You may remember from AJ’s sermon on Christ the King Sunday last year that today’s feast day is not a very old one. Pope Pius created it in 1925, out of concern for the way the world was moving – away from faith in an eternal and all-loving God, and toward secularism and a trust in earthly powers of a very different kind. He originally established Christ the King Sunday on the last Sunday in October, around Halloween and All Saints. It wasn’t until 1970 that it was moved to its current place in the church calendar – that is today, the last Sunday before Advent.
And the Sunday before Advent feels like a good place to remind ourselves of the glory of God. For the last 25 Sundays we have been moving through Ordinary Time, and it may have started to feel exactly that – ordinary – those months and months following the joy of the Resurrection, the awe of the Ascension, the fiery mystery of Pentecost. It’s felt like a long time since we’ve focused on the majesty and the glory of a heavenly king. Now, we are about to step into the liturgical season of Advent, of anticipation, of waiting and watching for the birth of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace. Christ the baby born to unsheltered refugees; Christ the king of all creation, born in a barn, with angels singing in the heavens. Glory, with a bit of Ordinary still there.
All of today’s readings for Christ the King Sunday explore the idea of kingship in different ways, while at the same time turning the concept of kingship on its head – images that not only challenge how we think of Christ’s role in the world, but also push us to think about how we are to respond to that upside-down idea of kingship. Over and over we are reminded that Christ the King is not a king who rules with an iron fist, a king who rules only because he is interested in politics and wealth, but a king who looks to the common good, who governs to make sure that the weakest and the most vulnerable are cared for and are part of community and communion. Christ the King is a different kind of royalty, ruling from a state of love, not a state of power and self-interest.
First, God is nourishing. Our Old Testament reading, Ezekiel, portrays God as an image we are familiar with in the New Testament, connected over and over with Jesus – the Good Shepherd. “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep,” God says. “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… I will feed them with justice.”
For Ezekiel, the work of God as King is the work of a king who takes care of those he is put in charge of, rescuing those who have gotten lost or fallen behind, making sure that everyone is fed, and not just with food but with justice – not just with acts of kindness, but with attention to a society that has resulted in some who are weak, injured, and lost, while others stand on solid ground.
Second, God is creative. Our psalm for today, Psalm 95, is a psalm of praise and thanksgiving – a good reading for this holiday week as well. It draws a picture of God as both king and shepherd – along with another way of thinking about God. Listen:
For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the caverns of the earth, and the heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands have molded the dry land.
God, King above all gods, Shepherd of God’s people, is also a creative and creating God. In the poetry of the psalms, God has dug the caverns of the earth and built the hills and mountains and the contours of the earth; God has poured the deep oceans.
In our society, power (and the people who hold it and our access to it) is wrapped up in red tape, in laws and regulations, social hierarchies. And yet the psalmist describes God as creative and creating, nurturing and envisioning, and invites us to celebrate that creation by singing – in a sense, to celebrate creation by contributing to it.
Third, God is unifying. The writer of Ephesians tells us that God has sent Christ to “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,” that Christ’s very person is the church that holds us all together. Christ the King is not sent to divide and conquer, but to reconcile and bring peace.
Fourth, God is eternal. Ephesians describes God as constant, not bound by time: God’s rule and authority and power and dominion as “not only in this age but also in the age to come.” God is constant; God’s work and God’s goodness do not end – instead, we are given the assurance of eternity in the certainty that God’s power outlasts temporary things.
And lastly, God is with us and among us, is both King and subject, both divine and human. In today’s gospel, Jesus reminds us that in caring for one another, in loving one another, we are caring for and loving God, by describing the most startling, the most upside-down image of Christ as King yet – not just a king sitting “on the throne of his glory,” but a king who is among his people and lives and suffers with his people, whose face is seen in the faces of those who grieve, who hunger, who thirst, who are imprisoned:
“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.”
The gospel brings us right back to the Old Testament reading to the image of the Good Shepherd. We are all strangers; we are all shepherds.
Christ the King Sunday reminds us that God’s view of kingship is different from our earthly idea of kingship: shepherding and nourishing, creator and creating, eternal and lasting, reconciling and peace-giving, and most of all a king who lives in the least of these, who hungers and thirsts, who lives among us in the lives of the sick, the poor, the hungry, and the imprisoned. This king we will not find in the places we expect to find him, not in the comfortable halls of power, but in the uncomfortable, backwater, impoverished and forgotten byways, challenging us to turn upside down our own notions of kingship and power. When we look for Christ in the streets of poorest Bethlehem, we will find ourselves. Amen.
— The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett, Curate, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Christ the King Sunday, November 26, 2023
Readings: Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 95:1-7a; Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46
