The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe: Cycle A 22-23

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17 | 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28 | Matthew 25:31-46

Almighty, everliving God, whose will is to restore all things in your Beloved Son, the King of the Universe, grant, we pray, that the whole creation set free from slavery may render you majestic service and ceaselessly proclaim your praise.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever, amen.

This celebration of the Eucharist is our final celebration for this year. The liturgical year is not the same as our calendar year, and it ends with this great feast of Christ the King. And it seems so appropriate that it ends this way, because we know that, throughout this entire year, as we’ve listened to the gospel of Matthew in particular, we’ve recognized the call that God has placed in the hearts of human beings to enter into a kingdom, the kingdom of God. So it’s appropriate that we then call this last Sunday a feast, a celebration of the kingdom of God, and when we look at this idea of a kingdom, it seems at first so counter to who Jesus is, because he keeps talking to us about his work as a shepherd, as a caring, loving, simple man who is there constantly caring for us. So we have to be careful of the image of Christ as a king, but it works when we understand something about the promise of how the kingdom of heaven is going to be established on this planet, on this earth, what it is that we’re all engaged in. And it is a new kingdom with a new leader, and the interesting thing about this leader is yet he carries the image of a patient, loving person. At the same time, he is so strong and so powerful, and he can get rid of everything that is not working toward the kingdom of God.

So let’s look at these images. The main thing that I want to start with is the image of God as revealing a Son who then becomes a Good Shepherd. In the first three centuries of the church, the church was a hidden church, an unlawful church. It was something that was considered, if you were following this new way, that you would be ⎯ if you would be discovered, you would be destroyed, and so it lived underground. Like in the catacombs is where they gathered, buried their dead, and the first images of who the Christ is in those first 300 years was always the same. It was an image of his face, but usually, always, if it was an image of what he was doing, he was a shepherd. There’s no crucifixion depicted in those first 300 years. The first one that we discovered was around 323, but that interesting thing is that the focus in the beginning was this kingdom that God has come to establish is best described not as a legalistic kingdom where there is a magistrate, a judge and everyone is constantly being judged. No, it’s about caring. It’s about a kingdom of caring, and so we go back to one of the earliest images in the Old Testament, in Ezekiel, of this image of God as a shepherd. And it's a beautiful, beautiful image, and what it’s saying is that the kingdom of God that is being established is one that is an empathetic, compassionate environment in which one would live. And when Ezekiel uses images of the scattered living in darkness, being stressed, being lost, being strayed, being injured, being sick. At times, that may be in your mind, as it was often in mine, that we’re looking at these people who are obviously in this state. When I look at people and they seem to be fine, they’re sitting in an airplane near me. I watch them at the grocery store or whatever. I have no idea where they are. I don't know if they feel disconnected from people, if they’re scattered, if they’re dealing with depression, if they’re feeling so stressed they can’t find any rest, if they feel that they have no direction, that they’ve strayed away from who they really believe they were, and maybe they were trying to find themselves or sick.

I want you to imagine. This is the thing that we have to understand that Jesus is saying to us in his ministry, foreshadowed in this beautiful image of Ezekiel, that this kingdom is about sensitivity and awareness and consciousness of the human condition that we are all sharing in. When you are in a position of being separated from the culture, when you’re running the risk of dying if someone finds out who you are, the communities that are formed in that time are really intense. And so we go back to the early church, and when we listen to these directions that were given to the early church, they were very much designed to help them at this time in their life. And so we can’t always just take literally some of the images that are used, because they’re used to address a need at that time, and yes, the need is universal, but in some ways, it’s unique to that particular time.

So the overall theme is that we’re living in an environment called the kingdom of God where care and support of one another is so essential. Matthew goes to the same things, and it’s interesting. In Matthew there is something given that is even more mysterious and something to ponder, and that is that, when we’re told in Matthew’s gospel that we should be caring for each other, the images given to us that the reason we care for each other is because when we’re caring for each other, we’re caring for God, that we are him, he is us, that there is a union in this whole mysterious thing called church, called life. Whatever we do to another we have done to divinity. Whatever we do to each other, we’ve done to ourselves. It’s like there’s a oneness, a unity in all of this that we need to ponder, and it’s difficult to figure out how it all works. But the one thing I want to make sure you don’t take away from these readings, something that I used to take away all the time, is an oversimplified, binary way of looking at the world, because Matthew’s gospel talks about the world at the end. Everyone is divided, almost 50/50. Half of them go to hell; half of them go to heaven. And it’s a very depressing kind of thought that we’re judged that way, and we’re not judged that way. This passage is not about that kind of judgment. It’s not so much about whether there are some that are cast into eternal fire. That’s not it. The main thing is there is a risk of not following what we’re being shown, what we’re being taught, and the way to talk about the risk is to say, “If you don’t do it, it’s really a catastrophe. It’s a mess. It’s destructive.”

So living in the kingdom is living in an awareness of who we are to each other, how important it is that we be there for each other, how we need to perceive each other and penetrate the façade of other people, not by invading in your questions and things but just going past what you know is probably a façade that we also put up, that we look great, we look like we’re doing fine, and just ponder the beauty and the awesomeness of what it is that we have before us, an opportunity to be sources of life for each other. That’s why we’re here. That’s what it’s all about, to be in a room full of people and to realize that they’re all dealing with whatever darkness, whatever difficulty, whatever way in which they feel naked, exposed, whatever, just to have an intention for everyone, that we want them to feel and know that they are loved, they’re valued, that they’re beautiful. That’s the kingdom of God. That’s the kingdom he came to establish. So just as the disciples were challenged to be attentive to each other’s needs and desires, longings, so we too today have the same responsibility, and when we’re in that awareness, we’re celebrating the kingdom of God.

Father, open our eyes, open our hearts to the mystery of your kingdom.  It lies just below the surface of our consciousness.  So often we get tied up into all the kind of self-centered ways in which we struggle to live our lives, but you invite us into the most beautiful kingdom, the kingdom of love, kingdom of truth, life, holiness, grace, justice, peace.  Let us embrace this responsibility with hearts filled with hope and trust that your kingdom has come.  And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.