Readings for the Twenty Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) Proper 29 – Track 2
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on Sunday November 26, 2023.
Happy Feast Day of Christ the King! This feast, which we might consider our patronal feast day as Christ Church, celebrates the culmination of the entire cosmos when all things submit to the Reign of God’s Love and Compassion. Now the term “king” might sound a bit off-putting to some of us, especially since our beloved nation was founded upon a profound distrust and rejection of a monarchical form of government that invests sovereign power in one person. Our founding fathers knew very well how easy it was and is for someone to abuse power and become a cruel tyrant and oppressive and violent despot. Despite the rotten track record of most humans who have held the title “king” or “queen” (including many within our Anglican heritage), we still refuse to retire the term permanently. The Supreme Governor of the Church of England today is King Charles III, for whom many Anglicans throughout the global communion continue to pray.
This feast day was created about a hundred years ago by Pope Pius XI as the Western world was reeling from the awful behavior of political leaders who were fomenting a political cesspool, out of which violent dictators like Hitler and Stalin emerged and rose to power. Today’s feast of Christ the King was created to remind us and assure us that Christ will ultimately reign supreme as the holy and just King of kings and Lord of lords and Judge of judges. It’s a reminder that we need today just as much as we did back in the 1920s, if not more so. Our reading today from the Gospel of Matthew reveals what kind of “king” Christ is while also providing us with a crucial way of looking at Scripture, history, the world, our lives, and the mission of the church.
Christ the King Sunday is the final Sunday of the liturgical year, the year devoted to the reading of the Gospel of Matthew; and I appreciate that we conclude our reading of Matthew with this powerful parable of the Sheep and the Goats, which is definitely one of my favorite parables of Jesus and one that I’ve kept in the back of my mind while interpreting the previous challenging parables in this chapter: the parable of the talents and the parable of the bridesmaids. According to the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, we will be judged by Christ the King not by what we believe, but by how we treated the hungry, the thirsty, the cold, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned. The parable teaches us that the way we treat the outcasts of society is how we treat Christ himself. “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). There’s a common theme in ancient literature of kings and even gods disguising themselves as poor and hungry strangers who wander into town to see how their subjects treat vulnerable outsiders. In this parable, Christ the King is showing us his hand and revealing to all of us that that is exactly what he is doing among us today, appearing outside our doors (or perhaps inside our doors) as the hungry, the thirsty, the cold, and the stranger. If you want to meet Christ in the flesh today, seek out these people. Philanthropists like Betty Chinn who work tirelessly with the precariously housed have had mystical experiences in which they have seen the face of Jesus in the poor stranger.[1] You can read about one of these experiences in her biography.
In today’s parable, Jesus is teaching us that, at the final judgement, we will be judged and our relationship with him will be measured according to our compassion for the outcast and the stranger. This parable invites us to let compassion for the outcast be our guide in how we see and understand Scripture, history, the world, our lives, and the church. I have personally become convinced that whenever we have compassion for the outcast, the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. That’s her job description. The title that Jesus gives for the Holy Spirit in John is the Paraclete, which means the one who walks alongside the stranger and the outcast.[2]
Nineteenth-century Anglican theologian and ethicist F. D. Maurice (Frederick Denison Maurice) wrote a book titled The Kingdom of Christ and in it he argued that the moral teachings within Scripture (especially the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) equip us with the tools to interpret and even critique other parts of Scripture that portray God as cruel and uncompassionate. According to Maurice, the fact that we find some biblical portrayals of God troubling is evidence of that the deeper ethical teachings of the Bible have taken root within us. Let that truth sink in. The reason you might be uncomfortable with certain parables of Jesus in which some people are cast out into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth is because Jesus’s deeper teachings about compassion for the outcast have taken root within you.
Also, when we hear the common critique among so many non-religious folk who blame the church and other expressions of organized religion for causing so much violence, war, and bloodshed throughout history, we can agree with that critique wholeheartedly while also acknowledging and inviting them to acknowledge that the reason they find that history so troubling in the first place is because the Holy Spirit and the teachings of Christ (and the church) about compassion have taken root within them, whether they want to admit it or not.
German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche understood better than most how much Christ’s teachings on compassion had infiltrated Western society and it made him very upset because he felt that such compassion prevented us from violently seizing power and selfishly grasping for whatever we want, like so many kings and tyrants throughout history. He called Christian ethics “slave morality” because they made us care about and seek to help the weak, the poor, the vulnerable, and the enslaved. Nietzsche ended up suffering a mental breakdown, manic depression, and periodic psychosis. He eventually died a broken and miserable man, perhaps because he realized he was fighting a losing battle. The teachings of Christ the King on compassion had already seeped too deeply into our society “like yeast into pounds of flour, working all through the dough,” to quote another parable of Jesus from Matthew (13:33).
So, if you feel any compassion for those in today’s parable who failed to care for the hungry and the poor in this life and who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41), then guess what? The teachings of Christ the King on compassion have taken root within you and so has the Holy Spirit. Matthew’s Gospel climaxes with the Passion account in which Jesus himself clearly takes on the role of the outcast. Jesus takes on the role of those in his parables who are thrown into the outer darkness because he has compassion on them as well. There’s even the ancient tradition of Jesus descending into hell because he has compassion on all those outcasts too.
We celebrate the Feast of Christ the King today not only because we believe that Christ’s Love and Compassion will have the final word, but also because we get to participate in the Kingdom of Christ even today, on the corner of 15th and H. We get to support the Reign of God’s Love and Compassion here in this community through our time, talent, and treasure; and we get to help this church live into its vision of being a community of compassionate companions walking together in the Way of Christ the King’s self-giving love for all. Amen.
[1] “As she bent over his feet, she felt wet drops falling onto her head. The gentleman was crying; his tears were anointing her. When Betty looked into his face, she had a transformative moment: she saw the face of Jesus in the face of the houseless man. She felt this powerfully throughout her whole body” Karen M. Price, The Gray Bird Sings: The Extraordinary Life of Betty Kwan Chinn (Arcata CA: Cal Poly Humboldt Press, 2023), 132.
[2] “Parakleitos, in Greek, is the exact equivalent of advocate or the Latin ad-vocatus. The Paracelete is called on behalf of the prisoner, the victim, to speak in his place and in his name, to act in his defense. The Paraclete is the universal advocate, the chief defender of all innocent victims, the destroyer of every representation of persecution.” René Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 207.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 