Then the sheep begin to talk; they are called the "righteous," the "just." "Lord" they call him, using the divine name Kyrios. "Master, Lord, when did we see you hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, in prison?" What Divine One, anointed of God, would suffer these things?
The king answers: "Truly I say to you: As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, sisters, you did it to me."
Then the king turns to the goats: "Depart from me, you who are accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Then they say, "Lord, when did we see you hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick or in prison and not minister to you?"
Then the king on the throne says, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least, you did it not to me."
There the dream ends. Or does it? It lingers around the edges of our minds, as dreams often do. Sometimes dreams are as real as life itself. Sometimes God speaks to us through dreams.
We cannot immediately sort out all the details: Whose face is that on the throne? From the foundation of the world? Eternal fire? But this is a parable, not a photograph; a dream, not a blueprint. There is one detail, however, which stays as the others fall away: The anointed one of God, the Messiah, comes to us among the least of these. If you want to be with him you must be with them.
There is another detail of the dream: That both sheep and goats are surprised about where they end up, a happy surprise for the sheep, a terrible surprise for the goats -- which at least should be a warning to the spiritually smug who think they have it all figured out.
You could say that in this parable of a dream Jesus has given us, ahead of time, the questions for the final exam. He doesn’t want any of us at the end of our days to look back with dismay or regret. But you could also say that he is giving us the vital clue about how to live in the presence of God and the Christ every day of our lives.
I
"Where are you, O God?" They are following all the rules of right worship, observing all the national days of fasting and prayer, but God seems nowhere to be found. Their cries seem much like the cries of the mainstream church in America concerned about dwindling rolls and dollars and waning size and influence, trying new kinds of worship and other techniques of church growth given by experts in the field.
God thunders back his answer:
Is this the kind of fast I want? For you to come to church and kneel and say correct prayers, to put ashes on your head once a year?
(All in need are your flesh, kin to you because they are kin to me; do not hide from their need.)
It sounds like Jesus has been reading the prophets! Where do you meet the Messiah? In the least of these. As Mother Teresa said, as she saw another sick and impoverished Indian coming for help: "Here comes Christ in another distressing disguise."
II
This is what I see you do every day in your work and in your mission for Christ: as you teach children, do therapy as soul-making, attend the sick; work for better schools for all our children, for low-cost housing, for a living wage; as you befriend the lonely, visit nursing homes, become advocates for the voiceless, love the outcast, raise your own little ones, provide jobs through your business. God is there.
This is why we offer mission experience for you in Camden, New Jersey, for our youth. In Ecuador we are planning an interfaith mission with medicine education and construction as our means of grace. Next Saturday, Room In The Inn is beginning as we literally invite the homeless poor into our church one night a week for food, shelter and friendship. We are in the process of cranking up our mission in Lakewood; planning a new Habitat House Mission. After worship you can talk to leaders of our Ecuador mission and Room In The Inn ministry in the Heaton Hall foyer.
We do these things not just for others, but for ourselves, for God waits for us in them, Christ waits for us in them.
Some of you are already giving of yourself to the edge of exhaustion. Today you should not hear a call to do more, but rather the blessing of God: "Well done, good and faithful servant." Others of you are bound in patterns which keep you self-enclosed. It is so easy. It is the entropy of the soul turned in on itself.
Bud Wilkinson once described football as twenty-two men in bad need of rest being watched by forty thousand in bad need of exercise. Jesus wants to move some of us out of the stands and onto the field.
III
But this sermon is more than about the doing of good. It is about the very nature of God, God’s Christ and the salvation God brings.
John Dominic Crossan said last month that there are four questions we all must wrestle with:
In an age where religion and politics meet on the bloody stage of war, these questions become urgent.
And for Christians there is a fifth question which shapes the answers to all four: What kind of king is Jesus? On Christ the King Sunday it is a crucial question, lest we let our notions of king define Jesus rather than letting Jesus define king.
For first-century Christians, to confess Jesus as Kyrios, Lord, was to say at the same time something politically dangerous: Caesar is not Kyrios. For twentieth-century Christians in Germany, those of the confessing church, when they signed the Barmen Declaration it said something politically dangerous: It said Jesus, not Hitler, was Kyrios, Lord; Jesus, not Hitler, was Fuhrer.
When we call Jesus Kyrios, Lord, and Christos, Messiah, Christ, this confession of faith makes us rethink everything about:
Where do we find Christ, the Messiah? Among the least of these.
Where is God? In acts of justice and mercy.
What kind of throne does the Christ sit on? It is in the shape of a gallows, a cross, an electric chair.
What is the power of God which is saving the world? It is not the coercive power of the sword, but the persuasive power of love made eloquent in suffering.
The Prince of Peace brings a sword, but it is a surgeon’s sword healing the soul as it does its work.
Imagine! The king of glory born in a shelter for animals.
The Lord of all life had no place to lay his head.
The Messiah, the anointed one of God, executed on a cross reserved for slaves and worst offenders against the state.
The servant of God led like a sheep to slaughter.
Justin Martyr, first-century philosopher become Christian, speaks of what opponents of Christianity were saying:
An ancient piece of anti-Christian graffiti has been discovered. Scratched on a wall is the crude picture of a man on a cross, except the head of the man is the head of a donkey. And underneath are the words: ALEXAMENOS WORSHIPS GOD.
IV
The text from Colossians may seem most foreign to us. It is addressed to a philosophically sophisticated audience, and it tells the story of salvation in the form of a hymn. Here is what it sings forth:
So in the least of these, whoever they are in your life, we not only meet Christ, we become Christ. There’s a mission statement and a half!
CONCLUSION
In his latest book Frederick Buechner, nearing seventy-five, looks over his life. He wishes he could have done more. He is in some ways haunted by the calling of Christ to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned. He hopes his thirty-two books will be enough. He wishes his faith could have been brighter and gladder, his life bolder and braver. "I wish I had been a saint," he writes.
But he hears this encouraging word from the four writers he has studied and perhaps from God as well:
"Be Christ," says the person on the throne whose face we cannot see.
"Be Christ," by giving of yourself to people who need most what you best can give.
"Be Christ" even as your theology is in flux or in threads.
"Be Christ" now, for you can put off making up your mind but you cannot put off the making of your life.
Our spiritual task is not to whittle Jesus down to our size, but to let God make us Christ’s size. So, "Be Christ," to the glory of God and the healing of the world.
Amen.
