves and our neighborhood and our congregation and our values, so that when those, who have slipped into poverty or crime or hopelessness, come into view, we find they don’t fit our convenient life-style. It’s not that we hate such people. We just don’t want to be right next door to them, and, God forbid, we don’t want them beside us in the pew.

In the first parish I served, it was sometimes customary for men who drove milk trucks for the creamery to come directly to church from the truck route. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t get to church at all that week. Many a time one of them would slip in and seat himself in a back pew. You could always tell when these folks arrived because the aroma of the barnyard permeated their clothes. Try as everybody might - and everybody there was from a farm, or had once lived on one - it was difficult not to shift uncomfortably or, if seated nearby, not to slide the opposite direction to put as much space as possible between oneself and the latecomer. Even at the door, when shaking the pastor’s hand, these worshipers exuded an "alien smell" not really welcome in the church building.

But it was always bracing, in the best way possible, to have such earthy reminders of the wideness of the net which God casts and the danger we all run of drawing boundaries too tightly, thus excluding some of those the architect has planned his banquet for.

Perhaps we need to learn to simply say that we are citizens of the planet. If we’re to create a ghetto, let it be as broad as the entire human family. Let the eyes we see through focus on the people we encounter - anywhere and everywhere - in such a way that it comes naturally to us to say, "There’s one of us. There’s one of those who’s coming to the banquet that I’m headed for. There’s someone I’m related to."

Many of us find a cultic sort of kinship, reading news articles or listening to reports on television, when we hear an item about someone who attended the same school as did we, who lived in the same home town as we, who shares the same church denominational background as we, who has some characteristic which gives him commonality with us.

What the Architect is calling us to do is to learn, naturally and second-naturedly, to do the same with every human being we encounter. Let us learn to say of every person we experience, "God says ‘Yes!’ to him or her. And so do I."

If we do any less, we run a good chance of discovering the banquet hall is full, and we have given up our invitation.

It need not be so. When life is over and when time comes to an end - just as the church year has for us today - the masquerade will stop. The masks will all come off. When the shouts go up, "Surprise! Surprise!" there is no need for those who know and love and pattern after the great architect to be surprised at all.

CSS Publishing Company, And God Said...Yes!, by Michael L. Sherer