Looking back in my files for this coming Sunday, when we celebrate the festival of Christ the King with the Gospel story of the coming of the Son of Man and the judgment of the nations, I didn’t find a single sermon that I felt worked from start to finish. But it’s such a compelling passage, so fearful and emotionally intense, that it always manages to summon up something. So I’ve compiled a few excerpts that might be edifying. As always, preaching ideas are free to a good home.
The King and his Court (2008)
Imagine, for a moment, that it is England in the 14th century, and you are an ordinary person living in the city of York. Like everyone else, you are a Catholic. You can’t read or write, but hear the sermons at church and you know the stories from plays and from artwork. You want to be saved. You believe in Jesus and you receive communion a few times a year. But you know that you’re sinful, too.
Imagine that it’s a high annual festival, and all the guilds of artisans in the city are putting on plays. Each play is on a wagon processing through the city. They depict the whole story of the Bible, from the creation of the world to the last day. You watch them as they stop by the town gate. Since it’s a festival day and there’s no work to be done, you might sneak out during the play on Noah’s ark, or Jesus in the temple. The young men and young women are out enjoying themselves. There are games to be played and casks of ale to be drunk. Imagine you hurry back, half-buzzed, perhaps flushed with the excitement of meeting a fellow young person, in time for the last wagon. It’s the one paid for by the fabric dealers and dry-goods merchants, the wealthiest in town. The sun is going down. The stage pulls up to reveal Christ enthroned in glory, looking out at you and everyone you know.
Christ has come to judge the living and the dead. He separates the people like sheep and goats. The sheep, on his right, will be those who have ministered to him in the form of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner. They will enter into eternal bliss, even though they did not know that they were serving the Son of Man and the King of the Universe. The goats, on his left, will be those who neglected the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner. They will enter into eternal punishment, even though they did not know whom they neglected. On stage a gaping hell’s mouth, with flames stoked inside, yawns open to receive the damned. And you are in the middle, watching this spectacle. Which group would you join at the last day? What good deeds have you done? Are they enough? You give alms, but have you given enough? You share what you have with the monks and travelers who are in need, but have you been generous enough? You live now in the time of mercy, but the time of mercy, the time of God’s patience, will not endure forever. The day of judgment will come.
This terrifying passage was, for centuries, the most important image of Christ’s return. Long before the Left Behind series promised a rapture for the righteous, Christians were taught to fear the judgment in Matthew 25….
This is the point in the sermon when my preaching professor would want me to find some “good news” in this reading. I am supposed to produce a unicorn from out of this pile of manure. And there isn’t one there to be found. It’s not because I don’t want to be encouraging and comforting. It’s because the world out there can be so cold and hard, and we can get so warm and drowsy in our protected lives. The task that falls to us, then, is not to berate ourselves for doing too little. It is to change our perspective. It’s to change our perspective from ourselves and our needs, wants, fears, and good deeds to God and the world God loves. The question, “have you fed, watered, welcomed, clothed, healed, visited enough” will never have an answer. The question “who is the king, and who are his treasured subjects?” is one we can all answer.
Today’s story is fearful, but it is also a story about Christ the King. This king’s high-ranking officials, his representatives, his no-good relatives appointed to good jobs, are the hungry, thirsty, foreign, naked, sick, imprisoned. He takes his throne among them and rewards their friends, shunning the wealthy and the powerful who have not heard the call of compassion. He rules not as a tyrant or petty dictator but as a gracious, patient, and suffering savior. We, on the other hand, live in rebel-controlled territory. We live and work in a world that does not know and does not trust Christ’s kingship, and it is our daily struggle to be faithful to that king who sometimes feels so far off.
Surviving the Apocalypse (2017)
For a long, long time this passage was the definitive picture for Christians of the final judgment. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s the most frightening of all of them.
Why is it so scary?
Because the nations of the earth do not know what they are doing. Or rather, they do not know whom they are doing it to.
In fact, the story isn’t even a judgment. The judgment is already happening. The choices that the peoples of the nations are making right now will be the choices that determine eternity, and they do not know it. The hungry are being fed or left hungry right now. The thirsty are being given access to water or not right now. The foreigners are being invited in or turned away, the naked are being sheltered from the cold or left to bear it, the sick are being cared for or left on their own, the prisoners are being succored or they are languishing right now, because of decisions that people are already making. And the King of heaven and earth from before the foundation of the world is among them in his people and the nations of the world do not know it.
They are heedless. Even now. And it is a bitter, frightening thought that when the revelation does come, when the truth is unveiled, it is too late. The peoples of the earth have already judged themselves. They have already placed themselves on one side or the other, with the sheep or with the goats.
And we can try plugging any rationalization or any argument that we would give for these decisions into this story and see how they sound. Think about what we hear—or even what we say—when we see the basic duty of generosity and solidarity with another human life being denied. They didn’t work for it. They did something wrong. It was a personal choice. They are responsible for their own problems. It’s just not realistic. Imagine those words being said to Christ the King on his throne of glory. Said to him, about him. How will those words sound?
So how do we survive such a terrifying apocalypse? How do we survive an apocalypse that no semiautomatic weapons or canned foods can endure, and that we can’t escape from even on the mountains of New Zealand? If there is a consolation for us in this story, it is that we have heard the revelation in advance. We have heard the end of the story ahead of time. In Matthew’s Gospel, the whole world is without excuse. But we, the followers of Jesus and the hearers of his Word, have been brought back behind the screen. He has tried to pierce the armor of our own heedlessness and hard-heartedness by showing us not what will come about, but what already is happening. We have seen the Son of Man being served or neglected even now. We, who are being conformed to his image in baptism and the sacrament and the word of life—we know it. We, who are called daily by the Holy Spirit to offer our prayers and rededicate our faith and share our gifts—we know it. We, who are joined in Christ’s body to his littlest, poorest, most forsaken sister and brother, whom we cannot flee even if we wanted to, no matter how far we go—we know it. We, who are called to bear witness to Christ’s reign of glory in the midst of his hunger and thirst and rejection—we know it.
Now and Then (2020)
This is happening right now. The world is passing judgment on itself right now, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, in its actions and choices. And the point of the story today is that no one knows. No one knows because the Son of Man appears to the world hidden in the presence of his least brothers and sisters. If he appeared as a powerful politician or captain of industry, he’d be given priority admission to a good hospital and the best treatment money can buy, the best legal representation and all the food and drink he could want. But as he appears in a humble form, he gets whatever we give to the least, poorest, most despised member of his Body.
That’s the dread of this passage. The final judgment will be nothing more than the past becoming clear. Not God nit-picking this or that sin or failing, not God avenging petty slights or indulgences, but humanity placing itself finally and irrevocably where it wanted to be all along: with the sheep, or with the goats.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us, so to say, in the middle. In the present. When the Son of Man says “the least of these who are members of my family,” the word is the same one Jesus uses in other places for the church: the brethren, the brothers and sisters. The church in this picture is not among the nations of the earth. The little flock that follows the voice of Christ and hears his words and shares the grace of his sacraments and devotes itself to the works he commands will be fine. In fact, in this story, we stand in as Christ’s representative. For the most vulnerable and deprived members of the Body, what is done to them is done to Him. For all of us, we have the task of making this vision plain to the world around us. In our personal and communal charity. In our words--whether we are speaking of the poor and outcast as fully human, and indeed as bearing the image of Christ in the world. And in our message to our neighbors and fellow citizens. What we did yesterday, what we do today, what we will do tomorrow will last forever. If you see something, say something, we’ve been taught for twenty years now. If you see the future, you are obligated to tell the future.
That, sisters and brothers, is our role. We are given the blessing and the responsibility of living both now, and then. We are told by our King that the past and future are always right here in front of us, that the day of judgment is happening now all around us. Mercy must come through us. We are taught by our King, who is and who was and who will be from before the beginning to after the end, that even God’s justice is an expression of love--love of the Father for the Son; the Son who loves the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and imprisoned. That even the dread warning we hear today is a word of love. Christ pleading with the world, “You do not have to do this to me. You did not have to do this to yourself.”
And we are called by our King to show him to the world, in our acts of love, in our demands for fairness and decency, in our defense of the least of our brothers and sisters.
This is the King we serve. He rules all time, all lives, all the world. There is no place in the universe, and no moment in time, where he is not present, loving and suffering and healing and transforming. He stands at the eternal crossing of past and future, with a suffering love that will recoil on every life for better or for worse. And we stand there with him, pleading, working, praying, and above all hoping that the vindication of our God and King will come to all those in need today, and will restore every heart that has set out for him. Amen.