Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Kansas City, MO

November 20, 2005
(Twenty-seventh [Last] Sunday after Pentecost; Christ the King)

• Ezekiel 34:11-17
• Psalm 95:1-7
• 1 Corinthians 15:20-28
• Matthew 25:31-46

Looking for Long Lines

Friday evening, we went to see the new movie biography of country singer Johnny Cash. It was a fairly good movie, with some strong themes suitable for a grown-up audience. I must confess, though, that what I really wanted to see was “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” Walking through the Palace Theater it was easy to pick out the Harry Potter crowd. The children were jumping up and down, and even the adults were laughing with excitement and, of course, the pointy wizard hats also gave them away.

I was reminded of the lines a few years ago in the opening weeks of another great fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings, and a few decades ago, when the original Star Wars movie came out. I suppose that before that, it was Buck Rogers.

We seem to be drawn to the great magical and mystical adventures, with surprising heroes and battle lines drawn between good and evil forces. Some say that our sporting events tap into this same impulse, so take note of the crowd at the next Chiefs game.

Personally, I love the kids’ movies. I cheer for the good guys, and I’m right in there with the rest of the audience, booing the monsters and rooting for the triumph of Hermione and Harry or Frodo and Sam. It’s fun and inspiring to see the villain trounced and the hero win.

So where are our long lines? We get to do this every week! Our Scriptures have all the drama and miracles and wicked adversaries and mystical themes of any four-star fantasy adventure. We are telling a very similar story. In fact, we are telling the story. Perhaps our lines aren’t as long because the story has gotten a bit bogged down over the centuries. In part this may have come about through our own well-intentioned pursuit of its meaning. We may sometimes miss the wonder of it all simply because we’re trying too hard to figure it out.

You know those hologram pictures that only reveal themselves when you quit looking at them too closely? I think today’s gospel is a bit like that.

It is filled with grand themes and drama. This scene in Matthew is of a final cosmic judgment, portrayed as the Son of Man coming in glory, surrounded by angels, with the nations at his feet. Hapless goats are sent to eternal fire, while righteous sheep inherit the kingdom of God. This passage has been closely dissected over time and subsequently used to threaten children, dissenters, and non-Christians alike, and to generally spread all kinds of nonsense, and worse, in Gods name.

We seem to understand that the dragons in Harry Potter are not real, and few of us worry about being chased by one any time soon, but we sometimes are frightened by overly literal interpretations of Scripture, forgetting that Jesus in His parables and our gospel writers also knew a thing or two about telling a story to make a point.

When we celebrate Christ the King and speak of final judgment to come, we are not saying that imperfect Christians or persons of other faiths are going to Hell. When we say that Christ is King, we are saying that the force of Love is stronger, in the end, than anything arrayed against it.

As Christians we look always to Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection to tell us the truth. And what we learn is that Good transcends evil. Period.

There are days when we need this information; days when the news on the radio is too hard to hear, or when something painful has happened in our families or in our community. There are days when it seems impossible or even silly to believe that God’s kingdom of peace and freedom has been prepared for us from the foundation of the world, and that this kingdom will, indeed, come.

And yet, we experience and demonstrate our awareness of this truth every time we share our resources and ourselves, every time we choose openness and faith over isolation and fear, and every time we cheer our heroes, be they Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia at the movies or Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa in real life.

Once we have claimed for ourselves the truth of God’s reign, we can quit asking, “Am I a sheep or a goat?” Rather, we might ask ourselves, “What part of me is sheeplike? And when and where and why am I more likely to qualify as a goat?” These questions apply in a corporate sense as well. How are we as a parish demonstrating our “sheepness”? Are there any areas where someone passing by might get a small whiff of aroma of goat?

The standard for evaluation is made very clear for us: are we feeding? welcoming? visiting? clothing? Are we aware of whom it is that we serve? As you did or did not do it to one of the least of these, so you did or did not do it to me. Do we recognize that Christ the King as described in today’s gospel is the radical identification of God with all human need?

Most of us seem to be fairly comfortable with being one in the body of Christ with each other through our baptism, but do we really want to be one in the body of Christ with the belligerent drunk on the street? It’s not always easy.

I would suggest that this identification extends as well to the entire created order; to animals and forests and oceans and ozone in distress. God’s world is crying out in need.

Before we get too overwhelmed, it helps to remember that these are huge issues, but that we can, and do, address them in particular ways, here and now. We cannot wave a magic Harry Potter wand and replace the ozone layer or eradicate world hunger, but we can, with God’s help, use the recycling bin, visit a difficult relative on Thanksgiving, or offer some time or money, as so many in this parish do, to the Kansas City Community Kitchen or the Emergency Utility and Rent Assistance Fund.

Thursday evening, our vestry voted to demonstrate our continued care for the community by increasing our financial support of these programs. We are renewing our commitments to doing exactly what Jesus said, based on our belief in him and in the ultimate presence of the kingdom. One way of gauging how we are doing as sheep is to see how we are doing as shepherds. Here at the Cathedral we can ‘baah’ proudly in many areas, even as we seek more ways to serve.

So here’s the way of it: we are Hermione and Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins and Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. We don’t just watch the great mystical story and cheer on the hero; we participate in its shaping.

As our story unfolds, we gather around the altar of its telling and we are gathered into it.

Today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, the culmination of our liturgical year; the last great scene of the movie. It’s the one where the monster is caught and sent away forever, the good guys win, and the children are safely home.

Next week, our story begins all over again as we look toward an intimate moment in a stable, filled with more magic than any epic up on the movie screen. Just as the pointy hats and excited laughter gave away which movie-goers were headed for Harry Potter, so we have telltale signs of who we are. We are to be known by our care for the world and each other. It’s a great plotline in a great story. It’s well worth lining up for!

The Reign of Christ

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

The Reverend Susan Riis tells the following story:

Many years ago I knew a woman who was a typing pool supervisor (I told you this was a long time ago) in a large insurance company. She was one of about ten night supervisors, each of whom had a crew of ten or twelve women. Night crews then and now have certain characteristics in common: many of them are working second or even third jobs. Many have family or personal situations that make night work either better for them or the only possibility.

This particular supervisor looked after her workers without being nosy or interfering. She had high standards for the work done on her watch, was demanding, just, and kind. It was her custom to give each of her crew a small Christmas or Hanukkah gift, a jar of hand cream perhaps or some stationery. On the night of gift giving, she would call each woman on the team up to her desk where she thanked her for her work that year, described some opportunities for the next, and gave her a present.

Among the people on her crew one year was a young woman fallen on hard times. She had been struggling just to get by for a few years, didn’t expect much more than that out of life, and was very much alone. When her turn came, she approached the desk expecting correction (the work was very detailed) or new directions. Instead she was handed a box wrapped with midnight blue foil and tied with a silver bow. At first she did not understand. It had been at least five years since she had received a present of any kind, indeed, since anyone had given her anything. In a second she understood, made her thanks, and returned to her desk.

Holding the little box in her hand, she felt at least ten years younger and fresher. The glow of having received a gift stayed with her not only all that evening but remained to change her life. For that little box was as strong as a life-line thrown to someone drowning in the ocean. It brought her out of the pit of nothingness; restored her to being a person – a person who receives and who then can give.

It is likely that the supervisor had no idea what she had done. She had simply done as she always had, what it was her custom to do – to treat everyone as her neighbor. However, I am sure that that kindness done to one of the least of God’s children that night will be one of many many stars in her crown on that day when she asks, "Lord, when did I visit you, clothe you, feed you?"

At some time or other we all have been one of the least, the last, the lost, or the helpless. We remember, and always with a fresh upwelling of gratitude, the act of kindness that pulled us up from the pit, from nonbeing to a renewed understanding that we are children of God. After such a gift the only thing for us to do is to take that feeling of gratitude and turn it into habitual acts of justice and kindness to each person our life touches. For we have no idea when a simple thing – serving meals at a soup kitchen, gathering blankets to be distributed, sitting down to talk with someone whose thoughts have become tangled through illness, finding something promising in a student’s work – might save a life.

When we think about the Last Judgment, our consciences are afraid and rightly so. We pray we may be sheep, no matter how silly, and definitely not goats. Yet Matthew shows us that our King and Judge does not arrive armed with an arbitrary rule book listing who’s in and who’s out of the Commonwealth of God. In fact Matthew’s tale of the Day of Judgment cuts right through to our real fears. What if we haven’t done what is really necessary and important; what if we have wasted our time on earth?

Again, Matthew shows us God’s simple but profound rule for life, one that anyone can follow and remember, regardless of age, education, ability, or wealth. To provide food and drink for those without these necessities of life, to provide clothing and shelter for those lacking protection from the elements, to rescue from isolation those who are ill or in prison, to welcome the stranger. All these actions toward the least and the lost reach out toward the Christ within each of them as the Christ in us was rescued, perhaps by an offhand act of habitual grace. As they restore God’s children, these deeds build the Kingdom of God.

A rabbinic commentary on the Last Judgment declares that every act of loving-kindness makes a gate for the Lord, a gate God uses to enter our neighborhood. My brothers and sisters, my prayer for us this festival of the Reign of Christ is that you and I may have the joy of making gate after gate after gate until, as Paul says, God may be all in all.