The God With Us Is Christ the King | A Sermon on Earning A+s for Jesus (and How You Really Can't)
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin for the people of St. George’s Episcopal Church on the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Christ the King (A) on Sunday, November 22, 2020.
Matthew 25:31-46
Flannery O’Connor once said about writing:
When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you must make your vision apparent by shock – to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.
She might has well have been talking about Saint Matthew. As we have seen, he is keen in his Gospel to make his point, whether he uses goats and sheep, wheat and weed, good seed or bad – he employs large and startling figures, almost shouting, especially towards the end. And his point seems to be that faith in God is not something to be had, but something to be evidenced by the way we live.
But in what way? I don’t know about you, but the minute it is even suggested that there will be an accounting or a judgment, I’m all ears. I want to earn the A (preferably with a plus beside it). If there’s a test, there must be questions? A study guide? At the very least, I want to suss out whether I am in the right or the wrong.
That’s the risk. That, in reading today’s Gospel passage, we become anxious achievers, list-makers, eager to meet all the requirements necessary to be sheep rather than goat. That’s the risk, that we begin placing ourselves and others into categories based on our own judgment about what is right and wrong. That’s the risk, that we make law out of the Gospel in a way that is antithetical to God’s promise, which is grace.
Everything in our culture orients us to the immediacy of doing, solving, and fixing – suggesting that we are only as good as what we can achieve or provide, so really can we be blamed for how we might distort this Gospel? Whether the problem is the economy, post-election tribulation, the pandemic, the poor at our doorsteps, or the rifts in our own families, the story we tell ourselves is that it is our doing which is primary and critical. We are sheep, after all, and we know how to earn our way to the top. And, in our rather polarized society, that comes with a side-helping of judgment toward the “goats” in our lives. At least we’re better off than them.
No wonder many of us hear today’s Gospel as a proclamation of the necessity of doing good works for those we deem less fortunate. Earning merit badges and A+s for Jesus. A fine starting point I guess, but it would be a shame to end there.
I propose instead that we first take a moment to think about the difference between doing for and being with. Both can look quite similar in outward appearance. Both can be facets of faithful service. Both can be rooted in good intentions.
But, at the end of the day, doing for and being with are fundamentally different.
Consider this story, a true story, which was shared by the Reverend Elizabeth Henry-McKeever, the preacher at my ordination.
There was a father who found himself at his wit’s end. His son was an addict, living on the streets of Denver. The son had been in and out of the hospital, homeless shelters, rehab, and even jail for years – and the father, who had given as much as he had, just didn’t know what else to do.
So one day, he got in his car, drove across the country, and spent a week living with his son on the streets. He did not set up yet another appointment with an addiction specialist or treatment program. He had tried those things for years and they had all failed. What he did instead was to just go and be with him. He slept next to him in the park and shuffled through the soup line right behind him. He bore witness as his son stumbled through back alleys in search of his next high.
He stood alongside him, and it must have broken his already broken heart even more. He couldn’t fix his son’s life. He couldn’t solve the problem. Lord knows he had tried. So, in the end, he offered the truest thing he had, himself.
Hear again Jesus’ proclamation:
For I was a stranger and you welcomed me; I was naked and you gave me clothing; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me (Matt. 25:43).
Notice that there is no solving here, not writ large anyway. There is instead an attendance to the other, a being with that digs deeper than surface level. A being with that recognizes hunger, thirst, isolation, vulnerability, sickness, imprisonment, even where it hides itself. A being with that sacrifices the power position of doing for. A being with that has little to do with banking good deeds to the glory of the doer.
A being with vulnerable enough to recognize that we ourselves are the hungry. Thirsty. Isolated. At risk. Sick. Imprisoned.
That is the difference between doing for and being with, because in being with we put ourselves in relationship with our fellow human. We do not look down from on high, but across, seeing ourselves in another just as we see Jesus there too. And, in doing that we put ourselves in relationship with the One to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.
And how do we know this? Because the subject of our Gospel, the subject of all our verbs, the subject of our life is Jesus.
Notice that both goats and sheep were surprised by the final outcome. And not so much at how they were sorted, but rather at the reach of Jesus’ presence: Lord, when was it that we saw you?
And Jesus says, Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me (Matt. 25:40). For he was with them.
This is the moment. The moment in which it is made clear that, against all odds and all sensibilities, it is Christ the King, our eternal Judge, very God of very God, Creator of all worlds, Alpha and Omega, who has come down.
It is God, Emmanuel, God with us, that sits on the throne of Glory.
Today is the last Sunday of the Christian year. The Feast of Christ the King. Today our Gospel places us before the throne of Our Lord, where we would rightly gather all of the year’s joys and sorrows and lay them at the feet of God, who sees and has seen everything to do with us and loves us still.
Fleming Rutledge writes, “That is the secret. The Son who “sits upon his glorious throne with all the nations gathered before him” is the same One who, at the very apex of his cosmic power, reveals that the universe turns upon a cup of water given to the least of these in his name.” [1]
The God with us is Christ the King.
And we can’t earn our way to this King through our good works, through our care for the least of these. There’s no way to earn the gift that He has given. Instead, we must make ourselves vulnerable to the Truth that Jesus, in all his glory and majesty, has stooped, surrendering himself, becoming one with our human condition: hungry, thirsty, isolated, at risk, sick, imprisoned. There is no other way to him then through solidarity with the least of these: of which I am one. And so are you.
That is the hope and the promise.
And boy, do we need it, as we extend the cup of water and as we ourselves receive it.
Amen.
*The image is the Tapestry of Christ the King, located behind the high altar at Saint James the Greater Church, in Saint Louis, Missouri.
[1] Fleming Rutledge, Advent: the Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 2018).
