This week's sermon

 

Christ the King 2023

This is the last Sunday of Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Christ the King.

It gets darker earlier every day for the next month and dawn comes later. We spend Advent in deepening darkness waiting for the Light of Christmas. Advent is a time of waiting…

And just before the waiting begins we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King.

 

For those who have lived their whole life in the United States, the idea of a King is hard to put our heads around.

Didn’t we fight a war over 240 years ago to rid ourselves of kings and queens?

Don’t we take pride in being a democracy instead of a monarchy?

So, how do we find ourselves bowing down to a King?

 

But Christ was not an earthly king—he is the King of Heaven, the King of the times to come.

In the first century A.D., Kings were the norm for rulers. So that image made perfect since to the earliest Christians as for the Jews before them.

 

All the readings today speak of royalty.

 

Reading from Ezekiel.

Reading from Psalms.

Reading from Ephesians.

 

And then there is the wondrous reading from Matthew, when the King of Heaven comes to separate the sheep from the goats just as God separated the lean sheep from the fat sheep.

Once the sheep are on the King’s right hand and the goats are on his left, he judges them.

Remember the words he tells the sheep before welcoming them to Paradise.

 

 

But they objected. When, Lord, did we do this?

And he tells them that when they ‘did it unto one of the least of these’ they did it unto him.

 

Things don’t go as well for those on his left hand—he sends them into eternal punishment.

 

In a wondrous book called The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut tells the story of Salo, a robot sent throughout the universe to find What IS The Meaning Of Life.

Salo finally encounters Beatrice Rummford who has been marooned on Titan, one of moons of Jupiter.

Salo asks her, “what is the meaning of life?”

Beatrice replies, “the meaning of life is to love whoever is around to be loved”.

 

That’s what Matthew is telling us—to love whoever is around to be loved.

To think of others rather than ourselves.

To pray God to remember you.

To be still—find time to be still—and in that you will know God.

 

Those things are what Advent is about:

Love those around you.

Pray God to look with compassion on all God’s children.

Wait and wait and wait some more, calming ourselves in spite of all the hub-bub around us, until we can be still and know God.

Not bad advice. Not at all.

Amen.