1 Christ the King, A RCL The Rev. Susan Eaves I can t speak for you but our world feels extraordinarily disturbed to me whether mass killings in churches or mosques, racial violence, gutter sexual behavior, vile destructive language diaparaging other human beings you name it, we seem to be doing it. It s not clear how we have arrived in this place politics, religion, media coverage, even our own individual standards have contributed and it isn t pretty. I find myself wondering if we can ever make the respect for the dignity of all human beings, and standards of justice and freedom to which we say we aspire. It so happens that today, the last Sunday of the church year, is known as Christ the King Sunday a strange title in a country that chose to have no king. In fact, few worshipping Christian countries today have monarchs of any kind. King is an archaic title with no great track record in history. So why has the church kept this title for the Christ? A story might help. The Hasidim tell the story of an event during the Second World War in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. Seventy years ago during bitter cold the Nazi soldiers were making a random
2 selection of inmates for execution. As the men stood at the end of their bunks in the barracks they could hear the bodies of those taken falling to the ground outside the huts. The killing went on all day. That evening was the beginning of Hanukah. There was no oil or candle or Hanukah candlestick to be found. Taking the battered wooden clog of an inmate, some black camp shoe polish and a wick made from some threads of their uniforms the first light was lit by the rabbi near where the many twisted and tortured bodies lay. The inmates gathered in the darkness and the rabbi recited the first two of the three prayers. Then he hesitated and looking over his shoulder seemed uncertain as to whether he should continue. Finally his comforting voice rang out in the darkness as he recited the third blessing, Blessed art thou, O Lord God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive and has preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season. Afterwards, an angry prisoner challenged his choice of prayer. How could he have the insolence to pray such a prayer in the face of such terrible slaughter? The rabbi acknowledged he too had hesitated but, as he turned intending to consult other rabbis, he had seen the faces of the faithful in the darkness. He had seen their faith and their devotion and knew he was blessed to be one among those who had such faith
3 despite the evidence. He knew himself to be under special obligation to recite the prayer. And even we, in our everyday world, catch glimpses of that kind of protest - the protest against the reality of human pain and suffering, devastating loss and confusion. We may try to construct answers but know they are poor at best. Earthquake, flood, war, oppression, hatred, sudden deaths, financial disaster, deep injustices, racism, abject poverty all these and many, many more are part of our human experience and we defy it. Our hearts may be broken but we refuse defeat. On occasion, human hope and faith appears to burn even brighter the darker the circumstances. It is who we are. Human beings, human hope refusing to settle for second best. Human hope insisting there has to be more. That more is possible ; some point when things will be right. There will be an end to suffering. Our hope is not, in fact, in vain. We insist that God will act, that the King of the Universe will intervene and set things straight. A true king who can and will prevail. Perhaps the most engaging thing about the story Jesus tells of the sheep and the goats was that the sheep, the righteous, had no idea that
4 their good deeds, their compassion for those in need and their actions to alleviate those needs, were anything more than what they were supposed to do. The sheep were simply going about the business of being good human beings. But whether we human sheep are behaving consciously or unconsciously, it is what God is looking for. The sheep are chosen not because they are rich or influential, religious or atheist, educated, knowledgeable, or even theologically correct. The impression given is that they were simply responding to the universe in the way God intends. It seems God is not too concerned about motives or doctrines, or institutions or human power. God simply wants us to care and to act (and maybe even act so we can learn to care.) It is not an accident that those with little often seem to live closer to God. For some strange reason the more we have and the more comfortable our existence the harder it is for us to respond to the needs around us. It is easier to postpone action because our needs are not so obviously urgent. Sometimes we are simply so tied up in our own agendas, it is easier not to look up. But Jesus is making it clear we must look upon our world and act if the kingship of God is to be made real. God s concern is the here and now. Comfortable or not God is looking to us to do something. The need is urgent. Come, God says to those who respond, you that are blessed
5 by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. This is God s world. The kind of world which is created by people who see hunger and provide food, who notice thirst and give me something to drink, who encounter a stranger and welcome them, notice the naked and clothe them, who tend the sick and care for them, who brave the prison and visit the inmate (and there are many kinds of hunger, types of thirst, strangers, nakedness, sickness and imprisonment). These actions create the world God has intended from the beginning. God so loves the world that our love for the world and all that is in it is the love of God s own self. So, as we sit here this morning at the end of another church year, as we name Christ as king, as we tend to our children, our elders, our friends, and our colleagues we must decide in what kind of world we want to live. We must decide how seriously we plan to take God s intention for the universe. It is not up to us to save the whole world God has already accomplished that. But it is up to us to live into that truth. In responding to the reality witnessed by the rabbi in Bergen-Belsen, our own heavy hearts are lightened. We too are imbedded in the great cloud of witnesses stretching across the centuries. Witnesses
6 proclaiming for eternity that there is more, more than we see right now. They are calling to us to witness to their faith and their devotion to the real and asking that we do the same. The poet R. S. Thomas wrote of this truth in his poem, The Kingdom. It s a long way off but inside it There are quite different things going on: Festivals at which the poor man Is king and the consumptive is Healed; mirrors in which the blind look At themselves and love looks at them Back; and industry is for mending The bent bones and the minds fractured By life. It s a long way off, but to get There takes no time and admission Is free, if you purge yourself Of desire, and present yourself with Your need only and the simple offering Of your faith, green as a leaf. Amen