(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “C the K”, originally shared on November 22, 2023. It was the 286th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
This coming Sunday is Christ the King Sunday
throughout the world. The news in many churches is not going to be good. Today,
we’re going to find out what the good news is, and where to find it.
Some things, even when we know that they are
coming, when they do happen, come as a surprise. For example, Christ the King
Sunday comes and we think, “What?! Next Sunday is Advent? There are only three
more Sundays before Christmas Eve!
Or when the Rolling Stones announce another
tour, and it’s sponsored by AARP!
Or the second coming of Jesus Christ.
This coming Sunday, churches all over the
world will celebrate the end of the Church year. They will consider the end of
history on Christ the King Sunday. They will consider the Final Judgement, the
coming of a new heaven and a new earth. And, in many churches, they will hear
bad news. And there will be lots of it.
Some people just dislike the term “kingdom”.
It sounds too male, too authoritarian, too distant. To some it sounds too white.
Too colonial. Too established. Too absolute. Too Western. Too judgmental. Which
is ironic, given that the Gospel reading for Sunday is about the last
Judgement.
Some would replace “kingdom” with “kindom”
as a more communal way to describe the kingdom. To do that, they must replace
“king” with “kin”. We must replace God’s kingdom with our own.
Some others would replace “kingdom” with
“reign”. They remove the maleness and soften the power dynamic, but still have the
authority and the enforcement to deal with.
Some would replace “kingdom” with “realm”,
as if to say that God had one and should stay in God’s lane.
But I get it. We in the United States had a
revolution to get rid of kings so that the people could rule. It was a radical
idea then, in human history, and it is a radical idea right now. One that we
are still fighting for.
We don’t want to be dominated.
“Domination” is a bad word in our culture,
outside of the sports world. But the root word in “domination” is the Latin
word “dominus”, i.e., lord or master. As is the role of a king.
It’s the same root in the word “dominion”,
as when God creates and commissions human beings, in Genesis
1:26-28,
26 Then
God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air,
and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
27 So God
created humankind in his image,
in the
image of God he created them;
male
and female he created them.
28 God
blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the
earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
To have “dominion” means to have authority
over, as a manager does in our culture. It’s a role given by God in which human
beings are empowered to manage and care for Creation, like a good King, acting
under the will of God, would care for a kingdom.
We describe Jesus as our lord and master.
That is, as our king. And we long for his return.
And the reading from the Gospel of Matthew
that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming
Sunday, on Christ the King Sunday, tells us what his return will look like. It
starts with Matthew 25:31-33,
31 “When
the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will
sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All
the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from
another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he
will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
There will be a judgement and there will be
a division and it will be undertaken by Christ the King. The good king. The
king of kings. The Lord of all. He is not the figurehead of a system that must
be decolonized and dismantled. He is the head of the Church, the body of Christ.
He is the one that people long for when they
know that they are powerless, when they need a good ruler to be in charge, when
they know they need someone who is both Savior and Lord, Christ and King. When they
know that they need Jesus. And it has always been so.
The first recorded Christian prayer comes in
the second to the last verse of the very last book of the Bible, in Revelation
22:20,
20 The
one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”
Amen.
Come, Lord Jesus!
And when he comes, how will this judgement
and this division take place?
We see the mechanics of it, continuing in Matthew
25, in verses 34-45,
34 Then
the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 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, 36 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.’ 37 Then
the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and
gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And
when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you
clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in
prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will
answer them, ‘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.’ 41 Then
he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I
was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to
drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome
me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not
visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when
was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in
prison, and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then
he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the
least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And
these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal
life.”
That part is very bad news. At least on the
surface.
It seems to say that whether we go to heaven
or hell depends entirely on how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, people
passing through, the unclothed, the sick and those in prison.
It’s said that rock ‘n roll has reinforced the
Biblical messages that there’s a highway to hell but only a stairway to heaven.
But can it be that hard to go to heaven if all we have to do is help the needy?
Yes and no.
If that is all we have to do if we take a
literal view of this text, then why the cross and empty tomb? Why salvation by
God’s grace through faith?
If good works is all we have, haven’t we
just substituted one form of the letter of the law for another?
If that is all we have then that is very bad
news.
How can we ever know if we have done enough?
Is the Christian life lived planning how to manage our resources so that we can
go to heaven? How can we know where the line is between the needy and the not
needy, so that we do not run out of resources?
Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that
the world’s greatest challenge is that we don’t define the word “family”
broadly enough. What does it mean to care for “the least of these who are
members of my family”? This text was written when almost everyone was poor;
does it have a different meaning in our more affluent culture? Should it make
us feel inadequate or guilty as Thanksgiving approaches?
Those are the questions of those living
under the Law, not the Gospel.
I don’t think that “doing” is what it’s
about at all. I think that this text is about “being” the new Creation in Jesus
Christ. The “doing” is what then follows.
I think that Jesus is describing a life of
faith, of a transformed life, of a life lived in a living relationship with the
one true living God. We care for all to whom God sends us in the name of Jesus!
I think that Jesus is describing a life in
which faith produces works, not the other way around. It’s what a life of faith
looks like.
That is, that Christians don’t need a Bible reading
to tell us to care for others. It is as natural for us as it is for a fruit
tree to bear fruit.
I think it’s like the story about the man
who died and went to heaven.
Just before he entered the pearly gates,
however, he turned to St. Peter and said, “I’m really looking forward to what I
know is on the other side of these gates but, I also know that once I get
inside, I’ll be changed. I don’t know if it will happen, but I think that I
might always wonder what life in the other place was like. So, I’d like to ask
if it would be possible to visit the other place, just briefly, to see for
myself.”
“Granted,” said St. Peter, and the man found
himself at the gates of hell.
He walked through and was greeted by a
horrible sight.
Inside, he saw rows and rows of tables
stretching to the horizon. Each table was piled high with delicious food and
drink, but the people sitting at the tables were starving.
The reason they were starving was that
three-foot long forks and spoons had been fixed to their arms, and while they
could put food in the utensils, the ends were too long to reach their months,
so they were starving.
“I’ve seen enough,” he said, and he was
transported back to the gates of heaven.
When he walked through, however, he saw
people sitting at the same kinds of tables stretching to the horizon, piled
high with the same food and drink. And the people also had three-foot long
forks and spoons fixed to their arms.
But, here, people were laughing and healthy
and singing praises to God.
The difference was that, here, people were
using their utensils to feed each other.
That idea had never occurred to the people
in hell and that, in part, was why they were there.
We serve others because that is our new
nature as people who have been remade by God. That’s the good news!
Words of Jesus near the beginning of his
public ministry in all four Gospels have a similar theme:
Matthew
4:17,
17 From that time Jesus began
to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Mark 1:14-15,
14 Now after John was arrested,
Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the
good news.”
Luke 4:43,
43 But he said to them, “I must
proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I
was sent for this purpose.”
John
3:3,
3 Jesus
answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God
without being born from above.”
Jesus says more about the kingdom of God
than about any other subject. He came to establish the already but yet fully
established kingdom. Citizenship in it is preceded by our being born from
above.
We are brothers and sisters in Christ because
of Jesus. As a colleague said online the other day, you have to have a kingdom
before you can have a kindom.
We have a king in Jesus and in him we have
kin.
Many people today see CK and think “Calvin
Klein”. Some think of the stage name of comedian Louis C.K. (the sound of his family
name, Székely). We think of Christ the King.
Though, it’s hard to picture “Christ” and “King”
in the same sentence unless you know Jesus as Savior and Lord. It’s hard to
picture a loving God, who is both merciful and just, committing people
to heaven and hell, unless you trust in Him.
Father Nicky Gumbel, the Evangelical
Anglican priest, and founder of the Alpha program, said, that he believes that
after the Last Judgement the hosts of people gathered will consider what God
has done and they will say, “That’s fair.”
Jesus Christ is our King not to give us more
laws, but to fulfill them in his death and resurrection. We simply live in
response to what he has already done for us. It’s why we celebrate this
coming Sunday on Christ the King Sunday.
Current events in Israel have sent many
people to their Bibles to search for the signs of the end. They need look no
farther than the Gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday.
The good news of life and salvation, the
gospel, is found in God, not in ourselves.
Instead of striving for things, Jesus calls
us to strive for the kingdom first and let God handle the rest, and then says,
in Luke 12:32,
32 “Do
not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you
the kingdom.
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