The Reign of Christ

I Was Hungry

Readings: Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 100; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

This last Sunday of the Church Year is called the Reign of Christ. On this day we celebrate Christ as king. We celebrate Jesus' reign that began with his ascension and continues as Paul expresses it in the letter to the Corinthians, "until all are made alive in Christ". It is a celebration that calls us to look at the whole concept of leadership within the kingdom of God.

And here, as so often in our life of faith lies a great paradox, for Christ our King is a king so different from any earthly experience we might imagine. To begin with, there is Ezekiel’s image of kingship. It is one that provides both pastoral faithfulness and justice. While he demands repentance on the part of the people, he also offers such hope and consolation. He speaks of God as the shepherd King, the one who searches for his lost sheep. Like a shepherd caring for the sheep, the shepherd King rescues the strays and binds up the ones who have been hurt. It is an image of kingship, which lays out the standard for the whole community. No fat, strong sheep push aside the weak or the sick. In God’s kingdom of shalom all are valued and live together in peace.

The image of the reigning Christ in Matthew’s gospel offers us that same sense of God’s grace. Jesus appears on the clouds at the end of time as a king sitting in judgement on those who stand before him. As we stand there looking up at his grace and majesty he questions us about the way we lived our lives. “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,” he says, and we wonder when it was that we saw Jesus thirsty. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was sick and you took care of me,” Jesus says to us. And we look back in our lives and remember the times we have seen the face of Christ in those we have met along the way.

It is a passage of Scripture, which evokes many memories in me. The first is an incident that happened to me many years ago when a friend and I visited my parents who were living in Jamaica. They did not live in the tourist area along the coast. They lived up in Christiana in the interior of Jamaica. It is a mountainous area where the roads are winding and narrow. On the last day of our holiday we headed off towards the airport in Kingston in our rental car. We did not get very far. Still in the mountains close to a town called Maypen, we were involved in an accident. We found ourselves in serious trouble. My friend was charged with careless driving. I was charged with aiding and abetting. We were taken to jail in Maypen. I finally got permission from the police to make a phone call. My sister answered. My parents were out.

“Get someone to come and get us out of jail,” I pleaded with her. And a couple of hours later, who should come but my parents’ friend, the priest in Maypen, Neville De Souza, who would later become the bishop. His arrival changed everything. The hostility against us abated. We were allowed to leave, although we still faced charges and had to appear in court a couple of weeks later. I love to remind Bishop de Souza that “when I was in prison, you visited me”. I like to remind him that he is the face of Christ for me.

It reminds me for a completely different reason of the weekend I spent living on the streets of Toronto. I was doing a course in Urban Ministry, which involved doing a ‘plunge’, living as a homeless person for two days. It was a life changing experience for me on a number of levels as I came face to face with poverty. I ended up in a hostel for battered women. There I shared a room with a young woman whom I will call Elaine. She had fled an abusive relationship. She was a recovering drug addict, probably a prostitute, but she was truly trying to get her life together and hoped that she would be reunited with her children who had been taken into custody by the CAS.

On Saturday evening she said to me, “Come to church with me tomorrow. You look like someone who would like to go to church.” I looked at my grubby jeans and sweatshirt, the only clothing I had. She saw my reluctance. “It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing,” she said to me. “Just come.” And so off to church we went. What’s more, it was a rather highbrow church in a good neighbourhood of Toronto. There was no room at the back of the church, of course, so Elaine led the way up the aisle to the front where she sang the hymns loudly and with obvious enjoyment. People around us tried hard to ignore us. I have to say, they did a really good job. We were not asked to sign the guest book. We were not invited to coffee hour. For “we were strangers and they did not welcome us.” Sadly I did not see the face of Christ in them. It was in Elaine that I saw that beautiful reflection.

Matthew wants us to know that our relationship to God is judged by our treatment of the oppressed. That judgement comes to all of us. Believers, those who have faith in God, are judged. And judgement is very much a question of our relationship to Christ. Do we see Christ in others? Do we reach out to those in need, not in judgement, but in true compassion for their need? Our guilt arises not from doing wrong things, not from being evil, but from failing to do what is right.

Our Christian calling is to be Christ like. Everything we can learn from Scripture leads us to know that Jesus makes himself one with those in need. He allies himself to the poor and the oppressed. As the shepherd of Israel, he is in solidarity with the whole of human misery in all its range and depth. He came to see that everything is as it should be.

He came as an amazing gift of God’s grace to help us to find God. And that happens in the most unexpected places, and in the most unexpected ways. We might think that we will find God in some mountaintop experience that lifts us from the everyday into the sublime. Those mountaintop experiences are important to us. They open our eyes to God’s awesome glory. But when it comes down to it, it is in the midst of the dirty, the grubby, the smelly and the unlovely that we will truly know God. It is in our actions that we will live out our faith.

The word went out. Jesus was coming again. These stories had made the rounds many times before. But somehow this time it was different. Everyone set about preparing for the return of the King. There was much speculation about where and how he would return. But there was no doubt that it would happen on Sunday.

The day dawned, cold and windy. People were up and stirring, filled with anticipation. A stranger wandered through the city streets, his tattered clothing in sharp contrast to his surroundings. He stopped in front of one house, went up and rapped on the door. A woman answered. He stood there for a moment in silence.

"What do you want?" she snapped at him. "Don't you know that this is a busy day? Christ is returning. We're all getting ready for church. He's sure to make an appearance there. I don't have time for you. Besides there are soup kitchens where the likes of you can get a meal."

He turned sadly and walked on down the street. It was the same everywhere he stopped. They were all too busy to look after a poor, hungry man.

At eleven o'clock he arrived at the door of a huge church. He could hear the sound of the magnificent organ and the singing of the choir. But the door was closed. He opened it and started down the aisle toward the only vacant seat, right up at the front of the church. All eyes turned toward him. Noses wrinkled as the smell of someone who has not had a shower in many days reached their senses. They noted with disdain the holes in the knees of his jeans and his filthy jacket. Two men appeared in the aisle.

"Out you go. There isn't a seat for you. We're saving that one for Christ. We are expecting him any minute now. He's sure to come here. This is, after all, the finest church in the city."

His heart heavy, he left the building and began to walk across the park. He walked for some time and finally came to a bridge over a ravine. He could see some people sitting by a fire they had made. As he approached they made room for him and he too began to warm his hands over the flame. A pot of stew was bubbling merrily on the fire. They ladled it out and motioned to him to take a plate.

"We're waiting for Christ to come," they told him. "But I don't suppose he'll find his way down here."

And the man lifted up his eyes to heaven. He blessed the food and began to eat. "I was hungry and you gave me food," he said to them.

Where after all do we find Christ? It is in the least expected places. Our God, you see, is a king who reigns, not from a throne, but from a cross. God's sovereign way is not the way of the world. It is not the way of power, but of powerlessness, a powerlessness that overturns all of our preconceived notions about God. Thanks be to God!