Delivered by Amy Higgins on November 26, 2023

Scripture: Matthew 25: 31-46

A man was hired to paint a boat. He painted it bright red as requested. As he painted, he noticed a small hole so he repaired it and continued painting. When he finished, he accepted the agreed upon payment for painting the boat and went on his way. The next day, the owner of the boat arrived at the painter’s home and gave him an additional check. The painter said he had already been paid for painting the boat. The owner said, “This is for repairing the hole in the boat.” The painter said the amount of the check was far too much for the work to repair such a small hole. The owner of the boat replied, “Yes, but I forgot about the hole and did not ask you to repair it. I forgot about the hole until I came home and saw the boat was gone. My children had taken out the boat. Even this is not enough to repay you for fixing the hole in the boat.” (The Red Boat from Sharing is Caring, Sweden)

It is Reign of Christ Sunday, or as some call it Christ the King Sunday. This special day in the church calendar is not as old as you might think. In 1925, Pope Pious XI created this feast in the Roman Catholic church as a response to the growing secular authority of fascism and the atheism of communism, reminding Christians that governments come and go but the authority of Christ is forever. Originally celebrated in October, in 1969 Pope Paul VI moved the feast to the Sunday before Advent, the last Sunday of the liturgical, or church, year. So this is New Year’s Eve for us in a way and as such, as we look ahead to Advent we celebrate and remember the king of the kingdom.

Matthew 25:40 is an easy verse for us to latch onto. Many ministries are based on and even named after it. And it can be easy for preachers and theologians to speak on it. But there is more to the passage than simply “what you do for others, you do for Jesus.” There is also the reminder that whatever is not done for others, is not done for Jesus and that will be punished. Some find that harder to reconcile, if in fact we believe the victory has already been won for all of us. But there is a reason Jesus begins the passage talking about sheep and how they will be shepherded in the kingdom.

In the beginning of this passage in Matthew, Jesus refers to Ezekiel, chapter 34 verses 11-16 to be exact. “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.”

Sheep are a common symbol in the Bible. Slaughtered for meals or for sacrifice, and in this case as a metaphor for God’s people. Sheep are difficult but, necessary. Unique but stubborn; they need to be herded, guided. One pastor in a commentary I heard this week said shepherds are to sheep as preschool teachers are to four year olds. We know the story of the lost one and the remaining 99. But here, Ezekiel’s sheep, God’s people, are scattered. Not because the shepherds have gone to look for the one that is lost but, because they do not care for the sheep. These shepherds, that is government and religious leaders, feed and fatten themselves. And so God will send a shepherd to truly care for His sheep. And so now that the shepherd has arrived, in our Matthew passage, he tells his followers how to care for one another.

Although, Jesus speaks of caring for the lost and the least in the context of the kingdom to come, this passage really is about the kingdom that is already here. Clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and visiting the imprisoned are not works of salvation, they are works of compassion and morality. Doing them does not make us righteous but we do them because we are righteous, in right relationship with God and one another. Our inclusion in the kingdom was settled before the work began. But the kingdom work we do here on earth does show our readiness for the kingdom to come.

The Abingdon Bible Commentary, from 1929, says of the Matthew 25 passage, “The real dividing line between men is whether or not they have the spirit of humanity expressing itself in kindly helpfulness wherever there is need and distress. Christian kindness is to know no limits of race or class but is to flow out unceasingly and naturally from a heart in complete harmony with the will of God. The bearing of the parable on the various accidental elements that divide us – race, caste, creed – is obvious. Equally obvious is its teaching that salvation is finally ‘of the heart’, not ‘of the head’.” Our Christian kindness is in these words from nearly 100 years ago, not from the talking heads and fear mongers of today. The way we care for others is our response to or rejection of Christ. It is of the heart and not of the head.

We want Jesus to make everyone do what’s right. And too often what we believe is right is just wanting our own way. As Rev. Sue Lodge says, “If Christ is king, Ceasar is not. If Christ is king, my side (of religion, of politics) is not. If Christ is king, my ego is not. For Christ to be king, we must ‘dethrone’ anything we put above him, including the church and who has the correct theology.” She also says we must “die into life”. In terms of the kingdom and Jesus’ words in the passage, we understand and believe our earthly death will bring us eternal life. But there is another meaning here. When we “die into life” in the way Rev. Lodge means, we die to self, killing our selfish wants to be right, to be judge. To kill the greed and superiority that makes us like the self-serving shepherds getting fat off the misery of others. Only love and mercy are the criteria for judgment. And that judgment is not ours to make.

This is the way of discipleship. To recognize the hunger and thirst, nakedness and imprisonment of others is to know these things in ourselves. We should always hunger and thirst for the Good News, for our daily bread. We should understand what it means to be imprisoned by the things that separate us from God and one another – judgement, gossip, too much TV and too little prayer, or whatever the vice may be. And we should certainly know the vulnerability, and maybe even shame, of a heart naked before God. Our discipleship requires that we are both sheep and shepherd. We must seek and receive sustenance of our own needs while also meeting the needs of others, not in spite of, but rather because of our own needs.

This is what John Wesley called The Means of Grace. Our works of piety – worship, study of scripture, prayer, Holy Communion – the practices in which we deepen our faith and relationship with God. There are also works of mercy – feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the lonely, caring for the sick. The Means of Grace are how we experience God’s grace in our own lives and how we express it to others. In our works of piety, we stand naked before God hungry for the nourishment only He can provide. In our works of mercy we share what we have been given that others may also receive. This is the call of our discipleship. And it is the prophetic call of Jesus’ words that “whatever we do for the least of these, we will do for him.” 

Christ will return to a world still full of need but, we cannot let it go undone, expecting Jesus’ return to fix it. Each and every one of us has a call, a call to use the gifts we have each been given. God’s hope is that we know that and will live into that. We care for others, dying into the life of discipleship, not because Jesus wants us to but, because it is who we are – followers of Jesus. This is the work of the Kingdom, the Kingdom that is here and now. The Lordship of Jesus has no limit; it is all knowing and encompassing of who we are in Christ. He reigns over everything and his reign has already begun. We sometimes like to think, especially in our approach to mission and charity, that we are pulling Jesus along with us, but he is pulling us along with him. And when he shows us a hole in the side of a boat, I pray we’ll fix it because that’s just who we are.