Christ the King Sunday: November 20, 2011

Christ the King Sunday: November 20, 2011
Matthew 25:31-46
Preacher: Pastor Carrie B. Smith

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

My dear people, today is a very important day. As of today, it’s only five days until Thanksgiving, six days until Black Friday, seven days until Advent, and only 35 days until Christmas! In fact, considering the time crunch you are all under, I am grateful to see so many of you in the pews today.

I’m especially grateful to see you because today is also an important day in the church. Today is Christ the King Sunday, otherwise known as the last Sunday of the church year. Next week begins a new church year and the Advent season, when we will begin awaiting with joyful anticipation the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Admittedly, Christ the King isn’t one of our most familiar Christian observances. As far as I can tell, Hallmark hasn’t discovered it yet! And there are those who wonder if Christ the King Sunday has outlived its usefulness, given the fact that most of us have never lived under a king’s rule. Celebrating Jesus as a monarch on a throne seems out of step with our more sophisticated, democratic way of life.

But then again, there is a certain wisdom in celebrating the kingship of Christ at this particular time of year.

Why? Because especially at this time of year, as we enter the holiday season, there are many powers and principalities at work which threaten to become kings in our lives.

First and foremost, King Christmas has reclaimed its throne this week. Everywhere we look, we see signs of King Christmas and its kingdom. King Christmas and Christ the King are not one and the same! Christ the King is our good shepherd and the prince of peace. King Christmas demands that we find good deals on gifts, plan a delicious meal, compete in the neighborhood decoration contest, travel in sketchy weather to see friends and family, and smile while we are doing it! As if our lives were not stressful enough, now the achievement of a perfectly cooked, beautifully wrapped, well-designed, warm and fuzzy Christmas has so much authority over us that we’re already stressed about the holidays on November 20th—and it’s not even Advent, my friends! And we still have 5 days until Thanksgiving…which is good, since I haven’t been to the grocery store yet.

On this Christ the King Sunday, when we honor the kingship of Christ in our lives, it is good and right to examine our lives and take inventory of the other so-called authorities demanding our attention and obedience.

King Christmas is just one of many. A list of other false monarchs could include King Economy, Queen Politics, Prince Achievement and Princess Tradition, also known as “Princess We’ve Never Done it That Way Before.”

And then, there’s King Football.

The authority of football has been all over the news for two weeks—and unfortunately the talk hasn’t been about the upcoming holiday football games. “King Football” is at the heart of the recent Penn State sexual abuse scandal. This scandal has shocked us, and makes us ask how such a terrible thing could happen in one of the most revered football programs in the country. Discussing this very question, National Public Radio featured an interview last week with Dave Ridpath, a professor of sports administration at Ohio University, who says the current scandal at Penn State is the most extreme example of a college sports system that protects teams at all costs.

Ridpath told the NPR interviewer: “…to be clear, this is possibly the worst scandal that I've heard of in college athletics and it takes a lot to shock me when I talk about college sports. But what I will say is it shows the lengths that very smart, very distinguished people, the lengths that they will go to to protect King Football, to protect the brand, to protect the image, to protect highly-paid coaches is immense.

And when you think that smart administrators - and these are smart people at Penn State - would act in this way when confronted with the safety of children…is almost mind-boggling.”

To be sure, it was just one disturbed individual who committed these crimes against children, but it was “King Football” who kept good people—smart administrators and well-loved coaches—from speaking out when young boys were being abused. Indeed, it seems that like dutiful subjects of the king, a number of good people went to great lengths to protect the football program, the university’s reputation, and their own positions within the kingdom. This is the power of a king over us: a king requires that above all else, we protect him and his interests.

And this is where our Gospel text for today, from the 25th chapter of Matthew, intersects with this news story. For it is in this Gospel passage that we meet a different kind of king: a king who is indeed powerful, and who expects our obedience—but whose interests and priorities surprise us.

Matthew 25 is sometimes called “The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats”, and at first, it seems an odd choice for Christ the King Sunday. The passage starts out all right in verse 31with familiar “kingly” language: “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.” This is what we expect when we imagine a king: a throne, and some glory, and maybe even a choir of angels for good measure!

But then this passage from Matthew seems to go off the rails a bit, with all its talk of sheep and goats and the “least of these.”

Christ the King, sitting on his throne of glory, goes about separating his flock into sheep and goats. The sheep, at his right hand, he commends for having provided him with food and drink, welcoming him, giving him clothing, visiting him in prison and healing him when he was sick. And the sheep said, “Who, us? What have we done for you lately?”

Next, the king reprimands the goats at his left hand, pointing out that they had NOT given him food or drink, not welcomed him, not visited him in prison, not clothed him, and not healed him when he was sick. And the goats said, “Who, us? What have we NOT done for you lately?”
And the king’s answer is the same to both the sheep and the goats: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”…or, to the goats, “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.”

And there it is. This one phrase from Matthew 25 gives us a true image of the kingship of Christ. We expect a king to be powerful. We might even expect him to act as judge. But we don’t expect a king to speak up for the “least of these”. We certainly don’t expect the king on the throne to identify himself with the little ones—to be present among us as the hungry, the poor, the sick, the weak, and the imprisoned. We, like the both the sheep and the goats, do not look for him there.

And yet this is exactly the kind of king we have in Christ Jesus: one who empties himself, who takes the form of a slave, who eats with sinners, who touches lepers, who welcomes tax collectors, and speaks truth to power. We serve a king who was born in a stable and who leads not from a throne, but from the streets, from the cross, and from the empty tomb!

Christ is our King—and as king of our lives, he rightfully demands that we protect his interests. But what we learn in Matthew 25 is that Jesus’ interests are the interests of the poor. We learn that Jesus’ priorities are the priorities of the hungry. Jesus’ realm is the realm of the naked and the sick, the imprisoned and the outcast. Jesus is for the least of these, wherever we may find them. Therefore if we want to serve Christ, we will serve the least of these among us.

On this Christ the King Sunday, this Gospel passage invites us to examine our lives and consider: who is king of our lives? If we were witness to the kind of abuse that took place at Penn State, whose kingdom would we protect? Whose interests would be our priority? Would we speak up for the least among us, the powerless boys in the locker room shower? Or would we go to great lengths to protect King Football?

Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.” Let us go forth into this holiday season, into our workplaces and schools, our shopping malls and our homes, and proclaim the kingship of Christ. Let it be known to all that the king we serve is the king of love and the prince of peace, He is lord of lords, king of kings, and son of the most high! On the last day, he will be sitting on his throne of glory, with all the angels around him and all the nations gathered before him. But in the meantime, if you want to meet him, he is at PADS, at the WIC office, on the streets, in line at the immigration office, in prison, and by the side of every single abused child.

What a mighty…and lowly…God we serve.