Sunday 26 November 2017

Christ the King, 2017


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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