Love Wins

(Scriptures: Ezekiel 34:11-24, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-46)

Today is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, known as Christ the King Sunday, or more recently as Reign of Christ Sunday. And so we sing the church’s coronation hymns: All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name….Jesus Shall Reign where’er the sun does his successive journeys run….Crown Him with Many Crowns. (I always think that last hymn should be a favorite of dentists…..bad joke, I know.) Our hymns point to the reign of Christ, point to where all our faith in Christ and faithfulness to the church is leading, that great and glorious day when Christ will ascend the throne of his glory.

Our Scripture readings invite us to ponder what it means to call Christ our Lord, to say that Jesus will reign. It’s interesting that Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday always comes in November, just a couple weeks after our November elections. This year, there were mostly local and some statewide races, no big national names on the ballot – although, in Liberia, for whom we’ve been praying for some weeks now, there was a hugely important national runoff election – I understand President Sirleaf was re-elected. But even here, locally, on election day we collectively made decisions – who will we name as our city councilman, our county judges, our county row offices – recorder of deeds and prothonatary and dogcatcher and so on. If we voted, we made choices. If we didn’t vote, we also made a choice – to rely on the votes of others to select our political leaders. In any political process, the candidates make lots of promises before the election, but it is only after they have been sworn into office that we truly learn how they will govern and carry out their responsibilities, be it as mayor or dogcatcher or anywhere in between. Only after the election do we learn what kind of mayor or councilperson or dogcatcher they will be. In the same way, in today’s readings we consider what kind of ruler Jesus will be, what sort of reign Jesus will carry out.

It’s clear from our Scriptures that Christ is not aloof or remote or detached or above-it-all. Rather, his rule, his reign is very hands-on, very much involved with the details, passionately, intimately involved with humankind.

Both our Old Testament reading and our Gospel reading use the actions of sheep as a metaphor for human behavior. Our reading from Ezekiel is part of a message from God against the rulers of Israel, who, rather than caring for their flocks – that is to say, the people of Israel – have only looked out for their own interests. Rather than feeding their flocks, they have fed only themselves, leaving their flocks – the people – to fend for themselves. God proclaims that God himself will gather the sheep who have been scattered. But Ezekiel’s message from God is not only against the negligent shepherds, but against those sheep who in their arrogance have driven the weaker sheep from the fold, who in their greed have not only grabbed the best for themselves, but spoiled what was left for everyone else. We here in America may find ourselves in this text, where we consume far more than our share of the planet’s resources, and leave environmental destruction affecting the planet in our wake. Indeed, it’s a surprisingly current image when, in a news story unfolding day by day before our eyes, moneyed interests in our nation and even right here in Pennsylvania are willing to risk environmental degradation to parts of the state, ripping open the earth and potentially poisoning the water, in order to get rich by extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale reserves by the highly polluting process of hydrofracking. The developers will get the big bucks, and the rest of us will be stuck with the mess. Well does God say, in the words of Ezekiel, that God will judge between sheep and sheep.

And then we have the well-known parable of the sheep and the goats found in Matthew chapter 25, which develops Ezekiel’s image of God judging between sheep and sheep into an image of the final judgment. We are given a picture of Jesus as a king so concerned about his people that, not content to rely on his court officials for information and guidance about his populace, he disguises himself as a beggar and walks around incognito to see how his subjects treat one another. The king behaves almost like a modern-day secret shopper who enters a store and pretends to be a customer, in order to see how the store treats its customers. Or like an undercover investigative reporter who wears a hidden camera and approaches members of a religious cult or a drug gang, ostensibly seeking affiliation, but in reality trying to learn what goes on behind closed doors.

It’s been said that “character is how we behave when we think nobody’s looking.” In Jesus’ parable, the king’s ploy works – both sheep and goats think nobody’s looking, and go about their business as they always do. The king’s disguise works so well that neither the sheep nor the goats recognize the king, and so both the sheep and the goats behave in character, behave as they do when they think nobody’s looking – the sheep offering assistance, and the goats offering nothing. Both sheep and goats ask the king, “When did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison?” Both sheep and goats were told, “as you did – or did not do – unto the least of these, you did – or did not do – unto me.”

The point of Jesus’ parable isn’t about trying to work our way into the kingdom. Rather, it’s about Jesus, like the shepherd in our Ezekiel passage, trying to gather his sheep who have been mixed among other flocks. Shepherds would mark their sheep, so that if they got mixed up among other flocks, they could distinguish their sheep from the rest. And Jesus’ sheep are marked as well – marked initially by the waters of baptism, marking the death of our nature of sin and by God’s grace, the beginnings of new life in Christ, and as we live into our baptismal vows, by love for God and neighbor. In Jesus’ parable, love, compassion, hospitality, caring are the marks that separate the sheep from the goats.

It’s striking that in Jesus' parable, the goats are characterized not by having overtly done evil – the goats didn’t kill or steal or pillage or plunder - but by having failed to do good, by having done - nothing. And this aspect of Jesus’ parable challenges me – sometimes terrifies me. Maybe it challenges you as well. I can remember many times when I’ve fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, visited prisoners - when I was at Old First, there were several persons with ties to Old First who got into trouble and were arrested, because of drug addictions or mental illness, and who I visited from time to time. And I can remember many times when I haven’t – times when I have passed by street people seeking donations without so much as speaking a word, times when I meant to visit someone in the hospital but never quite got there, never even got around to sending a card, times when somebody asked for something as simple as a ride, and I was too busy. Too busy. My record of compassion is a mixed bag. I feel like I’m not entirely sheep or entirely goat, but some of each, some sort of critter even stranger than the ones you’ll find at the Philadelphia zoo.

So maybe Jesus’ parable speaks on more than one level. It’s been said that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. Maybe the line between the sheep and the goats is not only between people, but also within them. As we live into our baptismal vows, as the Holy Spirit we received at our baptism works within us over the course of our lives, as we ask God’s forgiveness week by week and implore God’s grace, by God’s grace we conform less and less to the world, and are more and more transformed into the image of Christ. God begins to give us an extreme makeover, as we begin to be transformed more and more from goats into sheep. The formal theological term is sanctification. It’s a process that begins in this life, but is completed in the life to come.

It’s a process that begins not only in our own lives, but in the lives of others. Genesis tells us that human beings are created in God’s image. Sin distorts that image, but does not erase it. When we’re tempted to lash out at another human being, to insult them, to ignore them….remember that they, like we, are created in God’s image. Sometimes the divine image is really, really, really hard to find – but it’s there. Somewhere. And so it really is true that how we treat other human beings is how we treat God.

Every week as we pray the Lord’s prayer, we say the words, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” The Reign of Christ has begun – began with the resurrection of Christ, is spread in part through the work of the church – but is not complete. Jesus reigns, but not everyone has gotten the memo. We live in the space between “now” and “not yet.” But today’s Gospel reading tells us what God’s kingdom, God’s reign, will look like. Also remember that I John 4 tells us that “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.” And so, if God is love, and God reigns – then love reigns. Love rules. Love wins. All within ourselves and all within others that is unloving, will be left outside the door of God’s kingdom. God loves us, and at last we will be able to love God as we should, will be united in our love for God, and God’s love for us.

You don’t need me to tell you that we’re not there yet. We won’t get there in this life. But the beginnings of the kingdom are sprouting, even sprouting here at Emanuel Church. The love of God and love for one another we experience here, even though we don’t always get it right, is a small sample of the love we will experience unfailingly in the world to come. You could say that, at our best, we’re like a little outpost of heaven. Paul’s lofty words in our reading from Ephesians: “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.” – may seem far away from our own experience. But even as Paul looks ahead to Christ’s reign coming in its fullness, Paul is so certain of it that he speaks as if it’s already happened – as if, even though we only get glimpses of it in this life, it’s already a done deal. And it’s a done deal that will include us, the church, as Paul goes on: “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.” For the church – hey, that’s us, the church, the body of Christ.

May we at Emanuel Church continue to be a place where God’s love can be found. May we continue to be a place where people can come and see and taste that the Lord is good, where people can get a glimpse of heaven, a glimpse of the goodness that is to come. May it be so with us. Amen.