Glimpses of the kingdom…a sermon on Matthew 25:31-46

A.Hanson, 2009

From a sermon preached at Holy Love Lutheran Church.

Gospel Text: Matthew 25:31-46

Grace, peace, and mercy are yours from the Triune God.  Amen.

Today is the last Sunday in the liturgical year. On this particular day we talk about the person of Jesus Christ and God’s ongoing work in the world. We talk about what it means to have a King who defies earthly standards for what is royal and we learn about who we are in relationship to this King. The kingdom of God is now, not some far away time or place, and Christ shall reign forever and ever. 

Which is all well and good until we get a text like today’s Gospel from Matthew 25, which doesn’t sound like something to celebrate.  Jesus has gathered on the Mount of Olives with his disciples and they have asked him to describe what the end of the age will look like.  Today’s Gospel text comes from Jesus’ final time of conversation with his disciples prior to the beginning of his trial and passion.  In typical Jesus style, he decides to tell a story.

The story features a king who has gathered “all the nations” before his throne.  This king is said to separate the people from one another as a shepherd will separate sheep from goats. The king says to those on his right hand, the sheep, that they have been blessed and will inherit the kingdom.  They provided food, water, hospitality, clothing, and companionship to others during their time of need.  This group asks, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food? We were just serving others.”  The king says to the people, “Truly I tell you, just as you did to the least of these who are members of my family, you did for me.”  Then the king turns to those on his left, the goats, and says, “You are accursed, depart from me and into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food…” and so on. Those on the king’s left say, “Lord, we never saw you.  Therefore, we were never able to serve you.”  The king responds, “Just as you did not serve those who were in need, you did not serve me.” 

This text is a favorite among Christians everywhere, particularly those who have a bent towards social justice, because it is such a clear exhortation to be of service to one’s neighbor. Because just as Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are my family, you did it to me.” But the underlying motivation for many, if not most, Christians is not to be of service to one’s neighbor because of the Christ in them, but rather, an overwhelming desire NOT to be a goat. It is easy to read this parable and make it simply a humanitarian call for good works, which unfortunately correlates with a reading that our salvation is achieved by what we do.

We are entering into the season of good works. In just a few days we will be celebrating Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas in a few short weeks. If you have not already received the annual mailers from the Denver Rescue Mission, your time is coming. There is a pull this time of year to donate money, canned goods, toys, or warm winter clothing to one’s neighbors because “It’s what good people do” and perhaps, doing good works lets us be a bit more self-absorbed when it comes to holiday consumerism and consumption. If we toss a few dollars the way of “the least of these” it lets us buy our new electronics and clothing with a bit less guilt and feel warm and snug in our salvation by material means. I am not sure that any of us actually believe that doing holiday good works helps us rack up more points on a heavenly scorecard, but donating money for tax deductions at the end of the year or donating our cast-off household items to those who should be thankful for them is no less selfish than thinking we can coordinate our own salvation by what we do.

I am not convinced that the distinction between sheep and goats in today’s Gospel text is as clear-cut as Jesus would have us believe.  I know that I am both a sheep and a goat.  I recycle, I give to non-profit organizations, I listen to NPR, and I do my best to be a good person.  Yet while I am driving home from my chaplain job, I refuse to make eye contact with the people standing on the corner of Broadway and Sixth Ave with their signs because I am feeling fatigued from being of service to people all day long.  If we were measuring salvation by what we do, I would most certainly not measure up.  None of us would.

But in making this parable about the sheep and goats and avoiding everlasting turmoil or securing everlasting salvation, we miss a very important thing. Where is God in this parable?  God is not in the sheep.  God is in the people who are in need. Both the sheep and the goats seem to be surprised by this.  And I think it surprises us too. We want to think that we are somehow the ones bringing God to those people who desperately need God in their suffering.  We have a hard time imagining that God is already in the midst of the hungry, the imprisoned, the sick, and the lonely. There is an entire mission-trip industry built upon the desire of well-intentioned Christians to bring the “love of Christ” to people in need, but God is already there. Jesus is more likely to be found in a prison than a parsonage, or in a mental hospital instead of a mega-church.

So what’s the good news? Why read this text in a church?  And particularly, why read this text on a Sunday where we celebrate the Reign of Christ in the world?

What would happen if we view the coming Kingdom, the Reign of Christ in a new world not as something that is far off, but as something that is breaking in now? God is already here among us, making things new, stirring things up, working in, through, around and beside us. God is in us in our work as sheep, and in us when we are the broken and needy ones who are being cared for by the sheep. This is the Kingdom! The reign of Christ looks like: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me a cup of cool water, I was in the hospital and you came to see me, I was in prison and you visited me, I was an immigrant and you showed me hospitality in a strange land, I was standing on the corner of 6^th and Broadway and you met my eyes and smiled at me.

People of God, the kingdom of heaven is not far away, it is breaking in among us even now. Where might we see glimpses of the reign of Christ?  During his public address on Thursday night, President Obama cited this very scripture text in his call for justice and reform on immigration issues, and to welcome and make a way for our brothers and sisters from other countries, because we see the face of Christ in them.  I call this a glimpse of the kingdom! My friend Margaret is the pastor of a food truck church in St Paul, MN. She hands out calzones and the Peace of Christ on the streets.  I call this the kingdom! Yesterday during my shift in the emergency room I held an elderly woman’s hand as she was experiencing a heart attack and was terrified. I call that a glimpse of the kingdom! We see Christ in the face of our neighbors and in those people who meet us in our own time of need. The kingdom of God is now, not some far away time or place, and Christ shall reign forever and ever.  Amen!

What kind of king is this? A sermon on Luke 23:33-43

Grace, peace and mercy are yours, from the Triune God.  Amen.

As I prepare sermons, I often find that bits and pieces of music stay with me.  A scripture text will often remind me of a song, and that music becomes the accompaniment for my writing.  As I prepared to write this sermon for Christ the King Sunday, I was accompanied by the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.  Some of the words of this magnificent piece are, “King of Kings, forever and ever” and “he shall reign forever and ever” and perhaps most profoundly, “the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.”  But the majesty and beauty conveyed in this stunning composition seems downright bizarre when compared to what we hear from Luke’s Gospel today.

This Gospel text seems more suited to something we would hear on Good Friday.  It seems to belong more with the scripture texts of Holy Week than on the last Sunday of the church year, this day that we call Christ the King Sunday.  To call Jesus a king when we hear a text like this seems more like a brutal farce than it does a confession of truth.  The Jesus described in today’s Gospel text is not the sort of king that we would choose, given the opportunity.

Our idea of a king is triumphant.  Someone who demands respect from those around him. Someone who is not going to be humiliated.  Someone who hates all the same people that we do and someone that we can call upon to do battle against all the things that we find to be cruel and unjust.  This King would not keep company with undesirable people and would silence those who would stand against us, using power and might.  We come from a culture without a history of royalty, but we make other things into our kings.  We make political parties the ultimate mediators of what is right or wrong, good or bad.  We place general principles and ideals above individual people and situations.  We see money and property and possessions as the ultimate security in this life.  A king is anything in which we might put our trust to protect and defend us.

In this way, we are really no different from the crowd surrounding the cross. This crowd, probably composed of curious onlookers, along with some of Jesus’ faithful followers, and other Jewish folks, had lived with a story their entire lives of a Messiah who would come to earth to save them.  This Messiah would be regal and wise, like King David, and would be strong enough to defeat their enemies.  This Messiah would avenge generations of injustice.   This Messiah would protect and defend.

With all this in mind, today’s Gospel text from Luke is terribly painful to hear.  It sounds like a story of brutal defeat. Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, hangs on a cross, among convicted criminals.  Not only has he failed to save the people, he cannot even save himself. He is mocked and tormented by Roman soldiers. Jesus speaks only twice and in ways that seem shockingly absurd given what is happening to him.  He says of those crucifying him, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” and the last words spoken before his death are uttered to a criminal executed on the cross next to him, “Truly I tell you, you will be with me in paradise.”  While the soldiers and the crowd mockingly call Jesus a King and taunt him with calls to “save yourself!”, the only person who actually sees Jesus for who he is a criminal sentenced to death.  We do not hear the crimes for which these two men are convicted, but we do hear that they have been justly sentenced.   This scene at the time of Jesus’ death is a reflection of his entire ministry.

Throughout his life, Jesus kept company with people who live on the margins of  “nice” society.  And in his death, he is not surrounded by family and friends at a quiet bedside, but rather criminals as he hangs on a cross, above a jeering crowd. And it is to these marginalized folks, people with nowhere else to go and no one to turn to, that Christ is everything.  That he is truly the King.  The criminal on the cross next to Jesus had nothing to lose by asking Jesus to see him and forgive him.  And Jesus sees him and hears him, and invites him into heaven.  This is profoundly hopeful for me…for all of us…and this is the essence of what it means to call Christ a King. 

In the midst of a situation that seems desperate, at a place called “the skull”, in the middle of death by crucifixion, Jesus is still extending words of overwhelming grace. To those who torment him, and those who suffer alongside him.  Literally with his dying breath he is saying, “You will never be separated from the love of God.”  No matter what you have done, or failed to do, you will still be with me in paradise.  THIS is the kind of King that we need.  This king protects and defends us from all the things of this world that would separate us from God. God in Christ is continually noticing, forgiving, and making new all sorts of hopeless situations, people, and places.

Christ knows suffering.  Christ knows what it means to be in unimaginable, excruciating pain.  He knows death. To me this is infinitely more hopeful than any king that would defend or protect with brute force, wealth, or political power.  Because of who Christ is and what Christ does, we are never separated from God. For all of us who feel like we are put on trial and convicted over and over again for not being good enough, wealthy enough, successful enough, Christ says, “You will never be separated from the love of God.”  For all of us who struggle with the painful realities of addiction, depression, and broken relationships, Christ says, “You will never be separated from the love of God. For I have endured suffering and death and triumphed over all these things for your sake. “  He shall reign forever and ever. 

I have been thinking a lot about why we have this text at the end of the liturgical year. We start each church year on the first Sunday of Advent, with texts that tell of the coming of the Messiah.  We move into the season of Christmas and tell the story of the birth of Christ, and then comes Epiphany.  We move into Lent.  We hear the story of the last week of Jesus’ life and his triumph over death during Holy Week.  Pentecost is the celebration of the giving of the Holy Spirit to all the people of the world.  Then, in the time after Pentecost we tell the stories of the life of Jesus.  This final Sunday of the liturgical year is a statement about the person of Jesus Christ and God’s ongoing work in the world.  The kingdom of God is now, not some far away time or place, and Christ shall reign forever and ever.  Hallelujah.  Hallelujah.  Hallelujah.