Christ the King 2023

EZEKIEL 34:11-16, 20-24  PSALM 100      EPH 1: 15-23     MATT 25: 31-46

Today we celebrate Christ the King. In liturgical terms this Sunday is the baby of the family, only initiated in 1925, in response to the reign of Mussolini, and the rise of fascism. It was put into the church calendar to remind her people that Christ is Sovereign, not Mussolini.

In the 1920s, the church may well have needed reminding that because Jesus is King, Mussolini is not. And isn’t it ever thus? Today perhaps the church still needs reminding that because we believe Christ is our Ruler, then it means neither Charles nor Albo nor Biden nor Netanyahu nor Zelensky, nor anyone else, past present or future, can possibly be sovereign. Not in the real order of things.

So what does this rule and reign look like? What does it mean for us who try to follow the true King, and live in his alternative kingdom?

I came to the scriptures late this week, but it turned out they had already been chasing me. When I read the gospel reading, we’d already heard it at morning prayer and I’d already made the journey to Yongah Hill Detention Centre to see Ned.

In the 2+ years I have been visiting Ned we have sat in a variety of prison visiting rooms, on screwed down chairs with no natural daylight. Very occasionally we have been given a glass of water. But this week there is a new ruling. Now visitors can bring in factory-sealed snacks to share. So, with my cellophane neatly in place, I arrived at the soulless, colourless, miserable detention room with sweet baklava and biscuits and sour cherry juice, and we sat and shared this mishmash meal together. And while I joked to Ned that this was the first time we had been out for dinner, and I didn’t rate his choice of restaurant much, the food we shared felt almost as sacred as our holy meal here. It was a communion of sorts.

And when I read this gospel passage ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, … I was in prison and you visited me’ I knew afresh that, although it looked to those stone-faced eager-eyed guards that this was just a detainee and priest eating pastries, I knew, I know, that we were eating with the Christ; that we could see him, if we cared to notice, in the faces of each other, in the eating and drinking and in the visiting.

And I heard Clare O’Neill spouting vitriol on sky news about the release of people from indefinite detention, and I heard her describe them as deplorable and disgusting. I heard her say ‘I don’t want these people in our country’ and I dared to believe the truth that if we draw the line of who is in and who is out, then we are in danger of creating a divide and discovering we are on one side and Christ is on the other.

Whenever we say one is in, and another is out we will always find Jesus is never quite where we expect him to be. Because in his alternative rule and reign, he will always be found on the margins – his Kingdom flourishes and grows and blossoms right there on the edges, because that is where the hungry and thirsty and lonely and sick and naked and imprisoned and enslaved and hated people are found. Those are our King’s people – they are the people of the Kingdom. They are his family. And if we are hungry or sick or detained or bought and sold or despised – then we are first in line to his throne.

And for the vast majority of us who aren’t counted in that number, we should make certain sure we are in their company, because in the feeding and visiting and sharing and giving, in the hanging out on the margins, with all that might cost us and all that might take, it is there that we will meet Christ.  It’s there we will be changed. We might need to move ourselves from our comfort to discomfort, from wealth to poverty, from fitting in to being judged and excluded, but the riches we find there will be beyond measure. Hang out in the darkness because that is where the true light breaks in.

You know, I was brought up in a church that was all about making sure you were on the right side of the line – you’ve got to be sure you’re a sheep not a goat because Jesus is coming back, and he’s going to send you to fire and damnation if you’re on the wrong side of the divide. That theology was damaging to me – is damaging – and I could never find the good news. It was a rule of fear and didn’t help me know how to be free to live now. So, when I read these verses about judgment and separation and eternal punishment I don’t know what to do with them. But I do know this: our King is a king of love, a gentle servant shepherd, a just and righteous King and this passage says he does the dividing. It’s up to him and it’s not up to me.

It is up to him, but he is very clear on the bit that is up to me – feed, give, clothe, care, visit, notice others and take light to the places of darkness. Simple, clear instructions for living. And if we focus on that, if we focus on the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner, if we focus on making sure our welcome is unconditional and inviting, if we add our voices to the light instead of the darkness of exclusion and judgment then we will see the Christ. And we will know him. And we will learn we are blessed by the Father since the foundation of the world.

And as we gaze out from the good pasture of our lush grazing land among the flock, so we may see that the goat pen is empty because all have been gathered in.

Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.

Amen.