This is the last Sunday of the church year. Next Sunday begins a brand-new year with the season of Advent — the season of preparation, in which we prepare for the arrival of the Christ child. So why would we use this week before Advent to celebrate the festival of Christ the King, with all of these odd and worrisome readings? Quite simply, because of the Alpha and Omega — the circle of life — the beginning and the end. Next week we will look at the beginning of the story of Jesus, this week, we look at what Jesus tells us about the very end.
In this Gospel reading, Matthew tells us what Jesus has to say about the end of time or the second coming of Christ. Jesus says that He will come back to earth in glory, with all the angels, and will sit on the throne of righteousness. Notice the differences between what it was like when Jesus came to earth the first time and what it will be like next time. The first time He came as a poor, helpless child, born to a teenage mom, in a backwater village. He was born in the lowliest of all circumstances in the most unlikely of places. In other words, he was not only like us, he was born into an even more humble beginning than most of us. And after he was grown, he was an itinerate preacher, depending upon other people for his very existence. Now contrast that with what Matthew describes today.
Jesus will return in triumph and great glory. With angels around Him and with all nations of the world gathered before Him. He will sit on the throne of glory, as ruler of the world. What a difference!
You see, the first time He came, He wanted to draw us closer to Him and to show us a glimpse of the heavenly kingdom, so that we would know who it was that called us and why it was that we should respond. Jesus was gentle and humble and healing because that is what humans respond to the most positively. By his humility, he taught us the power of humility and by his love, taught us the power of love. But when Jesus returns, it will not be the time for all of that. As Matthew’s Gospel makes clear this morning, Jesus’ return will usher in the judgment. Sheep will go one way and goats will go the other. Some will be ushered into the glory of God’s heavenly eternity and others will be cast into the eternal fire where there will undoubtedly be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth — as Matthew is so fond of saying.
We in the Christian world are very familiar with this notion of God’s judgment. Medieval artists have painted foreboding pictures of flames and fire and demons torturing the unfortunate who end up in hell. In more modern times, we have had movies to show us hell and its agonies. 2005’s Constantine, had scenes where the hero and heroine each got pulled into hell and then rescued. The director’s vision was a vast, desert-like wasteland, with scorching heat, howling winds and skeletal demons running wild. No matter who is describing it — from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno to modern movies — images of hell are meant to frighten us.
People have spent lifetimes, and great sums of money trying to “make it up” to God so that they can avoid what they believe might await them when Jesus is the judge of all humanity, or upon their death, whichever comes first. And it was the Roman Catholic clergy’s practice of selling indulgences — a sort of a “get out jail free” pass that could be purchased to keep one from going to purgatory, or worse yet hell, that was the final straw for Martin Luther, and the catalyst for his founding of the Lutheran church.
Some of us worry a great deal about God’s judgment and hell and what might befall us at some future date, and Matthew makes it fairly plain that a negative judgment would not be a pleasant thing. But I’ll let you in on a little secret, if we read this Gospel passage the way I believe Jesus would want us to, we will get an entirely different picture of Jesus as King, coming in judgment.
True enough, Matthew says Jesus will come in judgment, with power and might like we cannot imagine. But what happens next in this section of the Gospel? What follows the discussion of separating the sheep from the goats? The discourse on doing acts of mercy, charity and kindness for the least of Jesus’ brothers. Jesus says we will all be counted as the “blessed of the Father,” who “inherit the kingdom prepared” for us from the foundation of the world, if we will give Jesus some food, a drink, some clothing, simple nursing care and a visit in time of need. Jesus says, when we do this to the least of His brothers, we do these things for Jesus himself and we will inherit the kingdom. That sounds to me like a choice, not like an arbitrary selection of sheep versus goats. This sounds to me more like us walking up to two signs and seeing “Sheep this Way” with an arrow, and “Goats this Way” with an arrow pointing the opposite way, rather than like a conveyor belt on which we ride until we get to the point where Jesus looks at us and points up or down, without giving us any explanation. To me, today’s reading is the text which proves something that one of my seminary professors told us many times. He said, “the gates of hell are locked from the inside.” That means that we get to hell, indeed we stay in hell, by our choice, not by God’s choice.
John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world that He gave His only son to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That is a great statement of the God whom I have read about and experienced in my own life. The God of all creation, who made a covenant with the children of Israel and said, “you are my children and I am your God, I will never abandon you.” That same God has always been faithful to that covenant, no matter how many times the children have been unfaithful. That same God loves us so much that God became incarnate, took on our very humanity in order save us from our sinful selves. Jesus died once for all. His death and resurrection broke the bonds of death and threw open the gates of hell. But there were still people in hell, trapped in a prison of their own making. The only thing that Jesus could not and cannot save us from is our own choice to ignore His calls to us.
Today’s discussion of caring for the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters is a call to us to live a Christ-like life; to do those things that Christ would do in every situation. With this simple choice — simple to make, not so simple to carry out — we can self-select as sheep and rest certain that we will inherit the kingdom prepared for us when Jesus returns.
Now, here comes the rub — the process of selection is never over. At least not until our lives on earth are over. Every day, in every encounter of our lives, there are two signs hanging over our path. We need to keep those signs in mind as we go about our daily business during the week. Let Jesus’ words and the vision of the signs guide us as we are faced with decisions like, “what do I do when this homeless man comes up to me and asks me for money?” Or, “how should I deal with my child, who has disappointed me so badly?’ Or, “what is the best way to handle my boss whose demands are totally unreasonable?” Or, “How do I treat this member of the congregation who pushes my buttons and gets on my last nerve?” It is all of one big piece, you see. How we treat God’s children is, in every instance, how we treat Jesus.
So the next time you are faced with a situation in which people have been divided into groups or camps, into “us” and “them,” or otherwise given a label so that you are tempted to treat them as somewhat less than human, remember that the signs hanging over the groups may look like, “us” and “them” when we look at them, but to Jesus, they may just read, “Sheep” and “Goats.” Self-selection is available all day, every day. Be careful what you choose.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who will come again in glory, to judge the world. Amen.
[Proper 29A Christ the King, Matthew 25:31-46]
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