Christ the King Sunday, Matthew 25:31-46

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman

We’re approaching the end of the calendar year when we take stock of and review the whole of 2023. Oh, and what a year it’s been, so often in troubling, disheartening, and even horrific ways judging by the relentless news cycles.

But we’re also amidst a season of Thanksgiving and of giving, when there’s a flurry of end of the year charitable contributions. These are opportunities to give thanks to God by sharing our abundance with others. Thus, it’s no coincidence that another major focus of our celebration today is on our stewardship as we will receive your statements of intent for our giving to Faith-La Fe in 2024.

In short, this time of the year is a season to see the big picture – the good and the bad – and to celebrate God’s provident presence and blessing amidst it all.

What is true in the more secular calendar is also true of the church’s year as well. Today is Christ the King Sunday, the Last Sunday after Pentecost, the New Year’s Eve, as it were, of the year of Sundays when we’ll begin a new cycle next week with the First Sunday of Advent. Thus, in church, it’s also a time to take stock of things – what’s Jesus Christ all about for us in our day in recorded history? What does it mean that Christ reigns as sovereign of all things? Just what kind of king is the Christ?

In terms of the appointed readings, we’re also at a culminating moment in Matthew’s Gospel today. The parable of the judgment of the nations, the separation of the sheep from the goats, is the last parable, the final teaching moment in the whole gospel narrative. What comes next in the remaining chapters of Matthew is the story of the Passion, that is, Jesus’ death and then also his resurrection.

By choosing to conclude the teaching aspects of the gospel with the parable of the judgment of the nations, Matthew seems to be making a point, a summation of Jesus Christ’s divine mission, and what we’re also to do as Jesus’ followers. And that this passage was chosen for the gospel on Christ the King Sunday also makes a point about the meaning of this day in the church’s calendar. So, let’s dive in to begin our explorations. What’s it all about?

In our individualistic society, we might assume that today’s parable is about holding accountable for judgment individual behavior, whether or not we as individuals fed and welcomed and clothed and visited the least of those who were members of the Son of Man’s family, or whether or not we as individuals failed to do so.

But remember, this is called the parable of the judgment of the nations. Matthew reports that Jesus said, “All the nations will be gathered before [the Son of Man]. And when Jesus says “for I was hungry and you gave me food,” the Greek pronoun ‘you’ is plural and remains so throughout. Thus, the focus here is on whole peoples, whole nations. It’s a collective and communal judgment that’s going on here.

Which is to say whole nations can do right by the least of the members of Jesus’ family. And nations as a whole, with their systems and policies and priorities, can fail to care for the least among us.

This being the case, on first blush, it may seem that this gets us off the hook as individuals, because maybe it’s the powers that be and leaders who are being judged here.

But remember: individuals comprise those groups under judgment. And we as individuals are citizens of a nation. As such we share in and are complicit with the ways that our whole nation collectively cares for the least – or not.

And the focus for judgment here really is on sins of omission, not actively committing atrocities on the least, but simply failing to attend to them, ignoring them, walking by on the other side as if they do not exist.

Lutherans tend to be nice and helpful people, faithfully contributing to the needs of the least and managing to not flagrantly break too many of God’s commandments. But it’s also true that we Lutherans can be pretty passive, thus guilty of sins of omission, of too often walking by on the other side of the street, especially when it comes to actively advocating for justice. We Lutherans are good at offering charity. We’re less convincing when it comes to the fight for justice for the least who are members of Jesus’ family.

And what’s true for individuals and churches is also true of whole societies. In some ways, the United States is very generous in helping the least at home and abroad. In other ways, our whole society is quite guilty of ignoring the plight of the least here at home and abroad.

So here’s the thing, and this is how Lutherans understand our human predicament: as participants in our wider society and as individuals, we are individually and communally, both the sheep and the goats. We are simultaneously saints and sinners.

As such, we are in desperate need of rescue. As saints and sinners, individually and communally, we are thus also counted among the least, the last, and the lost.

Therefore, we take heart in the promise shared in today’s first reading from the prophet Ezekiel, a promise we Christians trust is fulfilled in Christ, our King, our Good Shepherd: “Thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep and will sort them out. As shepherds sort out their flocks when they are among scattered sheep, so I will sort out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness…. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strays, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak….” (Ezekiel 34:11-12, 16a) We are among the strays, the lost, the least, whom the divine shepherd brings back to the sheepfold.

And Christ, our Good Shepherd, our Sovereign, identifies so fully with us, we who are among the least, the last and the lost that he becomes one of us on the cross. Hanging on the tree, Christ reveals himself to be hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, a prisoner of the Roman empire in the process of being executed by imperial power.

On that sacred tree, “Nails, spear shall pierce him through, the cross be borne for me, for you…. This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing.” In short, the throne of Christ our King is the cross.

And this completely inverts the world order and human understandings of what it is to be kingly, monarchial, sovereign. Moreover, seeing Christ in the face of the hungry, the thirsty, those whom we perceive to be strangers, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, brings royal dignity to these same. And this includes us when it’s all said and done. In Christ, we are a royal priesthood, a redeemed people, a nation made holy.

Through the mystery of Christ’s Passion, the story of which follows on the heels of the parable of the judgement of the nations in Matthew, we discover the source of our rescue from the dregs of society.

As we heard in today’s reading from Ephesians, “God put [the divine] power to work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and seated him at the right hand of Power in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and might and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And God has put all things under the feet of Christ and has made him the head over all things for the Church, which is the body of Christ, the fullness of the one who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:20-23)

Because of the sovereignty of Christ made known on the tree and vindicated in the empty tomb, Christ thereby rescues us from our lost and fallen state, transforming us from the least to share in Christ’s divine power. This transformation is accomplished when Christ pulls us up out of waters of baptism as sacred children, members of his family, restored in the divine image. This transformation is accomplished also when we become what we eat in a simple meal of bread and wine where we share in and benefit from and, in fact, become all that Christ has to offer to us and to the world.

We are thereby, through these means of grace, empowered in faith also to go and do as Christ has done, becoming the righteous sheep, made righteous by grace effective through faith. And we leave this place in the power of the Spirit of the sovereign Christ to feed and give drink and to welcome and to clothe and to visit the least among us. Thus, in our words and deeds, we become Christ’s royal hands for the rescue of those whom the nations have forgotten and left behind.

In the confidence of faith, we are freed from the fear and apathy that so often lead to our sins of omission in ignoring others in need. That is, in the stewardship of our lives we are freed by God in Christ, and sent by the Holy Spirit courageously and with God’s abundance to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God (cf. Micah 6:8) for the good of all creation – with special focus on the least in whom we see the face of Christ our sovereign.

May God’s generosity and abundance inspire our own generosity in sharing our abundance for the benefit of all people and all of creation.

And thus we, individually and communally with our whole church, locally and globally, become leaven in the loaves of the nations – for the healing and rescue of those same nations for the benefit and well-being especially of the least among members of Jesus’ family.

Thanks be to God in Christ for this mission of mercy entrusted to us. Amen.