This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka on Christ the King Sunday November 22, 2020.
Readings for the Last Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Today’s Feast of Christ the King marks the end and culmination of the liturgical year, which began last December as we here at Christ Church were just ramping up our many sesquicentennial celebrations; and many of us in northern California were cheering on the 49ers as they were enjoying a successful season that eventually brought them to the Super Bowl. Things were looking pretty exciting and promising back then; and I don’t think any of us were quite prepared for the cascade of disappointments and challenges that have tumbled upon us these last several months. At the beginning of this liturgical year, many of us were also reading Richard Rohr’s book The Universal Christ with Dr. Karen Price and learning about the great 20th century theologian Karl Barth from Pastor Dan Price, who is our residential Barth scholar.
In my first sermon of this liturgical year (back on the third Sunday of Advent), I talked about how Karl Barth urged us not to conflate the kingdom of man with the kingdom of God, not to conflate human political power with the divine power of Christ. When it comes to kings and political leaders who claim a “godlike status,” Christian leaders are actually called to prayerfully rebuke them rather than defend and adore and coddle them. And we’ve come full circle now because that is partly the message for us today on Christ the King Sunday, a feast that was added to the church calendar relatively recently in 1925, soon after the first World War when the great monarchies of Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary had fallen. Many of the political offices and institutions in which so many people deeply trusted had crumbled; and the church felt called to remind Christians that Christ still remains the king. On Christ the Solid Rock we stand while all the other ground is sinking sand. In the midst of all the changes and chances of this life and the challenges of this utterly exhausting year, we can all rest assured in the eternal changelessness of Christ the King and his royal authority over the entire universe. Because Christ remains the king, we can trust in those powerful words of the medieval English theologian Julian of Norwich who said that “Although sin is undeniable, in the end, all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”
During this liturgical year (known as Year A in our three-year lectionary), our Gospel readings have come mostly from the first Gospel in our Bible: the Gospel of Matthew. And Matthew is considered the most Jewish of the four Gospels. It was most likely written by and for a Jewish-Christian community in Antioch (in Modern-day Turkey); and, in the Gospel, Jesus sounds most like the Jewish rabbis of that time. And in Matthew, Jesus seems to be almost obsessed with this idea of the kingdom of God. He actually uses the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” much more frequently than the phrase “the kingdom of God” since the Jewish custom was and is to refrain from using God’s Name, in deference to the third commandment.
The Kingdom of God is the subject of most of Jesus’s puzzling parables and poetry and powerful sermons, including the great Sermon on the Mount, which begins with that beautiful Beatitude “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And most of Jesus’s parables begin with him saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like… like a mustard seed, like a wineskin, like yeast mixed with flour, like a fish net, like ten bridesmaids waiting for their groom, like a man who gives his servants talents, etc.” With all of these creative and challenging and sometimes opaque and even disturbing stories, Jesus is trying to teach his followers about God’s kingdom and how we can experience that kingdom right now, that kingdom in which Love reigns supreme, that kingdom in which Christ himself rules as king. And every time Jesus describes the kingdom of God in Matthew (or in any of the Gospels for the matter), it’s clear that God’s kingdom does not look much at all like a kingdom of earth. In fact, it seems like the kingdom of heaven is always subverting our conventional understanding of “kingdoms” altogether.
Pastor and author Brian McLaren offers a helpful description of the kingdom of heaven when he says, “In God’s kingdom… status-quo government gives way to a revolution of community and neighborliness, policy bows to love, domination descends to service and sacrifice, control morphs into influence and inspiration, and vengeance and threats are transformed into forgiveness and blessing.” Status-quo government gives way to a revolution of community and neighborliness.
At the Interfaith Peace Prize ceremony this last Wednesday, I spoke about how Jesus challenged the status quo of the Roman empire (the peace of Rome) by inculcating among his followers a sense of Shalom, the holistic peace of God, which is another way of describing the Kingdom of Heaven. And we see this revolution of community and neighborliness and shalom being expressed in this morning’s parable of the sheep and goats.
I believe that this parable is the key to understanding all of the other parables in Matthew’s Gospel and I must say that it is the parable that has perhaps been the most influential in my life, especially in my younger years. The idea that when we feed the hungry or clothe the naked we are doing so to Jesus Christ himself inspired me to hand out blankets to the homeless on Haight street in San Francisco as a high school student, to volunteer at St. Anthony’s Soup Kitchen in the Tenderloin, to lead urban mission trips as a college student and to major in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Urban Ministry. As a young adult, I often felt like I was serving Christ more effectively (and more authentically) on the city streets than I was while at church. And honestly, I’ll confess that as I read this parable now I feel deeply convicted because I find myself becoming more protective of church property and less compassionate towards those who live on the streets and those who can potentially damage our property. Every month or so, I pick up clothing or other belongings that people leave on the church property and I grow frustrated. And it becomes harder and harder for me to see Jesus in those who I feel are a threat to themselves and to others. And I grow disheartened when people who need help refuse to receive the help that we offer through Betty Chinn and the Rescue Mission and other outreach programs that we support. And I start blaming the victim by assuming that those who are having a rough time might actually deserve it because of poor life decisions.
And obviously these are complex issues that we all deal with here in Eureka, which has been described as a rural community with urban problems; and Jesus does not call us to be overly simplistic or naïve. In fact, there’s this great verse in Matthew’s Gospel (that my father would often remind me of) when Jesus says, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves, therefore be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves” (Matt 10:16). In other words, don’t be stupid, but still be compassionate.
Jesus expects his followers to be compassionate towards those in need because that is how the divine king dwells among us today, in disguise, inviting us into his kingdom. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Give to everyone who begs from you” (5:42). Don’t be stupid, but be compassionate.
Archdeacon Pam shared a story with me about C. S. Lewis and his biographer Walter Hooper. Hooper recalled a time when he and Lewis were on their way to the Eagle and Child Pub in Oxford (nicknamed “The Bird and Baby”), where they would meet regularly with J.R.R. Tolkien and other British authors. As they were walking, Lewis gave some money to a street beggar and Hooper made the usual objection: “Won’t he just spend it on drink?” Lewis answered, “Yes, but if I kept it, so would I.”[1] Be compassionate. Give to everyone who begs from you because that is Christ the King among us.
The words from this morning’s parable that resonate most deeply with me now are the words of Christ the King who says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). When Jesus says “members of my family” he’s not referring exclusively to Jews or Christians. He’s referring to his fellow human beings who are in need and whom he sees as part of his family.
When we see someone on the street begging for money, may we to learn see them as our brother or sister, as part of our family, as part of us, indeed as Christ the King himself among us. Jesus is trying to help us transform the human race into the human family. He is trying to help us understand the Kingdom of God as a community of kin, as what one theologian called “The Kin-dom of God.”[2]
We here at Christ Church Eureka are a family and I believe we have actually grown closer to each other and strengthened our bonds during this challenging year. Together we have been experiencing the Kin-dom of God among us through the many creative ways we have been reaching out to nourish, to visit, to comfort and to hold each other in loving prayer. May our sense of family expand to cover the whole world so that God’s Kin-dom may come on earth as it is in heaven.
And finally, may we be gentle and compassionate to the parts of ourselves that are hungry and lonely, the parts or ourselves that might feel sick and naked and imprisoned, especially during this holiday season when so many of us are physically cut off from each other. May we proudly claim our identity as full members of God’s family, citizens of the Kin-dom of Heaven, and may we practice gentleness towards ourselves so that we can learn to be even more gentle to our brothers and sisters who are in need here and all across the earth, the earth who longs to receive her king.
[1] Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Biography. Revised Edition (London: HarperCollins, 2002), 296. A parishioner reminded me that November 22 (the day this sermon was preached) was the day that C.S. Lewis died in 1963, the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
[2] Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 2002), 89. Isasi-Díaz writes, “From a Christian perspective the goal of solidarity is to participate in the ongoing process of liberation through which we Christians become a significantly positive force in the unfolding of the ‘kin-dom’ of God” (89). In the endnote, she writes, “There are two reasons for not using the regular word employed by English Bibles ‘kingdom.’ First, it is obviously a sexist word that presumes that God is male. Second, the concept of kingdom in our world today is both hierarchical and elitist—as is the word ‘reign.’ The word ‘kin-dom’ makes it clear that when the fullness of God becomes a day-to-day reality in the world at large, we will all be sisters and brothers—kin to each other; we will indeed be the family of God” (103 n. 8).
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 