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Christ the King Sunday

Rod Frohman                              Third Presbyterian Church
November 20, 2005                            Matthew 25: 31-46

Thanks to the tutoring of Deborah Hughes, our Interim Associate for Pastoral Care, I have recently been perfecting my skills in Microsoft Excel. It is a software program that is used mainly for financial spread sheets, but, like its twin sister, Microsoft Access, is a good data base program in which to keep and sort data in all kinds of ways. I used Excel for my summer sabbatical study of 100 Presbyterian churches. I asked each minister I interviewed 65 questions about their adult education program and their outreach ministry. I typed their answers into an Excel program thus giving me 6500 “cells” or boxes of data. That is a lot of information. How is it used?

Well, you have to sort it according to certain criteria such as size of congregation, theological type, the number, and type of adult education classes, the type of outreach programs each church had. So, for example, if you sort the data making theological position a constant one can find out if liberal churches have a greater or lesser tendency to have food cupboards than conservative churches.

Thus MS Excel can be rather handy in helping a shepherd separate sheep from goats, or short sheep from tall goats, or black sheep from black goats, or short black sheep from tall white goats, or short white goats fed on grain from tall black goats fed on grass. These are, of course, things a shepherd would want to know, don’t you think?

The Gospel text of the morning says:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, …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, (Matt 25:31-32)

This allegory is based upon a common rural scene in ancient Palestine. At the end of every day a shepherd had to separate his goats from his sheep and get the goats in to a cave or shelter because the thinly furred goats could not withstand the midnight chill.

Imbedded in this sorting allegory are two endings: the ending of the day and time. The allegory works like this: as the shepherd sorts out the goats from the sheep at the end of each day, so we will be sorted out at the end of time by the shepherd king.

Now why all this sorting? Because, suggests Jesus, we are running out of time. Running out of time? Who is running out of time? Time for what?

Observers of culture suggest that as westerners we tend see time as empty. (Christian Century 11-3-99 p. 1052). “Time as empty is space understood to be a box filled by human power and inventiveness. When we understand time as empty we fill it with meaningful content. [jobs, leisure, hobbies] Further, we work, live and love at a frantic pace; speed is of the essence [whether it is miles per hour or megahertz] because the last thing we want to do is to waste time.” (Ibid.)

Biblically construed, time is not empty. In the creation legends in Genesis each day has a different purpose, day one: light and darkness, day four: fish, day six: humans, even a day for rest, the seventh. Biblically speaking, time is not a box in which things happen. (Ibid.) Echoing this sentiment, John Calvin said that we dwell in “the theater of God’s glory”. There is nothing empty about time at all.

Speaking of time, today is the last Sunday in the Christian year, “Christ the King Sunday.” Next Sunday is the First Sunday in Advent. Christmas is not far behind. On this last Sunday of the Christian year we are called to reflect on what we are supposed to do with the time that we have. Christ the King Sunday is the both the opportunity to stop and measure, as well as it is the yardstick by which we measure our time. (Ibid.)

When we say that Christ is our King we affirm that our time is not empty, but is full. There is something already IN our lives. Our lives are measured with a particular yardstick. On Christ the King Sunday we affirm that a first century peasant-rabbi has become our monarch; that is, his rule reaches higher than parliaments, congresses, and oval offices. He measures life from above time and all temporal authorities. In traditional Christian theology Christ the King is also the one who stands at the end of time when all the data of the cosmos will be gathered and brought to him and he will be the one to sort humans one from another when our little experiment is concluded. Therefore, Christ the King Sunday represents the annual reminder that the end is coming, that some day, in some form or another, our time will run out. Some day we will have our day of accountability, a day of measurement, a day of judgment.

How’s that for a cheery little greeting just before we head into the Christmas season? Ho! Ho! Ho!

Knowing that it was the last Sunday of the Christian year, knowing the Gospel text for today is a pretty gruesome allegory about the end of time and the sorting of sheep from goats, with the very troubling words of Jesus, “Depart from me you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and all his angels,” knowing all this, I kept saying to myself, “Rod you can’t stand up in front of those good and faithful people and tell them that. So, just duck the troublesome text and send them home happy.”

So, I'll be the first to admit that all of this sorting and judgment talk makes me uncomfortable, perhaps embarrasses me a bit. But let’s give it a hearing.

Well, what kind of sort criteria will be used? It doesn't turn out the way we think. Notice the criteria that Jesus uses:
I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me. (Matthew 25:34-36)

We are sorted NOT on the basis of what we believe but by what we do. ”But,” we protest, “What happened to our faith in the grace of God which is greater than all our deeds and works?” In Reformed theology we understand this sorting to be part of the long record of God’s grace. The grace of God is not some kind of wienie, bourgeois permissiveness. God’s grace involves forgiveness, but it also involves accountability, judgment—sorting.

So, what we see here in Jesus’ eschatological (eschaton is Greek for “the end”) allegory is that action counts, not words and beliefs. Further, his allegory is an outline of a mission program for any congregation, a program that deals with the hungry, thirsty, naked, and strangers (homeless), sick and prisoners, the ”least of these.” Incidentally, “least of these” literally means “microscopic, impotent, inconsequential”. (Kittel. Theological Word Book of the New Testament Vol. 4 p. 657). Commenting on this Jesus saying Rabbi Harold Kushner once said, “A whole life devoted to just one of the least of these would be a complete life.”

So, who are the sheep? Who are the goats?
The king will say to those on his right, 'Come you who are blessed by my father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world'.

Notice how there is a series of questions that follow; “Lord, when did we see you hungry? thirsty…naked?" The questioning is a reaction of surprise!! When Christ the Shepherd King says, "Come... inherit the kingdom prepared for you”, the reaction of the chosen ones will not be, “Cool, I knew he would chose me.” But rather, “Who me? Really? What did I do that was so terrific?”

But the goats are surprised too. Goats keep their own personal score with God and when they are rejected they protest, "Lord, see what I have done for you!! Certainly I deserve heavenly citizenship.” “Lord, when did we see you hungry and not help you?” “Look at all that we have done.” We are not talking celestial Oscar awards here. It is not obvious to everyone what is going to happen.

When we peel away the hysteria from this allegory, we find that this sorting out will be a surprise to both sheep and goats. There will probably be a lot of people who will discover in the end that they have befriended Christ, presumably without knowing him by name. And they will have been befriended in return. (This allegory of Jesus illustrates why it is so very, very important for Christians to understand that we are not the only religion in the cosmos.) The surprise factor here seems to say that there is more substance to the determination to serve than there is to having formula or doctrine down pat. Further, the allegory says nothing about effectiveness. Jesus only asks, “Did you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit me in prison?” Jesus doesn't ask how many hungry we fed, naked we clothed or prisoners we visited. He just asks, “Did you do it?” (Ibid.)

Which gets to the heart of all of this. We are sorted out by Christ the Shepherd King on the basis of whom we have served. It ultimately is just that simple. Someone is hungry or naked. As we feed and clothe them so we have fed and clothed Christ. Monroe County is economically and racially segregated. As we develop fair housing and open enrollment in our public schools, so we have housed and educated Christ. According to the US Census, 88.4 percent of all U.S. children have no health insurance. So as we provide heath care for all, so we have provided health care for Christ. ( Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2002, http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/healthmedical/a/healthins.htm)

This last Sunday of the Christian year compels evaluation, a gathering of data from the past year or years. Today is a milepost to help us see where we have been and where we are going. Today has the potential to be a valuable day for us to help us to see our ongoing lives in light of the end of the many stages of our lives; the end of the year, the end of the decade, the end of a career, the end of a life, or the end of time.

But when the end comes; and it will come, perhaps with a bang, perhaps with a whimper; when the end comes and we finally face the Shepherd King, I think it will be a rather surprisingly intimate encounter. Somehow I think all the weeping and gnashing of teeth is just exaggeration to get our attention. I see it like this. I think I will sit down together with Christ, in kind of a comfortable coffee shop conversation and he will look me straight in the eye and say, “Well Rod,... tell me…what have you done with your life?”