Loving the King

This is the last Sunday of the church year, and is traditionally known as “Reign of Christ” or “Christ the King” Sunday.  What might that mean for us in a post-king-kind-of-world? …

Loving the King

Psalm 100 November 23, 2008; Matthew 25:31-46

This is a confusing time of year for those of us who live in the church calendar as well as the secular calendar. In the everyday world, we are approaching Thanksgiving, that curious holiday that is dedicated to eating, accompanied by pious prayers of gratitude from people of all faiths (and people of no faith). Thanksgiving feels as though it ought to be a religious holiday, but it isn’t quite.

And as soon as the turkey leftovers are put away, we launch immediately into the holiday shopping season. I suppose, to be honest, we need to confess that the shopping season has been underway for some time now – the Christmas decorations appear in stores even before the Halloween costumes have been marked down. The brown and orange M&M’s have been replaced by the red and green ones.

I have come to believe that shopping and gift giving are appropriate parts of one of the faces of Christmas. There are three: one involves gift giving; the second is about gatherings of family and friends; and the third is religious. That brings us back to the church’s calendar.

On the church’s calendar this is not Thanksgiving week; it is Reign of Christ Sunday, or (in its more traditional name) Christ the King. This is the last Sunday of the year for the church, the ecclesiastical equivalent of New Year’s Eve. And while the passage we just heard from the gospel of Matthew does come from the last few days of Jesus life, we are not going to move forward chronologically to the events of Holy Week and Easter. Instead, we will start the lectionary cycle again next week with texts that speak of the coming birth of Jesus, not the end of his life.

And to make all of this even more complicated, in Christian tradition, Advent is not only about preparing for the coming of the infant Jesus, it is also about preparing for the coming return of Christ. So we will be looking forward to one event that has already happened, and to another one that is mysterious in nature and indeterminate in its timing. We will listen to ancient words of prophets, and try to discern which of those words continues to speak to us today, in our present situation.

So on this confusing Sunday, which marks the end and the beginning, the secular and the sacred, the material and the spiritual – on this confusing Sunday we receive a biblical text that doesn’t seem to fit any of our holiday moods: it is not about giving thanks, it is not about getting ready, and it is not about Christ acting like a King, at least not any king that I can think of.

This passage shares many qualities with the story of the master and three servants that we heard last Sunday: it has a sing-song quality to it, like a ballad; it starkly contrasts different ways of behaving; and it ends with a harsh and judgmental tone. How, then, to read this passage?

We might think of today as the day we reflect back on the year past as we think about making our New Year’s resolutions. The words of Jesus prod us to remember those times that we have fed and clothed people who are hungry and cold, and those times when we did not. We remember the care we offered to those who were ill, and the care we never got around to offering. We remember the ways that we have stayed in touch with those who are imprisoned – whether by prisons or mental illness or addictions, and the ways we have stayed away. These are hard and high standards that Jesus sets for us – the more so if we take them seriously.

And so if we do take them seriously, we make our resolutions – a month earlier than everyone else – but that might be a good thing. The resolutions that we choose to make after this moral inventory may take many forms. We may resolve to work ourselves at the food shelf or hospital; we may decide to support organizations that work to reduce hunger or visit prisoners; we may choose to work politically to change policies and economic systems that impact the way that human services are provided.

Each of these is a good and responsible resolution, but they may sometimes work at cross purposes to one another. Volunteering at the food shelf will help a hungry family today, but does not do much to support the Community Action Center or the shift the global food economy in a way that will reduce hunger in the long run. Volunteering at the hospital can be a compassionate act, but it also shores up an awkward and expensive health care system that cannot itself provide the human touch that is part of healing. And when it comes to policies and economic systems, people of good faith can have drastically different convictions about the kinds of changes that are healthiest and most likely to succeed.

Yet none of this is part of today’s story. The king who is separating the sheep from the goats does use methods, strategies, or even sincerity as a criterion. Instead, the King focuses on the basic purpose: caring for God by caring for one another.

Now that is something that fits with our holiday season: we renew our bonds of familial love and loyalty, we celebrate our friendships and relationships, and we reach out to those in need. What does not fit with our holiday season is the radical nature of this imperative: we are called to renew our bonds with all of creation, not just the people, places, and creatures that we love, trust, and enjoy. We are called to mend and reconcile those friendships and relationships that have been damaged, even if we were not the one to damage them. We are called to see all of the needs around us, including the ones that fill us with fear, anger, or disgust.

Being a sheep, in the language of this passage, is not as easy as it looks. And so when the ancient psalmist writes “We are [God’s] people, and the sheep of [God’s] pasture,” [Psalm 100:3], he may not be portraying sheep as the docile, simple minded creatures that we often picture in our old favorite, Psalm 23, or in the passages about Jesus as shepherd found in the gospel of John.

Yet it is worth noting that this psalm is one of great joy and thanksgiving. Being the sheep of God’s pasture is challenging, and it is also a great blessing. This is definitely a case of “and” and not ‘but.”

Let me explain what I mean. We often use the word “but” in the middle of sentences to connect two ideas that seem contradictory. For example, “she loves chocolate but does not eat it very often,” or “loving God is challenging but a blessing.” If we substitute the word “and,” though, we get a somewhat different picture: “she loves chocolate and does not eat it very often,” or “loving God is challenging and a blessing.” The word “and,” I think, does a better job of expressing the complexity of the situations we live in and of the faith we live in. The word “and” means that we cannot just give up half the sentence (as we do with “but”), but have to accept the paradoxical whole.

And in that paradoxical whole, we see more truth than we would ever see with either half. If we just read Psalm 100 and offered praise and thanksgiving to a God who is good, steadfastly loving, and endlessly faithful, we would miss the deep challenge that comes to us if we try to live as Christian disciples. On the other hand, if we only listened to the harsh words of the judgmental King, the one who sends some of his subjects into “eternal punishment,” we would miss the deep joy and gratitude that comes as living as children of God.

Christ the King Sunday is not a sentimental day on the church calendar. It is the day, rather, that our personal moral inventory meets the mystery and complexity of God in all of God’s faces – Creator, Christ, and Spirit. It is the day that we are reminded that whatever specifics we may choose to act upon, our calling is clear: to live for one another and not just for ourselves. It is the day that we are reminded that of all of our loyalties, one is higher than all the rest: our loyalty to God, who we have met in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God for a King whose rule is marked by compassion, healing, reconciliation, and love.

Amen.

Prayer for November 23, 2008

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

As we come to our national holiday of Thanksgiving, we offer our prayers of gratitude for the abundance in which we live. We are grateful for the wonders of your creation, and for the privilege of living more comfortably than most people in the world today, and indeed, more comfortably than most people in all of history. We thank you for warm shelter, for food and clothing; we thank you for safe travel, for a nation in which goods and services are widely available. We thank you for the great circle of human connection that surrounds us, and for the care we experience from our brothers and sisters.

At the same time, gracious God, our thanksgiving prayers make us doubly aware of the ways in which we continue to hunger and thirst.

We are hungry for meaning in our lives. So many things happen, so many things are asked of us, and so many things are given to us, that we hardly have time to sort them out. We want for there to be a pattern or a plan that we can understand, but we remain befuddled by random events in the world and scattered feelings in ourselves. Help us, we pray, to discern your organizing and unifying hand in these events and feelings.

We are thirsty, O Lord, for the truth. We are tired of information that comes pre-digested by people and institutions that want to mold our thoughts. We are weary of arguments that are always framed in extremes and which never seem to represent a nuanced point of view. Bring us, we pray, prophets for our time – voices whom we can trust to see and speak with clarity and insight. Help us further, we pray, to find our own prophetic voices.

Our spirits groan, Beloved One, with an appetite for compassion. Finding fault and assigning blame for the ills around us do not satisfy. And yet, opening our hearts to the suffering of others seems overwhelming and dangerous. Give us courage, we pray, to live in solidarity with people who are subject to pain, exploitation, and violence; and then let our compassion for these companions be the energy for our discipleship.

All these things we pray, in the name of the one who is the bread of life, the cup of forgiveness, the water of compassion, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us ….

Previously offered November 20, 2005