Sermon for the 26th of November - Sermon for the Feast of Christ the King

Christ the King is a relatively ‘new’ addition to the Western liturgical calendar.  It’s almost 100 years old. Pope Pius XI introduced it in 1925, and he did so following trauma of the First World War. The Feast of Christ the King is designed not to recover an ancien régime or to establish a theocracy. It’s more of a magnification of the feast of the Ascension.

The ‘reign of Christ’ was, and is, a prophetic challenge to a secular culture. Because we find in Jesus’s humble kingship, an alternative to empire building, to nationalism, and secularism. Jesus is King and not Elon Musk, despite what might think. Christ is king, and not the financial market.

The Pope’s vision was wonderful. But, of course, it hasn’t been realized.  Where weapons and hatred speak more loudly than the quiet voice of the Prince of Peace.  We live in a context, which feels dangerously similar, prior to both world wars.

Instead of embracing the countercultural possibility of a humble, wounded king, we live in a world that has given itself over to a version of kingship that is all about domination, supremacy, and greatness.  We have fallen in love with the loud, the muscular, and the aggressive. We have forgotten that the only power Jesus wielded on earth was the power to give himself away.  He is the king who entered humanity as a vulnerable, red-faced and crying baby. A king whose greatest displays of power included riding on a donkey, washing dirty feet, hanging on a cross, and frying fish on a beach for his agnostic friends.  How did we go from this God of kenosis — the God who empties himself of all privilege, the God who pours himself out for others — how did we go from that, to God as Iron Man?

And what can we do? We sing hymns about the kingdom of God, we hear sermons, arrange bible studies, recite creeds, and so on. All very good and important. But the Gospel tell us where Jesus is to be found.  Jesus is to be found in the least and the lost and the broken and the wounded.  Jesus is to be found in the un-pretty places.

“Whatever you did to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” If we are to take the Bible seriously, and live out the kingdom of God, that’s where Jesus is going to be.

A few years ago, Pope Francis urged priests be “shepherds with the ‘smell of the sheep’”, grounded in the situation of their flock. I assume he meant that metaphorically… or maybe not. Because Jesus is found in the messy and perhaps smelly places, which we might want to avoid. And why might we want to avoid that calling? I think it’s probably being afraid. Perhaps afraid of my inadequacy?  Jesuit theologian James Keenan defines mercy as, ‘the willingness to enter into the chaos of others’.  ‘The willingness to enter into the chaos of others.’ Maybe that’s what we’re afraid of?  Other people’s chaos?

And it’s okay to be afraid.  It's okay to have questions about how best to help, genuinely help, those in need. But at some point, our fears must come face to face with reality: “Whatever you did to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  That’s the challenge of Christ the King today – to take Jesus’s kingship seriously. That’s the theology behind what we do as a church, raising awareness and funds for the homeless work of the Upper Room and Glass Door, as well as collecting food and clothing last month.

I find the Gospel reading about the sheep and the goats particularly interesting, growing up in a tradition where belief was all important. Are you, is he or she, a believer? I am now deeply uncomfortable about that language. And what we find in Matthew 25 is instructive. In the final judgment of all humanity, it says nothing about belief.  It’s a scene describing the culmination of history, when all nations will gather before Christ, and Christ will separate his people as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.  And what is the criteria he uses for the separation.  The Nicene Creed? The 39 articles of religion? Our personal faith in Jesus? Well, it turns to be nothing to do with our beliefs or doctrinal commitments. The criteria will be compassion, and compassion alone.

The final part of the Gospel is deeply disturbing. Throwing those who did show compassion, the goats, into the eternal fire of hell. It’s essential that we don’t construct a whole theology from one verse or passage. Because of the main sweep of scripture affirms a God that is all compassionate generous and forgiving love. A God who runs out to his prodigal child not with a stick but with a loving and delighted embrace and who then throws a party.

But our Gospel reading today puts things in an unhelpful a binary way…. Which side are you on? The sheep or the goats? The human condition and life isn’t so neat. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recognised, ‘The line between good and evil runs … right through every human heart.’ There are some days where I am more goat-like than sheep. And so our vocation, daily, is to become more sheep-like. A bit more wholly, as it were!

Soon, we will enter into Advent, a season of waiting, longing, and listening.  Soon we will walk into the expectant darkness, waiting for the light to dawn, for the first cries of a vulnerable baby to redefine kingship, authority, and power forever.  But on this Sunday, here and now, we are asked to see Jesus in places we’d rather not look.  To daily become more sheep-like. And we are invited to remember that every encounter we have with “the least of these” is an actual encounter with Jesus.

Reference

Debie Thomas, You Did It To Me, 15 November 2020.