Sunday next before Advent: Matthew 25:31-46
This parable is the teaching on what God's judgement will be like. In most Bibles it's actually called "The Judgement". The problem is that Jesus tells it all wrong. Based on what many of us have been told, it should have been about "the righteous" entering heaven purely because of their belief in Jesus, no matter how they lived their lives. "You were right to believe in me - come you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance" is what Jesus should have said to the sheep.
And the others (the goats) should have been people who, although they lived good lives, never actually believed the right things about Jesus. "But Lord," they would have cried, "we fed the hungry and showed compassion to the poor!" To which Jesus should have responded "Yes, and I would love to save you, but sadly I cannot since you never actually accepted me as your lord and saviour.".
In fact, Jesus doesn't just ignore the standard evangelical narrative here - he completely reverses it. Having assembled "all nations" before him, God divides them into two groups, the "righteous" and the "unrighteous". In both cases, no mention whatsoever is made of what these people did or did not believe before they came to the judgement. What distinguished one from another was based entirely on how compassionately they lived their lives. Basically, whether or not they were kind.
This is intended by Jesus to catch us off guard. Even the characters in the parable itself are surprised by how the final judgement was actually playing out. This, as with many of the parables, is meant as a warning to those of us who think we have it all sewn up. Perhaps we, like the religious leaders of Jesus day, have come to assume that we are automatically entitled to a share of God's kingdom simply by virtue of being the "true believers". We need to be reminded that God can raise up "true believers" from the very stones of the earth. Living compassionately, however, is up to us. It also cautions us about dismissing others just because they don't believe the same things about Jesus as we do. These "others", Jesus warns, could be entering the Kingdom of God ahead of us.
No matter what we claim to believe - in the end Jesus seems mainly concerned about how we really live our lives here and now. Perhaps because this reveals what we actually believed all along. Want to enter life right now and at the judgement? Then feed the hungry, care for the sick and look after the stranger. Belief matters, but love wins.