One of the few things Americans can broadly agree on right now is that we are going through a crisis of legitimate government. We may be diametrically opposed to one another in how we describe the situation, but we agree that we’re in crisis. It’s a relatively new experience for us. We haven’t had this level of public suspicion and disaffection and anger in my lifetime, even during the Vietnam War. And it creates a new context this year for this feast of Christ the King. 

The whole business of “kingship” is, even in better times, a bit of a stumbling block for Americans—an institution we rejected centuries ago. It may help to think of it simply as “government.” Monarchy was the only form of government in use in the New Testament period in any context larger than a municipality. To tell the truth, our own presidency isn’t all that different from a modern constitutional monarchy, even if the monarch has to submit to an election every four years. And we know well what a difference a good president can make in comparison with a bad one. 

It’s the same reality that the prophet Ezekiel was talking about in our reading this morning. Earlier in the chapter we just read from, God says that the shepherds (meaning the kings—a metaphor used often in antiquity) have abandoned their sheep. “The shepherds have fed themselves,” God says, “and have not fed my sheep.” 

God continues, at the beginning of the part we just read: 

“I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek 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.”

Does that sound familiar somehow? Yes, God is the Good Shepherd, the one who seeks out the lost sheep, just as Jesus would later say of himself.

And this is what God demands of kings. God wants our government leaders to take care of the weak sheep. There will be fat sheep, at the same time, who want the king to favor only them. There’s a vivid image of them in the paragraph that was omitted from our reading this morning. God says to the fat sheep: 

“Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?”

The true king must not favor these bullies. The true king must take care of the weak.

But, alas! we don’t live in a world where God has taken direct charge. God refuses to do so, in fact, because God is unwilling to deprive us of our freedom, the freedom that Adam and Eve chose in the Garden of Eden, the freedom to experience both good and evil. Sometimes we wish God would interfere with this freedom a bit more—preferably to our benefit, of course. But God loves the wayward, unpredictable creatures we are. And God doesn’t make a habit of saving us from ourselves. 

Instead, God at least tries to inspire us and our leaders. God wants for us leaders of integrity and generosity:

“I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God and my servant David shall be prince among them.”

It’s a beautiful vision! And it happens from time to time, with individual leaders. But the House of David was a mixed bag, like our own presidents. There is no one source or form of leadership in this world that is guaranteed always to do the right thing. 

When we speak of Christ as “king,” then, we don’t ignore the unfinished, imperfect state of the world we live in. Christ is our shepherd now in the same way God was shepherd of Israel in the time of Ezekiel when it was collapsing before the overwhelming power of rival world empires on either side of it. We pray for help—and sometimes receive it in unexpected ways. But there is no magic cure for what ails us, no voice from the clouds, no lightning bolts to put our enemies on notice and set things right again. 

Is God powerless, then? No. God is practicing restraint. God is giving humanity space to come to our senses. But God is still the supreme ruler of the universe. Our reading from Ephesians describes the Risen Christ very much in terms of royal authority and power:

[God] seated [the Christ] at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all.

The Jesus who himself became the weak sheep bullied by the fat ones, who submitted to every expression of human evil directed against himself without seeking to harm any one in return, who kept faith with God and with the power of love, is revealed here as embodying the deepest and most powerful reality of all. And what is that? It’s the power by which God created everything that exists, the power by which God shepherds us still, the power of love. 

And it is this love that will sit in judgement over humanity as we come to the end of our course, individually or collectively. We heard it a few minutes ago in the Parable of Sheep and Goats. This parable comes right at the critical turning point in Matthew’s Gospel! It is the last piece of Jesus’ teaching before his arrest and crucifixion. It always evokes a shudder, with its command to the accursed: “Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” But set that aside for a moment. I’ll come back to it. 

For the center of the parable is the curious and unexpected nature of the judgement itself. The blessed are those who, touched by ordinary human consideration for others, have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcome to the stranger, clothing to the naked, who have visited the sick and those in prison. And, most astonishing of all, they don’t even remember doing it! They don’t think of themselves as particularly good. They just tried to be decent human beings. 

Jesus really seems to be lowering the bar here. Is that really all there is to it? He doesn’t even say, “You were champions at feeding the poor or visiting the sick.” He just says, “You did it. Remember that?”

And the accursed never did it at all. Busy as they were trampling the grass and muddying the water, they didn’t even notice that they were overlooking something. If they’d only known it was Jesus they would certainly have done the right thing by him. After all, he’s a powerful figure, seated “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.” They would have been careful to stay on his right side. But, no, off they go to the eternal fire. 

But don’t confuse the metaphor for the thing itself, the fire for what it points to. God doesn’t suddenly turn into a tyrant in the Last Days, doesn’t become a sadist who enjoys the suffering of others. No, the condemned are their own eternal fire. Having abandoned all human generosity, they chose only to magnify and enrich themselves at the expense of others. And they are being left to what they have created for themselves: a life of strife, jealousy, vicious competition, failure and, ultimately, disgust. They have only one another to bully and rob. And it must be a nasty disappointment for them.

Does that mean that the Good Shepherd, gives up on them? I doubt that. I think that God is always waiting and hoping that love can still touch even the most callous person’s heart and reveal its power for good. We can and should pray for those who have fallen into the trap of selfish arrogance. Maybe our prayers will help them toward a different vision of themselves and this world. But we also proclaim the perfect kingship of Christ, paradoxically revealed in Jesus’ gentleness and love, as the true standard of human leadership. It’s a kingship that puts love and generosity toward all in the first place. Embrace it for yourself, by giving what you can to a world in need. And, by the grace of God, it can help us all move forward out of our present crisis. 

Preached at Good Shepherd, Berkeley

FEAST OF CHRIST THE KING, NOVEMBER 22, 2020

Proper B: Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 95:1-7a; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46