A parable about judgment.
It seems to me that we are usually at extremes about final judgment. We get down on ourselves and wonder if we God is really going to save us, or we focus on all the stuff that keeps us from being worthy of being saved. Or, we immediately accept that we are saved (we're pretty good people, really, aren't we?) and quickly move on and dismiss what Jesus is telling us.
I also suspect that most of us are more sure about whether others we know are sheep or goats, than we are about ourselves. I would guess we tend to judge others more harshly than we hope God judges us.
We spend a lot of time trying to figure out who among the hungry, thirsty, homeless, and imprisoned are deserve our support; Jesus does not seem to have that same concern.
This story comes just before Jesus begins sharing details of his death, which gives it the power of being something like his last words.
Sheep and goats were often fed together and kept together during the day, but at night they would be separated because goats wanted the warmth of being inside and sheep wanted the freedom of being outside. sheep were more valuable. Visually, sheep were white, which could stand for righteousness and goats were black, which would stand for unrighteous, although I read somewhere once (can't find it right now) that sheep were so dirty it was hard to distinguish the sheep and the goats based on color.
Any good sheep or goat stories?
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