Today
is the Feast of Christ the King, the culmination of the Church year. Today we
celebrate that God has raised Jesus from the dead, and set him over all rule
and authority and power and dominion—and that God has done this for us, the
Church.
But
what does that mean? What sort of a king is this Christ, depicted on the throne
of heaven in the stained-glass window behind me? How does he exercise his rule?
And how does it benefit us, his people? Or what does it mean for those who are
not part of the Church?
Ezekiel
was a priest, but he did not serve in the temple in Jerusalem. He was one of
the generation of his people who were carried off into exile in Babylon. There,
they wept, and tried to make sense of what had happened to them. Why had God
allowed this to happen? When would God restore their fortunes? How ought they
to live in the meantime?
Ezekiel
painted a picture for the people. In it, he asked them to imagine themselves as
a flock of sheep, dispersed among several other flocks. In time, God himself
will come to them as a shepherd, to seek out the scattered sheep, and vindicate
the weak and the lean sheep.
Jesus
draws on this imagery in his discourse on the sheep and the goats. The context
is this: within days, he will be executed. Among his final teaching, Jesus seeks
to prepare his disciples for what is to come. In Matthew 23 we see Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem, because
in rejecting him and his message, the imminent destruction of the city—yet again—will
not be averted. In Matthew 24, Jesus
goes on to predict the destruction of the temple. While some will see this as
the sign of an imminent end to history, Jesus declares that this is not the
case: there will be wars and rumours of wars, the rising and falling of
nations, the persecution of his followers. He is speaking of history, as we
experience it in every generation. And into this history—not after it—Jesus
introduces the power and authority of the Son of Man, or Mortal: the term—also borrowed
from Ezekiel—by which Jesus referred to himself.
In
the light of this, Jesus’ advice is to be watchful of unfolding events while
investing our lives in the places where we find ourselves (Jesus uses several
parables to convey this teaching, in Matthew
24 and 25). This block of collected teaching culminates with a discourse on the
judging of the nations, by the Son of Man, that references the sheep and the
goats.
Now,
this is one of Jesus’ most misunderstood teachings. It is routinely told to
convey the idea that the genuine nature of the faith of those who claim to
follow Jesus will be determined based on how they have treated the poor. I have
even known Christians who worry whether they will be welcomed by God, or rejected,
because on occasion they have walked by a homeless person like the priest and
the scribe walking by the man left for dead on the side of the road. But while
it is clear throughout scripture that God has a heart for the poor and calls
his people to reflect that, even allowing judgement to fall on the nation of
Israel when they refuse to hear the cry of the poor, this is categorically not
what Jesus is saying here.
Jesus
is drawing on the imagery employed by the Old Testament prophets to convey the
idea that God would use the Gentile nations to judge his people, but would also
judge those empires based on how they treated God’s people. To give one example,
Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar appointed Daniel, Hannaniah, Mishael, and
Azariah (given new names, Belteshazzar, Shadrah, Meshach, and Abednego) to
positions of responsibility in his court. To give another example, Haman, an
official in the court of Persian king Ahasuerus, attempted to have all the Jews
annihilated (his plot ultimately foiled by Mordecai and Esther).
Jesus
takes this imagery of the fortunes of the gentile nations rising and falling
based on how they have treated the people of Israel and makes two developments.
First, the basis is now not how they have treated the nation of Israel, but the
new Israel: Jesus’ disciples, his brothers or new family. Second, it is Jesus
himself who will be the judge.
Like
the Old Testament prophets, Jesus uses apocalyptic language to describe that
judgement. For those of us who are British, because of our cultural heritage of
European art, we tend to think of apocalyptic language as describing the
judgement of individuals at the end of time; but in scripture it routinely describes
the judgement of nations through the unfolding of history.
We
read these passages on the Feast of Christ the King because they inform our
understanding of what sort of king Jesus is, and how he rules. And in this
Gospel passage we see that Jesus exercises his rule through the deployment of
angels, or spiritual beings, with responsibility for different nations. Where
nations welcome the Church, they enter-into a share in the blessing of the
kingdom of heaven. This is very much our vision in Durham Diocese, where we see
our purpose as the church as being to serve our communities for the blessing and
transformation of us all. Jesus is king over all for the Church, but the
blessings of the kingdom of heaven are not restricted to the Church. They will
come as a surprise to some—not at some future time, but today, for children,
women and men of goodwill, Friends of the Minster and of all our churches
throughout the diocese and beyond.
On
the other hand, where nations persecute the Church, imprisoning disciples, or
denying them fundamental rights or opportunities enjoyed by everyone else, Jesus
will instruct his angels to withdraw their protection, leaving that nation
vulnerable to the tendency nations have demonstrated throughout history to
destroy one another. Empire after empire lies utterly burned to the point of no
return to the unfolding pages of history.
What,
then, might this discourse have to say to us today? Well, a third of our
congregation is Iranian: men and women who have fled here because the Church is
persecuted in Iran. As we listen to Jesus’ words, and celebrate that God has
raised this Jesus from the dead and seated him over all rule and authority and
power and dominion, for the Church, can we imagine a future in which the regime
that has oppressed the Church is removed from power, and a new structure of
government emerge made up of those who have seen the hidden-but-growing
Christian community as being good for the nation as a whole? Can we imagine
religious freedom in Iran, and our brothers and sisters going home, and us visiting
them there? Perhaps an official link between our diocese and a province in Iran?
That
is the hope Jesus holds out in this passage. Yes, there will be persecution:
you need to prepare for that. But there will also be vindication! Hold fast! I
will be at work to do this for you.
And
what might this passage have to say to us about our own nation? As a society,
we have been less-than-welcoming to those Christians who have fled to us
seeking refuge. Might England experience something of divine judgement in however
our history unfolds, post-Brexit, over the next decade? Many are hoping for a
rosy future; others for a least-worst-case-scenario. Whatever unfolds, Christ
the King is at work to vindicate his beloved Church, for the blessing of the
wider nation.
In
uncertain times, may our hope in that—our hope in him—be renewed.
Amen.
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