How Is Christ, King?

Last Sunday after  Pentecost: Christ the King Cycle A  proper 29 November 23, 2014

Ezek. 34:11-16, 20-24     Ps.100       

Eph. 1:15-23      Matt. 25:31-46

Lectionary Link

There were two friends who ran into each other while pumping gas and they decided they wanted to catch up on all the family news.  So Henry ask John if he wanted to meet him down the road at Starbucks for some coffee and John said yes.  Henry took off and arrived at Starbucks for John and he waited and waited and after about half an hour John finally showed up.  Henry ask, "What took you so long?"  John said, "Did you see that stalled car on the road?"  Henry said, "Yes, but it was a Mercedes and I figured the guy was just going to call Triple A."  John said, "But he was waving for someone to stop and so I did.  Well, it turns out he had forgotten his cell phone and so he used mine to call Triple A.  He thanked me and told me to go on but he ask me if I liked baseball and I said that I didn't follow any sports teams.  Well, he took a box with a baseball in it and signed it and gave it to me.  And I decided that I should take a selfie with him, so I did.  Henry said, “Are you sure it wasn’t just some Joe Blow signing a baseball?”    Henry opened the box and saw the signature of Madison Bumgarner on the baseball and his teeth dropped out of head.  He said, "Are you sure this is not a fake?  Let me see the selfie."  So John got out his iphone picture and sure enough, it was Madison Bumgarner.  Henry said, "Just imagine that I drove right past this guy in need and I didn't stop to help him and he is a hero of mine, and you hate sports and you stopped and got to meet the hero of the World Series.  How ironic is that?  If I had known who it was, I would have stopped and helped."

  Now I just made this parable up to give us a modern sense of the parable of Jesus.   I believe that the experience of the Son of Man being present within the poor and the vulnerable and the presence of the Risen Christ being known in all people is to arrive at the height of human spiritual development in the experience of compassion or empathy.

  It is literally impossible to walk in someone shoes, no two people have a coincidence of experience,  and so how do we move from wanting kindness and favor for ourselves to being able to imagine, well, “I guess other people want to have the experience of kindness and favor too.”

   This parable of Jesus reveals to us how the capacity may be non-existent in some and commonplace in others.  We are fortunate in life if we have been mentored by people who have taught us empathy and compassion.  It really is an incredible gift to have the energy of imagination go out of oneself and with sensitivity enter the life of another which in turn allows one to nuance a comforting response to another person and not even know it.

  People who have learned empathy most often don't know it.  If they knew they had empathy it would be like acting or a performance.  “Hey, look everyone, see how much empathy I have!  See how much compassion I have!”   And if empathy and compassion were but like a theatre role it would be empty.

  The parable of Jesus about the judgment of the Son of Man acknowledging the people who had compassion and empathy indicated that such people were kind of amazed.  "When did I do that to you?  And the Son of Man replied, because I was hidden in the poor, the hungry and prisoner and so when you did it to them you did it to me."  That is the absolute grace of empathy; in empathy people get treated as being valued,  loved and worthy of care.

  In the biblical story, the ultimate king was King David.  He was a shepherd King.  He rose from humble beginnings and had a way to treat people to make him a successful King.  In fact, he was so successful that he set the bar too high for the kings of Israel.  And so the Hebrew Scripture writers made him into a future mythical figure who was the great person who could restore peace and order in the world.  The entire notion of the messiah grew out of idealizing King David after most of his successors were terrible failures and when Israel lost their freedom of independence.  Surely, a new anointed one, someone in lineage of David would arise again.  If Israel was like any country, it would have cycles of success and downturns; surely there is a great day of success with a Davidic Messiah in our future.  Surely, we will have another shepherd king who like all shepherds will be able to separate the sheep and the goats, those who understood God's purposes.

  The Son of Man, an apocalyptic figure, a Davidic messiah, the Risen Christ and a returning Christ all get morphed into one future idealized leader and judge in the aspirations of those early followers of Jesus.

  The life experience of the early followers of Jesus was not that of successful citizens in a new kingdom with a Davidic hero.  The early followers of Jesus depended upon the extraordinary gift of empathy and compassion for their survival and this became expressive of their fellowship with each other.

  In the parable Jesus there reference to the separation of sheep and goats.  I think it also implies that we can be both sheep and goats, because in wisdom parable one needs to understand that they are are like dreams and comprise the structures of human behaviors.  We can be people who practice empathy and compassion even when we don't think anything about it.  But what is also true is that we can participate unknowingly in the banality of neglect and even cruelty.  People are neglectful of each other and cruel to each other and don't recognize it because when everyone is doing it, each individual seems to be absolved of any wrong.

  In the aftermath of the Adolph Eichmann trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt tried to answer why and how Nazi Germany could happen in a country with lots of Lutheran and Catholic Christians.  She used the phrase, "the banality of evil."  Evil and cruelty became banal, commonplace and unchallenged because there was a significant power and knowledge base in society to allow people passively to comply to the "everyone is doing it" syndrome.  And so evil became unacknowledged and unchallenged from within their society.  A Nazi "Christian" could say, "when were we cruel?"  And the Son of Man could say, "When you did to your neighbors, who happened to be Jewish, you did it to me."  People may be those who practice an unnoticed and regular empathy at times but in other ways be agents of an unexamined banality of evil.  Just think about the history of the subjugation of women, the long history of slavery, the religious persecutions and inquisitions, the discrimination against the impaired and against the gay and lesbian persons in the world.

  The Son of Man stands to us as both judge and king and as one who has only one criterium; empathy expressed in compassion.  How can you say you love God whom you can't see if you don't love your brothers and sisters whom you can see?

  Today, we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King.  And Christ is not King like any earthly king that we know of.  Why?  Because Christ has the power to empty divinity of any appearance of divinity and hide the divine self within the lives of ordinary people and say to us, " Now come and find me and come and worship and honor me by serving Christ the King in each other." 

  And if we can do this, we have achieved the very highlight of being human in the best possible way, by achieving empathy and compassion.

  Today the Son of Man recognizes us for when we have practiced empathy and didn't know it.  But the Son of Man also wants to interdict our patterns of not recognizing the kingly presence of Christ in some people whom we neglect or demean with knowing it.

  May Christ the King as the Son of Man bring us to judgment today as we learn to be affirmed in the empathy we have achieved but also be rebuked and exposed in the areas of blindness when we have failed to see Christ within the lives of others.

  Christ is like no earthly King; Christ is the incognito King who is best known when we practice empathy and compassion.  Let us thank Christ the King for this high calling to empathy and compassion.  It is the impossible work of God's Spirit within us.  And so we say, “Holy Spirit, do this impossible work within us.”  Amen.