It was 40 years ago this week (on July 28, 1982) that a talented Christian musician by the name of Keith Green died at the age of 28 in a tragic airplane crash.**
I knew little about Green then, but I have fond memories of him because of the first song of his that I heard.
That memorable song was “The Sheep and the Goats,”
based solely on the words of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 25. I don’t remember
when or how I happened to hear it, but in the late 1970s I listened (probably
on a cassette) multiple times to a recording of it.
Back then I was only able to hear him sing that gospel song,
but now the video of a live performance of it is available on YouTube, and I
encourage you to click on this
link and watch/listen to Green performing it in 1978.
It is nearly eight minutes long—and the last part of it is
especially powerful, so I hope you don’t miss that. (If you just don’t have
time to watch/listen to the above video, here
is a link to just the lyrics for you to read or at least scan.)
Green’s emphasis on Jesus’ words about the sheep and the
goats impressed me so much that I talked about it some in 1981-82 when my
family and I came back to the States for a regular “stateside assignment,” a
year’s “furlough” from our missionary work in Japan.
Sometime during that year, I was asked to speak one Sunday
night at the First Baptist Church in Bolivar, Mo., where June’s mother was a
member—and where we had been members on our first furlough in 1971-72. In that
sermon, I introduced Green and his powerful song.
It seems that some of the attendees that evening were not
too pleased with my emphasis on Matthew 25 and Green’s musical interpretation
of it. They were mostly supporters of the words of the “Great Commission,”
Jesus commanding his followers to “go and make disciples of all nations.”
That “commission” was not the only or even the primary
reason June and I committed our lives to missionary work, but it was long a
part of our thinking. But during my first fifteen years as a missionary, I came
to place more and more emphasis on the words of the following verse.
Jesus continued, “...teaching them to obey everything
I have commanded you.” I had increasingly come to understand that the words
of Matthew 25 that Green sang so forcefully were a very important part of what
Jesus had commanded and what we followers of Jesus should do.
Jesus emphasized loving others, and what he said as
recorded in Matthew 25:31~46 emphasized what that meant in action—or inaction.
Most people don’t consciously choose to be sheep or goats,
they just live according to their values and priorities. And there is a problem
when or if people seek to be sheep in order to receive the benefit of being so.
From my late teens, I have tried to do the sort of things Jesus said were characteristics of those he called sheep, although too many times, I’m afraid, I was too sheepish (=“resembling a sheep in timidity or lack of initiative”).
And part of the problem of growing older and losing energy
and mobility is not being able to do the things Jesus spoke about in the
Matthew 25 passage—not that I ever did those things extensively. But I used to
be able to do a lot more than I can do now, and I am sad about that.
But I try to do what little I can—such as writing blog
articles like this one. And June and I are proud of our daughter Kathy for unquestionably
being the type of person Jesus referred to as a sheep—and she told me that she
is “a big Keith Green fan,” and she probably first heard “The Sheep and the
Goats” in our home as a teenager.
_____
** Once again, this blog post was prompted by an article
published in Plough Quarterly. “Singing God’s Glory with Keith Green” was
published in the Summer 2021 issue and is available online here.
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The first comment received this morning was a very brief one from local Thinking Friend Ann Henning, and although she is the only one to write saying this, I trust many of you had the same reaction when you listened to Green's rendition of "The Sheep and the Goats." Here is Ann's comment:
ReplyDelete"It was powerful!"
Following the Jesus Seminar and other biblical studies of the gospels, I've concluded that neither the words of the final judgment in Matthew 25 nor those of the Great Commission in Matthew 28 are exactly Jesus's words. However, it is clear that the earliest followers of Jesus concluded that these two emphases were their mission and that Jesus commissioned them thusly. My best guess is that the sentiments in Matthew 25 are solidly founded in the life of Jesus and the earliest church's understanding of him. The epistles, especially those of Paul and James seem to reinforce it. The Great Commission, as interpreted by the Church ever since, seems much more problematic to me. That priority should ever be given to proselytizing over love for others and "the other" seems to me the great mistake of the Christian Church. In any case, thanks for the reference to Keith Green, whom I don't remember ever hearing, as well as the emphasis on the sentiments of Matthew 25.
ReplyDeleteAnton, there is much I would like to say in response to your comments, but I will have to be brief this morning. My main problem is what you wrote about the "Great Commission." That term was not used until the 19th century, it seems, and it was perhaps coined by and certainly popularized by Hudson Taylor (1832~1905), the great British missionary to China--and I think you would be hard pressed to show that he, as well as most of the great missionaries of the 19th century, gave priority to proselytizing over love for others. The great mistake was when Jesus' teaching became co-opted by Emperor Constantine, and the unfortunate tie between the organized Church and imperial powers from the fourth century until the present is the great failure of Christianity, not the implementation of Matthew 28:18~20 (whether they were the exact words of Jesus or not).
DeleteVery true. It was a hard temptation to resist, after all the social stigma and persecution for being Christian in Roman society. While Jesus resisted the temptation towards Christendom as presented by Satan in the desert, later Christians didn't, and that is where, to borrow from Koyama Kosuke, Christianity became a crusading religion rather than a crucified one. Helping others in secret who are 'down and out' -- who can do nothing in return but (sometimes) say thank you -- that is the road of the cross.
DeleteThanks, Greg, for these additional perceptive comments. I was a big admirer of Koyama-sensei (1929~2009), and I think he was correct in his assertion you cited. That is why I have long contended that the most authentic form of Christianity through the centuries has been in the small faith communities that had no political power and who, in fact, were often mistreated or even persecuted because of their faith, communities such as the Anabaptists for the last 500 years--and such as many Christians in Japan where they are but a small minority religion.
DeleteI have two things to add to this thread, although the second one is more pertinent to your previous blog but seems a bit fitting here, too.
DeleteFirst, does anyone know of any serious, detailed study of just how thoroughly the Christian Church appropriated the mindset, fashions, customs, etc. of the Roman Empire. It has seemed to me for a long time that Christianity, in a quest for power, pretty much took over the ethos of the Roman Empire, but I have only seen in various Christian histories minor treatment of this project.
Second, there have been great differences among missionaries over the centuries, how they've approached the people native to the foreign land they chose to go to, especially in already highly "civilized" places like China and Japan. Any given missionary who is a model of love, care, and acceptance can be countered by a great many egregious acts, especially those I suspect you're implying, who imported Western civilization as coterminous with Christianity. In any case, here is a quote from Imbolo Mbue's recent novel, How Beautiful We Were, that seems to me captures the absurdity of the traditional Christian view in this hilarious and more-or-less imaginary encounter with Christian missionaries in Africa:
“I remember still, when I was a little girl, a day when two Europeans and their interpreter came to Kosawa. They came to tell us about their Spirit. They said their Spirit would bring us out of the darkness we didn’t know we were living in. We would see the light. …
“We gathered in the village square to hear them talk, not because we cared to but because our woja [village leader] at the time believed all European men had guns—why risk being killed if we could simply lend them our ears for an hour? Their interpreter, a young man from the third of the five sister-villages, began the meeting with a song. Clapping his hands, he sang with his eyes lifted to the sky about someone who once walked on water, a man who had twelve friends who followed him everywhere--the song made no sense. When he was done singing, the European men delivered a message of how we would live a better life after we died if we turned our backs on our Spirit and chose their Spirit. ‘You have no ancestors waiting for you in the next world,’ they said to us. ‘Your ancestors are burning in a fire—do you want to join them there?’ They did not tell us why their Spirit would throw us in a fire when we hadn’t done anything to offend it. We wondered, as we listed to them, why their Spirit was so bitter and irrational. If we closed our eyes and said some words in prayer, the men said, their Spirit would become our Spirit. After we died, instead of joining our ancestors in the fire and burning with them for an everlasting night, we would spend our afterlives in a place where there was no night, one glorious morning, a place where the roads were straight and shiny, and the gardens had the most beautiful flowers. Everyone loved each other there, and a choir in shiny white robes never stopped singing.
“You should have seen how hard my father and the other men of Kosawa laughed after that meeting.”
Pp. 219-220, Mbue, Imbolo. How Beautiful We Were. N.Y.: Random House, 2021.
Thanks, Anton, for your additional comments, and I wish I had the time to respond more fully. (For some reason I seem to be having a bit of a struggle trying to keep up with everything right now.)
DeleteRegarding your first point, I'm sure there are studies along the line you were inquiring about, but I can't suggest anything off the top of my head right now. As you know, Anabaptists have long considered the amalgamation of the Church and the Roman Empire to be the fall of the Church. Some refer to it as the "Constantinian captivity of the Church." But just as in recent years here in the U.S., as you have heard me argue, conservative evangelical Christianity didn't take control of the Republican Party and the 45th President nearly as much as the Republicans and Trumpists co-opted the power and influence of evangelical Christians. The situation in the Roman Empire in the fourth century and Christianity was quite the same, and more so, it seems to me.
As you might guess, there is much I would like to say about your second and main point. I had not heard of the novel you mentioned, but I was able to check out an e-copy of it from the library this morning, and I have already started reading it.
Your point is more succinctly stated in the following words (you no doubt have heard) attributed to various people, including Archbishop Tutu: "When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land."
But on the other hand (and there is always another hand), . . . [and here I need about an hour to write what I would like to say about this.]
Thanks Leroy for another of your Great Blogs and I think you are Very Blessed and a real inspiration to us.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder of this Wonderful song and what it means to us 'Sheep" and followers of JESUS.
Thank you for introducing me to an excellent song by an obviously excellent composer. It made me think of a section of a slightly older response to the gospel, the musical Godspell. Ironically, this particular passage in the musical is not a song. It ends with an interesting twist on just what the passage means. You can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqeJ4LtE4HU
ReplyDeleteAs to what it means today, all I can say is, "But, CAPITALISM!" At the heart of the dogma of capitalism are sacrifice zones, where people, the environment, and even civilization itself are sacrificed so that capitalism might flourish. Unfortunately for USAmerica, those sacrifice zones that support America rather closely track the actions of the goats. Indeed, we live in a world where people want to be a GOAT, not a sheeple. (GOAT, as QB Tom Brady might tell us, is Greatest Of All Time; while sheeple are people resembling sheep.) For a look at sacrifice zones, check Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
Wow, that is really insightful, Craig -- and to see how GOAT has been repurposed...gosh, there is a really good sermon there.
DeleteAlthough I am not quite sure how it relates to today's blog post, here are important words received this morning from Thinking Friend Michael Olmsted in Springfield, Mo.:
ReplyDelete“It seems to me, perhaps it is the sense of life's brevity at my age, that our self-indulgence and loss of compassion (speaking of ‘the church’) is stronger than ever. The current status of politics in our nation, too often supported by the institutional church, is a celebration of selfishness. True faith in God can never be the product of self-serving religionists partnering with the institutional church. Our day is a carbon copy of religious practices of those days when Jesus was one with us in the darkness of our inhumanity, a darkness that never dims except in the light of his grace. God forgive me in my darkness and help me make your grace real for someone today.”
This discussion of "self-serving religionists" reminds me of yesterday's CNN article about a pastor and wife who were robbed of a million dollars' worth of jewelry right in the middle of a church service. The thieves ran out and jumped into a Mercedes to make their escape. Who says God does not have a sense of humor, even as He grinds that mill so exceedingly fine? You can read more here: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/25/us/brooklyn-pastor-robbery/index.html
DeleteHi Craig -- yeah, I saw that story too and I thought, 'Huh? A million dollars worth of jewelry?!'
DeleteHere are perceptive comments received from Thinking Friend Greg Hadley in Niigata, Japan:
ReplyDelete"Keith Green. Ah, I have complex feelings about him. He was a wonderful musician and I really looked up to him when I was growing up in the local church and listening to his music in high school and college. But now, I see much of his music as laced with messages aimed at making people feel ashamed, afraid, and condemned. He evokes in me a desire to come crawling to an angry God. For me, that is one more example of what I call ‘Preaching the Good News but Living the Bad News.’
"About sheep and goats. It seems to me that this parable is about those in the world who never heard or understood the good news of the gospel, but who lived it in their lives regardless (or not). What do you think?
"If so, it is good news…but not for those who hope for ultimate reconciliation for the goats."
Thanks, Greg, for seeing better than most the complexity of both Keith Green and Matthew 25. I knew very little about Green before I did some reading about him in preparation for writing this blog article, but I began to have mixed feelings about him from what I read. Still, I stand by everything I wrote regarding his song about Matthew 25.
DeleteI am not sure he was dealing with the question about those who had never heard or understood the Gospel, although it naturally raises that issue in our minds. He was probably primarily emphasizing that "what we do is more important than what we believe," which happens to be #23 in my book "Thirty True Things . . . ." I refer to Green and Matthew 25 in that chapter--and while writing that part of the chapter I was listening to "The Sheep and the Goats."
Yes, I certainly would agree that Keith Green was focused more on Christians and what they should do in the world. In this, he was singing to the 'Goats' (i.e. the fake and hypocritical Christians who attend Church but who do none of the things Christ speaks of in this parable). I suppose he sought to be a prophetic voice in the Old Testament sense of the word. Thing is, the people who would be prone to listen to his music would be the 'Lambs', and they would feel guilty for not being 'Sheep'. There is the danger of them doing works of the type Jesus spoke of then from a sense of fear of condemnation ('I hope I won't be judged as a Goat'), or shame for not doing enough for Christ ('Depart from me, I never knew you.'). I doubt that the Goats would be listening to his music or hearing the message. (And an aside -- questioning Keith's framing of the message like I am often becomes dismissed by proponents of the Guilty Gospel with the ad hominem response of 'only a Goat would object to Keith's message.') But I believe Matthew 25 is more about Jesus returning to a very Jewish notion that the people of God are known by their fruits. It is what they do that reveals who they are, because who they are is manifested in what they do -- further punctuated by the fact that from a distance, many of the species of sheep and goats in that area of the world look indistinguishable from the outside (though the goats often have little tails that stand up while the sheep don't). Of course I can see and affirm how this parable encourages us in Christ to be mindful and to love those around us who are 'down and out' in society (since in the Kingdom of God, they are actually the 'Up and In'), it is just that Keith Green's framing of the parable, at least for me, elicits service of others from a spirit of passionate guilt, rather than to reach out in fearless love.
DeleteThanks for your further comments, Greg. I am sure Green's rendition of Matthew 25--as well as Jesus' words themselves--have produced guilt feelings in some people and perhaps have prompted a "works righteousness" theology in some. But I didn't embrace either of those deviations when I first heard Green sing his song so powerfully back when I first heard it or when I have heard it recently, but I think your cautioning people not to make either of those mistakes is important.
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