Feast of Christ the King
Nov 21 & 22, 2020
What is your spirit animal? Maybe you are familiar with the concept of ‘spirit animals.’ It originally came from the Lakota tradition of spiritual quests in which an animal spirit guide accompanies a teenaged seeker in a coming-of-age ritual. It has entered into America pop culture. People choose and animal they identify with or whose qualities they really like. My spirit animal is a grizzly bear. The animal for my four-year-old son EJ is a tyrannosaurus rex.
Many people choose a fierce animal—one that might be at home as the name of an NFL team. A big cat—Lions, Panthers, Bengal Tigers, Jaguars. Or a bird of prey—Falcons, Eagles, Seahawks. You get the idea.
Jesus has a spirit animal, too. Can you guess what it is? It is one that we heard in the Gospel today. And it’s one of the four animals that are depicted in the artwork of this Church. Do you see it?
That’s right—the lamb. You see it above me, held by St. Agnes. Above her is a dove, the Holy Spirit’s spirit animal. Another animal depicted in our church is the eagle on the standard of the Roman soldier on our stations of the cross, which is seen twice. The eagle is the spirit animal of Rome, much like the United States.
The fourth animal is a secret. I will reveal it in three weeks when I preach again on the Third Sunday of Advent.
We heard in the Gospel and First Reading that God identifies all of us collectively as his sheep. Now Americans tend to have negative connotations associated with sheep. It would be an insult to tell another person, “you are such a sheep.” It suggests that the person is stupid, weak, and a blind follower of others, unable to think for themselves.
This is not how the people of the Ancient Mediterranean thought about the animal. Sheep, and the other animal from today’s reading, goats, were beloved and important animals. Many families had a “house goat” that slept with the family in their home. Sheep and lambs are mentioned over 300 times in the Old Testament, the most of any animal. Jews had a rich vocabulary about types of sheep that were often applied to people. A beloved young girl might be called “tabitha” the name for a young ewe. A powerful king would be called “a ram” which was a mighty compliment.
There was an intense bond between animals and people—Jews and sheep and goats—that we might connect with our own love of dogs and cats.
So why does Jesus single out the sheep to be our spirit animal and the goat as a kind of antithesis—the anti-spirit animal? It isn’t because goats have terrifying eyeballs, though they do. There are a few suggestions that I came across, but I would like to focus on one. It has to do with competition. Here is what one goatherd said about her animals,
“Competition" is the name of the game in the goat world. Beginning at birth, kids [that is baby goats] fight their siblings … for their mother's milk. When kids begin to eat solids, they challenge other kids for food. Moms shove other moms for the best location at the feed trough or for the most desirable forage/browse, deferring only to the larger aggressive males. Adult males fight for everything important in their lives -- feed, shelter, and breeding rights. In the world of goats, if something isn't worth fighting for, it isn't worth having. The strong survive and flourish; the weak subsist and eventually die.”[1]
American culture highly prizes individualism and competition. While the goat may not be a candidate to replace the bald eagle any time soon, the sports acronym G.O.A.T – greatest of all time—is definitely an aspiration for so many of us. Who doesn’t like winning? Who doesn’t like accolades? At the end of every school year, my institution gives out awards to teachers. Just before they are announced, I find my heart beating faster and adrenaline in my system. Am I going to win something this year? This is not the type of reward that any of us called to. It is not what we do as individuals. Rather it is our relationship with Him, the Good Shepherd and King, and what we do for each other—the other sheep.
You see, sheep are cooperative animals who are part of a flock. They move together and defend each other from predators. They recognize each other’s faces and are attached to and even emotional about the other members of their herd. Hence, you can see in Jesus’ discourse the way that his chosen lambs have taken care of each other through the works of mercy: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, shelter to the homeless, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead.
Christ gives us this very concrete list of 7 actions to take, 7 works of mercy. These are what He will judge us on. We are not called to simply be kind to people or care about the poor in the abstract, but in these very specific ways. Bishop Robert Barron suggested reflecting every night on how we fulfilled or didn’t fulfill the works of mercy that day.
Now, we are in the midst of a pandemic, and doing the works of mercy can be very challenging. I have a student at Mercy who is passionate about prison reform. For a service project her senior year, she has tried very hard to find ways to serve the inmate population this fall. It has almost impossible given the dangers of Covid.
I would challenge you then, as we enter into Thanksgiving this week, to find tangible ways to serve each other, and to put aside our goatishness, particularly towards those closest to us. Let us follow the example of the Lamb of God, who is also the Good Shepherd and pray that when the he in his glory comes to separate the goats from the sheep we might hear him say to us, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Amen
Christ dividing the sheep from the goats. Mosaic. Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, 6th century.
[1]Suzanne W. Gasparotto, “Behavior and Mating Habits of Goats.” Updated 10-5-10 http://www.tennesseemeatgoats.com/articles2/behavior.html?vm=r
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