LAST PENTECOST – Christ the King

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: LAST PENTECOST – Christ the King
PROPER: 29 A
PLACE: St. John’s Episcopal Church, Kingsville
DATE: November 24, 2002


TEXT: Matthew 25:31-46 – “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

SEE ALSO: Ezekiel 34:11-17 – “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.”

ISSUE: The passage is a vision of the Kingdom of God. Where those who have joined with Christ in his compassionate ministry inherit the Kingdom. The basic issue is not imperialistic achievement and status, but the ability to love one another as brothers and sisters, and to be in and with Jesus Christ, like suffering servants.
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Today’s gospel reading is a blend between a parable and a vision of the Last Day. It is an appropriate ending to the church year. It stands as a vision on this last day of the church year, as the final reckoning for the world on the last day of God’s final judgment. Remember parables like that of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Normally, the gospel accounts are assuring in that they offer forgiveness and opportunity for change and renewal. We are very comfortable with those stories and parables. Even the infamous Prodigal Son gets another chance. But there is also the final time of reckoning, when life is over and the day of reckoning comes, and there’s no turning back to try again. There comes a time, when the door is slammed shut. The party banquet begins and the Bridegroom doesn’t remember those who come late, and the door is shut and that awful trumpet of God sounds: “I don’t know who you are!” and the foolish are shut out in the darkness. There is an ultimate time of reckoning. Be alert; be ready.
Before I get into Matthew’s vision of the Last Day, and the Parable of the Last Day, I want to begin by saying a few things about the Hebrew Scripture reading from Ezekiel. At the time Ezekiel was writing, kings and rulers were considered to be the guiding shepherds of their people. Remember that chosen King David was a shepherd boy, who becomes a shepherd of his people in Israel. But David was certainly not totally successful in his leadership. Kings that followed divided the kingdom into Judah and Israel. Other empires in turn captured them. The rulers uprooted the people. Their homelands were destroyed, and the people were often exploited and treated unjustly by the ruling monarchs and emperors. Israel and Judah suffered significantly at the hands of imperial governments. Finally, you have Ezekiel’s great vision of hope where God himself says, “I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them . . . and bring them to their own land. . . feed them with good pasture, . . . they shall like down in good grazing land. . . and shall feed on good pasture . . . I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep and I will make them like down, says the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I shall judge between the sheep and sheep, between rams and goats.”
In this passage there is much, which is similar to the 23rd Psalm, but much which is similar to what Jesus Christ does when he gathers a flock of 5,000 to feed in green pasture. What we have in the Christian Scriptures is Jesus Christ revealed as The Word, that is, what God has to say. In the ministry and the teaching of Jesus Christ, you see the shepherding of God in Christ to reclaim a lost creation. We see the prophetic utterances of Ezekiel played out in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. He becomes for the Christian Community The Good Shepherd and Christ the King!
Then we are given the visionary parable of Matthew’s Gospel. The Son of Man, the Shepherd of God, Christ the King, has all the nations of the world and their rulers standing before him. The Good Shepherd, Christ the King begins the process of separating the sheep from the goats. The imagery here is fascinating. Sheep were honorable animals and were taken care of by shepherds. They were largely honorable because the male sheep were protectors of their females and families, because when they were slaughtered they did not cry out. Women in the family, on the other hand, cared for goats. Male goats shared their females with other males, and thereby were considered dishonorable in their unfaithfulness. Therefore, the separation of sheep from the goats meant that the shepherd was separating the honorable from the dishonorable, and the faithful from the unfaithful.
Now notice carefully what this visionary parable is saying about the Last Day. The judgment of the shepherd is based on faithfulness and what is honorable. The shepherd here is not some imperialistic type. The Good Shepherd, Christ the King’s status is based on something quite different from the imperialist way of the world. The new imperialism is based on the compassion and the caring of the shepherd for his flock. Furthermore, the flock is also judged on its ability to be compassionate as well.
The caring shepherd brings the sheep to his right hand, the hand or place of honor, saying to them, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Why? Well, not because of your achievements, not because of your status, but because you gave food to the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, took care of the sick, clothed the naked, and visited those in prison, and incidentally a fair number of early Christians were in prison at one time or another. Those who are the righteous are those who faithfully served with Jesus Christ in a spirit of hospitality and compassion. Without moaning and complaint they sought justice for one another, all as brothers and sister with Jesus Christ, and caring hospitality becomes a way of life.
It becomes relatively clear, I think, that if you live in a world of injustice, and world without patience, a world without caring, then you live in a world that is on its way to hell, to the garbage dump where the flames don’t go out, and where nations are nothing more than an ambitiously competitive to the point of destroying one another. It becomes a world where there is no peace.
We must not trivialize the gospel of Christ. Remember last week’s parable of the Talents. It was not about a master giving his servants a few bucks in hopes of a return of a few more bucks. It was about a master who gave millions to his servants, and some of them doubled the money, while one buried his. Participating in the church and the Kingdom of God is not about giving you a buck, and asking you to double it. It is rather about the understand of the wealth of love and forgiveness, the shepherd of God in Christ for his creation, and having his servants share in and participate in the great mission of God’s eternal love and hospitality.
While certainly this visionary parable calls God’s people to a caring for their own families and rejoicing in the privilege of being suffering servants for one another without complaint. It is also about the care of God’s total world community, especially for a nation that has so much. Too often the church itself becomes self-satisfied, if not complacent with contributions to food pantries and other such charities. That is well and good, and is as it should be to handle emergency situations for people who face rough times. There is still a far greater picture. We have to ask ourselves why it is that we give and give and give to the Food Pantry, and there are still people coming week after week, month after month, and the need does not decline. It in fact increases. There needs to be a systemic change as to how the poor can find ways to move to more lucrative work, and have available more lucrative wages that sustain single parent families in our world. It is not just in the giving of a few canned goods, but it comes to the way we vote, and the way we challenge and inform our leaders of their need to be good shepherds in the world order. We all may have to reduce our own expectations of what we get out of life for the benefit of others. “We may have to live simpler, that others may simply live,” is a common aphorism of our day.
Some years ago, the Episcopal Church had an outstanding evangelist. Her name was Gert Behanna, and she had written an autobiography entitled, The Late Liz, referring to her pen name, Elizabeth Burns. Gert went through a remarkable change, a period of grand repentance. She had been very wealthy, but as she lived out her life she went through several divorces, and her health declined significantly due largely to a serious alcohol problem. When her wealthy but extraordinarily miserable life was finally in the pits, by the grace of God, Gert had a conversion experience. She sobered up with the help of God and Alcoholics Anonymous. She set up her wealth into a fund for people in need, and her health dramatically improved. She spent her last days, well into her 70’s speaking at churches and to AA groups about her life. And Gert had a feeling, or perhaps, her own vision of the Last Day. Gert used to say that on the Last Day, “We will all stand before our Good Shepherd and he won’t ask about your great accomplishments. All the Shepherd will ask is, “How much did you love?”