Christ the King

The Reverend Martha Frances
Year A, Last Pentecost, Christ the King Sunday
23 November 2008 - 8:00 a.m. only

Text: Matthew 25: 31-46 Other: Ezekiel 34:11-16; Psalm 100; Ephesians 1: 15-23 Today is the culmination of the long green season of Pentecost—ordinary or common time. As we've moved through later Pentecost, we've studied parables concerning the end time called the parousia or the Eschaton. Today, we celebrate the fulfillment of those parables, a time which we only know in part in this life—the reign of Christ as King. Today's collect calls on God to restore all things through the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Note that we ask in the collect for God to free us from sin which divides us & to bring us together as one. For the past 3½ years, we've been on this journey of becoming one congregation of Hope, & we continue with our pledge ingathering & then Thanksgiving feast today. It is important, as we begin preparations for the coming of the Christ child once again, that we celebrate Christ's coming in glory. So what are most of the scriptures about today? Sheep & shepherds! We're reminded of how frequent are the images & stories of sheep in the Hebrew Bible by the first selection from Ezekiel who lived during the Babylonian exile. The Hebrew sheep have indeed been scattered to what was to them the ends of the earth—Babylon—& their God the Shepherd promises to search for them, to rescue them from all the dangerous places where sheep get themselves separated & stuck, especially on dark, stormy days. God the shepherd claims us all & yearns to gather us together, bring us into our own land, & feed us with the richest pastureland. Of course, we all know that the grass is always greener wherever we aren't, & the Hebrew people may have imagined the mountain heights of Israel as more plush than they actually are, but the point is that God plans to shepherd the Hebrew sheep Godself without the help of the kings who had really made a mess by not being faithful to the Lord God. God the Shepherd will care for the sheep—& at this point the goats are mixed with the sheep—in all the ways a shepherd does: feed & water them, make them lie down to rest, seek the lost, bring back those strayed, bind up the wounded, & strengthen the weak. Sounds like a pretty cushy life for sheep, doesn't it? And certainly, submitting to God's shepherding of our lives is more comfortable than when we're trying to run our lives by ourselves. But Ezekiel's vision of God the shepherd isn't all a bed of clover. The shepherd will destroy the fat & the strong; God will feed them with justice. Here we see an early image of the separation, God's judging between sheep & sheep, between rams & goats. What's the difference between the distinctive animals? They're all part of the same family, loved by God. The Gospel for today is one of the most familiar sheep & shepherd passages in the whole of Scripture, not really a parable, but rather a vision of the end times found only in Matthew. The shepherd is now revealed as the king—overlapping images which reach all the way back to King David, also a shepherd. The king separates the sheep from the goats, showing favor to the sheep. I think it's again important to see that both sheep & goats are of one flock & are both cared for by the same shepherd. Even the judgment scene is within the context of the shepherd who cares even for the less favored animals in the same flock. When the shepherd/king honors those he calls sheep, they are surprised. Notice that the favored ones aren't favored because they thought beforehand, "If we feed the hungry & clothe the naked, the king will be pleased with us & reward us." In fact, they're surprised that their actions have been noticed even by the king, much less that the king considers their works of mercy deeds done to him. It's all news to those who are being commended. What we have to remember in this story is that the good works are not done in order that the sheep may earn their way into eternal life. The good works are done because that's how the flock shows gratitude to the shepherd/king who has already saved them, protected them, fed & healed them. The actions that the honored sheep have done unto the least of God's people are the traditional works of mercy & loving-kindness every Jew is expected to do in society. The one exception which probably didn't come out of Jesus' original list of acts of kindness is visiting those in prison. Why? Prison was a punishment seldom used by the Hebrews. It is likely that the encouragement to visit those in prison came from Matthew's own time when Christians were being imprisoned for their faith & because they would not worship Caesar. How does this judgment scene relate to us today? Well, many Christians make this a list of whether we are being "real" Christians or not. As I indicated above, such merciful deeds would identify a good Jew as well as a Christian. Jesus' injunctions to action are no different from those he learned as a Jewish rabbi, & they are indeed valuable functions of any society even today—to care for those who are most vulnerable & least able to care for themselves. In fact, Jesus makes clear that we fulfill all the laws if we remember to love God with all our hearts, minds, & souls & to love our neighbors as ourselves. The kindnesses enumerated in this scene with the shepherd/king are examples of caring for our own neighbors as we need to be cared for. These examples are sort of the bottom line for fulfilling the 2nd commandment. The difference for Christians is that we fulfill the actions not in order to earn our salvation—that was done for us with the death & resurrection of Jesus who is Christ the King. Rather, we take up our crosses—& take on our responsibilities as Christians—in joyful response to the salvation & reconciliation already achieved by Jesus Christ.