Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from November 20, 2005

“Christ in Our Midst”

Rev. Thomas Ratmeyer

Scriptures:

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Matthew 25:31-46

I remember getting my report card twice a year when I was in school, they were given to us in the classroom on the last day of the period to take home.  They were beautiful certificates.  I think they were printed in a printing house with the seal of the school on them, and signed by the teacher and by the principal.  The grades were filled in in handwriting.  Some teachers took real pride in their using of real fountain pen-type ink.  It looked beautiful.  As you may imagine, depending on the report card, the trek home was either pretty quick or would take quite a long time.  There was something to the fact that we were handed judgment in this particular way, rather than receiving it in the mail.

Well, today is report card day in the life of the church.  Today is Christ the King Sunday.  Today is the last Sunday of the year; the church year begins again next weekend with Advent.  Today, on the last Sunday, we not only acknowledge that Christ is the true king in our lives; we also acknowledge that Christ sits in judgment over us.

So I want to put four questions before you as we think of Christ as the King and the Judge.  First question:  Who is this king that will judge us?  Second:  How are we going to be judged?  Third:  How can God be both just and gracious?  Fourth:  How can we be saved? 

Who is this king that will judge us?  Both Ezekiel and Matthew use the familiar image of a shepherd that tends to the sheep.  But while Matthew is a referendum on the sheep, Ezekiel is a referendum on the shepherd.  God is the good shepherd in that text.  God seeks out his sheep that are scattered and lost.  He examines them and brings them home.  I envision that type of examination as the same that we would do with our cat when it was gone for three days and we thought it was lost.  When it comes back we’d pick it up and make sure it’s alright, examine it whether there are any scars or wounds.  This is a shepherd who goes out of his way to tend the sheep, to find the sheep, one who unifies the flock.

This is a political text because right before this passage, this text is an indictment of all the bad shepherds, the previous kings of Israel.  God acts opposite to how they acted.  Listen to this verse that talks about how God acts as the good shepherd.  It says, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy.  I will feed them with justice.”  Here now is the opposite, the indictment of the others, the bad kings.  “You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.”  What divides the good from the bad are specific actions that respond to the specific and obvious needs around us in society.

What’s with the fat sheep and the lean sheep?  There is a justice dimension to this text.  The fat sheep are judged not because they’re fat but because they push the weak out of the way and obstruct their access to food.  It’s not the inequality in resources that is the ethical issue here but the accumulation and consumption of resources by some at the expense of the others.  You might think of this as ecological justice, economic justice.  This is justice that calls for all to have the same access.  So Bill Gates, if you will, is not a bad guy in this text because, with his foundation, he does everything to improve access to resources for those who lack them.

Then there’s another aspect to this text that is important.  At the end, God promises a human shepherd.  God promises David to be the shepherd.  King David has long been gone, though.  He was king in the history of the people of Israel.  So this is a shepherd from the line of David who will be the good shepherd and serving God.  From a Christian New Testament perspective, this is, of course, the foreshadowing of Christ.  David, you might remember, before he became king was a shepherd himself.  He took care of the sheep.  He was willing to lay down his life for the sheep and such is the shepherd that is about to come.

Let’s move to Matthew and ask:  How are we going to be judged?  The line that is drawn between those who make it into the kingdom and those who don’t is very clear.  It is the question of how we have acted toward the least among us.  Have we acted to help those with the most basic needs?  Have we fed the hungry?  Have we clothed the naked?  Have we cared for the sick and visited those in prison?  Note that this was a surprise for both groups as Christ sits on his throne and divides them and gives his reason for who makes it and who doesn’t.  Both groups are surprised!  What saves the ones who make it is not an elaborate theological understanding.  It’s not even the confession of faith but the simple act of helping those who are left behind.

I want to go back to last week for just a moment because I made a point last week:  Who are we to say that people who don’t even know to confess Christ because they’ve never been exposed to the Christian faith, don’t have access to the kingdom of God by the grace of God?  This is the same argument.  Those who make it into God’s realm did not get there because they recognized Christ.  They got there because they recognized the need.  This is not to disregard the role that the Christian faith has in our lives.  It certainly makes every difference in mine.  But I reject the belief that, without a confession of Christ, there is no grace of God.

How can God be both just and gracious?  Are we doing all that God calls us to do?  Are we living lives as righteous as God wants them to be?  Probably not.  If we were judged just on the basis of how we have lived our lives in relation to the law and the commandments of God, in spite of our trying, we might not be okay.  But in the death and resurrection of Christ, God has found a way to restore justice for our shortcomings and failures and sins.  By sacrificing God’s self in Jesus Christ, justice is restored.  In the death and resurrection, God acts graciously toward us, for our shortcomings and failures and sins are forgiven.  But the point of this Scripture, Matthew’s Gospel, is that it doesn’t end with that.  The same Christ, who is God’s gift of grace to us, is the one who encounters us in the neediest of the needy, the least among us.  God is not done with us by letting us off the hook once and for all.  God wants us to look up to our forgiveness by how we live our lives henceforth, by loving kindness, by doing justice, by walking humbly with our God.

How can we be saved?  I think we need to be saved not only in the theological sense.  We need to be saved from our own discomfort.  Matthew’s Gospel makes us uncomfortable, I think, at least in two ways.  First, it makes us uncomfortable because what it calls us to do is so obvious, so simple that we can’t hide behind any ambiguity of understanding.  There is not theological dispute between Lutherans and Episcopalians, or Catholics and Congregationalists here.  As far as I can see, what we have to do is very clear.  The second discomfort is, of course, what it is that we have to do—reach out to the least among you.  Whether we call them the least among us is the beginning of the problem, don’t you think?  If we didn’t regard them or disregard them as the least, then maybe we wouldn’t have to be reminded to reach out to them.

Let’s be uncomfortable together for a moment.  What you have done to the least among you, you have done to me.  Christ is the person in the nursing home that I pass by on my visit to a loved one, the person who seems to merely exist in a wheelchair in a hallway, sleeping most of the time, and who I might hesitate to approach because I don’t know what kind of response I might get.  Christ is the person who sleeps under the bridge who has an anger management issue, and whose spirit cannot survive in the confinement of a shelter.  Christ is the person with such mental and physical disabilities that I am uncomfortable because I don’t know how to interact.  But that fear is quite theoretical and quite hypothetical because, once I start interacting, it’s very easy.  Christ is the person who dies in the Superdome.  Christ is the person on death row.  Christ is the person with HIV/AIDS.

The next time I’m going to be uncomfortable this way, I will remind myself that I am encountering Christ.  Maybe it isn’t as much about me as I’d like to think sometimes.  Besides, if this is an encounter with Christ, then it is also a reminder that we all live in God’s grace.  If I don’t find the right words, if I don’t find the patience to listen, to be there, if I don’t get it right, whatever right may be, then there is always God’s grace.  It is for not trying in the first place that we get in trouble.

May the blessing of God be with us.  Amen.