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Sunday 20th November, 2011 Sunday next before Advent
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
CHRIST THE KING

Sentence
O shout to the Lord in triumph all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness and come before His face with songs of joy. Psalm 100:1

Collect
God of power and love, Who raised Your Son Jesus from death to life, resplendent in glory to rule over all creation; free the world to rejoice in His peace, to glory in His justice, and to live in His love. Unite the human race in Jesus Christ Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.
Amen

Old Testament Lesson Ezekiel 34: 11 – 16 & 20 – 24

Thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
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Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken.

Psalm 100

O shout to the Lord in triumph all the earth: serve the Lord with gladness and come before His face with songs of joy
Know that the Lord He is God: it is He Who has made us and we are His, we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Come into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: give thanks to Him and bless His holy name
For the Lord is good, His loving mercy is for ever: His faithfulness through all generations.

Epistle Ephesians 1: 15 – 23

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.




GOSPEL Matthew 25: 31 -46

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'
Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'
Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

NOTES ON THE READINGS

Old Testament
The OT prophets are often full of vivid and powerful images of God at work; very often there is the contrast between those who had been leaders of the people, so-called shepherds who did nothing but seek their own agendas, and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is one of quite a number of passages that takes the shepherd image – and poses such challenges. It was not only for those of Ezekiel’s time, but of all times; and it was not only an image for Judaism and the Church – it is in fact an image for all humanity, for all leadership, for all who would share responsibility for humanity. Do not miss the powerful point of all this – the other readings will point you in the same direction.

Psalm

Although there are not a lot of specifics, this psalm rejoices in what the author sees as the breadth and effect of the faith. Remember that he was Jewish! We can enter into the same joy, but do see where that points!

Epistle

Have you dared to see what Paul was talking about or have you succumbed to the polite and spiritual level that manages to avoid the realities? The second paragraph of this passage has enormous repercussions which need to be seen, in this day and age when it is said that ‘religion is irrelevant!’ It is nothing of the sort, and has an enormous – if unpopular emphasis to offer all humanity of whatever culture. Here is no dominant, exclusivist nor triumphalist doctrine, but is a pointing in the only direction that can offer peace and progress – in love.

GOSPEL

‘When the Son of Man comes in His glory’ sounds like the set-up for a grand and powerful denouement, not unlike the sort of thing ancient Jewry hoped for when the Messiah came and sorted out the enemies of Judaism. There they felt sure that God would show up the rotten so-and-sos, and make it clear that Israel was top dog.
Forget it. Christ the King was, is and always will be concerned not with power but with service and caring. Who is the focus in this passage, and the answer is those who are hungry, thirsty, estranged, sick, imprisoned! Not your usual sort of king eh? Not your standard politician, eh? Why ever is it that we so miss the point of this Faith of ours, and turn the Servant Shepherd King into some sort of power-broker? That will never be the reality, so don’t ever forget that.



NOTES FOR A SERMON

If you were ever asked to give a resume of the Faith to someone who has no real idea of it, what would you point to? Jesus Who died for you and everyone else? If ever you do that, you have almost certainly removed Jesus of the Scriptures right away from reality and into some sort of religious morass. I kid you not! What is the goal, point and purpose of the entire Biblical Faith? Heaven? No ....... right here and now. Start again if you will, at the opening chapters of Genesis, and see that what is being presented to you is a world view of singular and present significance. It is the proposition (not a good word for this at all really!) that this Faith that is explored over centuries is designed to offer a direction and means whereby human history can be changed from not complete disaster but almost, into something much closer to life as it was designed to be. From Genesis 3, with its expose of much of the cause of human ills, it is a statement that life was not meant to be like this, but was designed to be far more complete, open and valuable, with far less in the way of stuff-up.

That Old Testament Lesson illustrates part of the problem. Leadership, whether we take the picture from Ezekiel’s time or from our own, is marred by the same selfish, human power-exercise. If I am boss, you are my slave to do exactly what I tell you. I know what’s best, so get used to it. People from politicians to colleagues do it, and life becomes shattered. Power. Control. Sexual abuse, financial control. Look wherever you like and there it is staring you in the face, and demanding your attention or at most your obedience. What is becoming quite intolerable is the expectation and pressure from governments in this country to give them the freedom to do whatever they want. That is one short step left to tyranny. I remember someone writing, towards the end of the last century, that the 21st is likely to be the century of the tyrant.

You will know the old – and totally unreal! – comment that religion and politics do not mix. However one look at the Old Testament prophets, and a solid look at the Gospel, makes it quite clear that such an approach is simply the avoiding of the real issues. This is no attempt to make everyone religious; it is the expression of the conviction that the usual human means of governance tends to be counterproductive most of the time. While there will ever be Christians who will support people like G.W.Bush in the Iraqi campaign, seeing that as the true use of power, the Faith in fact turns right away from such abuse of people and position.

The Christian Faith has not only to do with matters spiritual, but with matters rather closer to the bone. From those Old Testament prophets on, the clear perception has grown that justice and truth, compassion and integrity are vital for the formation and preservation of society. These are not so much ‘religious’ statements as they are really quite basic human issues. So if I have to belt you over the head to get you to follow my programme and be obedient to me, then I have shown that my process of governance is totally false and untrue.

Now look again at Jesus’ path: when He talked about destroying evil, it was not by destroying the perpetrators but by showing up evil for what it is. The crucifixion, apart from anything else, underlines that reality. Jesus came as servant not as boss, carer not as master. And the very Eucharist itself points in exactly that same direction, even though we tend to ignore both the emphasis and the importance of the faith.
You may well feel that such an approach is disingenuous and pathetic. But did you notice the effect of the reconciliation approach of South Africa after the collapse of apartheid? Who knows what the picture would have been if the reaction then was one of revenge rather than reconciliation.

It is certainly true that it will take a book rather than a sermon to unpack all that lies behind the point and impact of the Christian approach to life and living; even Gandhi in India suffered the same fate as Jesus when he attempted to point people to a similar non-violent path. But neither experience of Gandhi nor Jesus does anything to invalidate the direction, and its values.

This is the Christ the King we worship today – the real question for us is whether or not we respond in life to Him Whom we say we worship!