Christ the King Sunday

Christ the King Sunday SURPRISES 11/17 & 20/05

Our Gospel lesson for this Christ the King festival has much to teach us as we seek to follow Jesus, the King, day to day. First a few obvious, but often overlooked, points:

1) Jesus is coming back to earth…The first word in this reading is “When,” not “if.” “When the Son of Man comes…” (Mt. 25: 31) We confess this in our creeds and the Bible presents this consistently and convincingly. Jesus is coming again!

2) Jesus is not coming alone. Reading from The Message: “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place.”

3) There will be no need for absentee ballots on this promised day, for no one is going to be out of town, nor overlooked, when Jesus comes “blazing” back.! In Mt. 25: 32 we are told, “All the nations will be gathered before him.”

4) A process of separation or sorting will immediately commence… “He will separate the people one from another, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats.” (Mt.25: 32) In Palestine the sheep were generally white and the goats black, making it quite easy for the shepherd, even in the dusk at day’s end, to separate the animals. From a sea of faces, the coming King will single each person out in turn.

5) Each person is asked, not about their creed or preference in worship nor his standing in the community. The criterion seems clearly to be how we have dealt with, related and responded to the needy of our day…the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked.

One might wonder. “Is the Christian life just one long string of loving acts, outreach, and kindness?” The answer is “no”, but this loving lifestyle springs forth from the love made known to/shown through us in Christ. Without such acts, faith turns selfishly inward, languishes, and dies. Love springs from faith, so our love from and for Jesus shows itself in how we give and live day to day. Believing, without acts of love, is not the standard…acts of kindness, without loving Jesus, fall sadly shy of what God expects. God’s judgment does not depend upon the knowledge we have amassed, nor the fame we have acquired, nor the fortune we have gained, but upon our surrender to the King-ship of Jesus Christ and upon the help we have given in the name of our King and to the glory of God!

There are surprises in this story, as the loving folk did not realize that their daily kindnesses could ever have been a personal service to Jesus, nor that they had done anything worthy of recognition. They simply and consistently did what we do when we are in a loving relationship…we give and we give of ourselves. They lived their lives, not to receive honor, but to honor their Lord and King. The unloving were equally surprised, for they imagined that they had it all figured out and had diligently done everything they were obligated to do…a popular notion even in our day. But, their relationship with God had been diluted to rote religion. They had never thought of Jesus as being linked with them in love and they failed to realize that all people are created in God’s image. They were not ignorant of Jesus, but they had been self-centered so long that their faith was now only a ritual observance, emotion-less motions, and a correct creed. They had separated Jesus from the doings of daily life. This is dangerous and, according to this text, damnable in the sight of God as the King returns to earth.

At the last judgment, Jesus did not say a word about effectiveness, results, nor productivity. His only questions: “Did you feed those who were hungry? Did you visit those in jail? Did you befriend the stranger?” What is your response? Most of us are not in charge of much, except our own lives. Our impact upon the needs of the world will most likely be local…the cup of cool water, the hour spent visiting one afternoon, the letter written in sympathy to someone who is grieving, the active listening to another in need.

In the hymn “Borning Cry,” we sing: “When the evening gently closes in and you shut your weary eyes, I’ll be there as I have always been, with just one more surprise.” We mistakenly expect only to encounter God in the grand and the glorious, and herein lies our surprise! God is to be experienced in the cup of water, the unexpected visit, in the sandwich or soap or toothpaste or shampoo or wrapped shoe box or Ramen noodles or toilet paper given to those we may never meet, but who are dear to the heart of God. It is God’s job to worry about issues of effectiveness. It is our job to be faithful…to be, in our living and in our dying, an outpost of the coming kingdom and a credit to the king. We know, and are reminded on this Christ the King Sunday, who sits upon the throne. We do the good that we do because we know the King and the nature of his kingdom, a kingdom that continues to take shape through an infinite number of small…oft-viewed, insignificant…acts toward the world that God sees and brings to full measure. As our friends the Quakers put it, “A great amount of light is produced by a thousand small candles.” As we say at Baptism: “Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” LBW/Holy Baptism) Come, Lord Jesus. AMEN.