The Feast of Christ the King, Year A

Ezekiel 34:11-17
1 Corinthians 15:20-28
Matthew 25:31-46

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JESUS CHRIST IS OUR KING, and our king says, "Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive [my Kingdom] like a child shall not enter it." (Mk 10:15) A child wholly depends upon other people for everything - food, drink, clothing, inclusion, a sense of self-worth; a child receives everything as a gift. Jesus identifies with children: "whoever welcomes a little child in my name welcomes me." (Mt 18:5) Jesus wants us to identify with children - their dependence, their vulnerability, their openness, their learning, their growing, their eagerness, their enthusiasm. Those things should always be in our lives. We forget maturity is a life-long process - not something completed. If we're not maturing, we're regressing; if we're not growing, we're dying.

Earlier this month, I went to my first parent-teacher conference. We talked about learning goals for children in the class. These included: tries new activities/situations; handles frustration constructively; attempts to use words to resolve conflicts; accepts comfort from others; shows concern and gives comfort to others; plays alone contentedly and independently; plays cooperatively and interacts with peers; assumes role of leader during play; assumes role of follower during play; values own work; values the work of others; adjusts easily to changes in routine.

What kind of grade do you think that you'd get in that class? Those are ambitious goals. I left thinking that it was about time for me and just about everyone I know to go back to preschool! Most of us should be able to find something on that list where we could use some further development. No doubt then our world would be at least a little more like the Kingdom of God.

But let's not be sentimental. There are many aspects of childhood we need to leave behind. My understanding is that most child development experts believe that we don't begin to develop the capacity to empathize until we are at least two years old and then it is a very gradual development. Becoming sensitive to the needs of others is a mark of developing maturity, a movement beyond childish ways, beyond self-absorption.

Even more grown up than recognizing need in others is responding to that need. Today's gospel is Jesus' call to us to address the needs of others. It's about making the comfort of others more important than our own comfort. That's what his Kingdom is like. That's what's expected of his followers. That's what we're to be.

Last Wednesday evening at the catechumenate we discussed the great variety of saints, that each of us will find the personalities of some saints attractive and some hard to take, that the Kingdom of heaven has diversity beyond our comprehension, that this encourages us to grow in toleration and to honor and to learn from all people. One of the ways God has blessed me in this parish is having a chapel dedicated to S. Francis. It forces me to confront and to learn from S. Francis, to whom I'm not immediately drawn and probably would otherwise mostly ignore. It's a blessing to be gathered with saints and people who challenge us.

Some aspects of Francis' personality and character, however, have to fill us with admiration and awe. The pampered, 'high-living' son of a wealthy merchant, Francis was a dandy, a metro-sexual on a horse. One evening as he headed out for another night of carousing, everything changed. Fr. Richard Rolheiser describes what happened:

God, social justice, and the poor were not on his mind. Riding down a narrow road, he found his path blocked by a leper. He was particularly repulsed by lepers, by their deformities and smell, and so he tried to steer his horse around the leper, but the path was too narrow. Frustrated, angry, but with his path clearly blocked before him, Francis eventually had no other choice but to get down off his horse and try to move the leper out of his path. When he put out his hand to take the leper's arm, as he touched the leper, something inside him snapped. Suddenly irrational, unashamed, and undeterred by the smell of rotting flesh, he kissed that leper. His life was never the same again. In that kiss, Francis found the reality of God and of love in a way that would change his life for ever. ⁽¹⁾

Francis renounced his wealth and his pursuit of pleasure and triviality. He decided to identify wholly with the poor. He embraced poverty as the way to be united with Christ, to live with Christ, to follow Christ perfectly.

Of course, Francis had been baptized in the Church and brought up as a Christian, but his encounter with the leper was a conversion moment, a moment of commitment, a moment of turning to Christ. Francis' had encountered Christ in the need of a stranger. If we are reaching out to the poor, to those in need, our faith will not be lukewarm. We will know Christ. We will have a relationship with Christ. In our comfort obsessed world, a sure way to see God and to know God is to respond to the need of those who are poor and have no place. It's looking beyond ourselves and putting others first, and not on our own terms. Rolheiser says, "If we touch the poor we touch Christ. In this way, touching the poor can be a functional substitute for prayer." ⁽²⁾ Caring for people connects us to Christ.

The value of outreach and mission work is hardly limited to the benefits received by those we serve, but perhaps much more so for those performing the service. In this parish, we serve people in our neighborhood through the N Street Village and, more recently, Rachel's Women's Center so that we meet Christ, so that our faith comes alive. Our service does more for us than for those we serve. People who join mission work in Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, and throughout the world find that they themselves are the greatest recipient of grace. To begin to escape the lies of our world, the self-seeking, the bondage of wealth and comfort, we identify with the poor, the hungry, the naked, the forgotten, the lonely, the sick - those who the world excludes.

We have to remember that the people our God most identifies with are not the privileged and well-fed, not the attractive and presentable, not those admired by the world. God identifies with those in need. We should recognize him in everyone who has need. God's kingdom reverses the ways of our world.

Whether we're brought up in the Church or have come to the Church much later in our lives, there has to be a point in our lives when we decide to commit to Christ, to follow him and to turn away from all of the other things competing for our loyalty: wealth, recognition, status, amusement, pleasure. We have to make a decision and say, "I'm not going to structure my life on the ways and values of the world. It's not what I believe in. It's not what I want to be." We have to renew that decision again, and again, and again.

Jesus presents an entirely different and counter-cultural vision for humanity. He says we have the good life by orienting our lives in a whole new way. In the Kingdom of God, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the oppressed are liberated, the poor have good news, the dead raised up. This is the good news. In the Kingdom of God, the poor, the mourners, the meek, the broken, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers - they are blessed; God is with them; he identifies with them. This is the good news. In the Kingdom of God, enemies turn to love one another, and the outcasts are included. Everyone knows that they are loved by God, that they are beautiful, that they are made in God's image, that Jesus identifies with them. This is the good news. God blesses us not in being powerful, but in being powerless. God blesses us not in being served, but in serving. God blesses us not in being comfortable, but in our need.

The challenge to us is to re-orient our lives to the values of God's kingdom. It transforms entirely the way we understand life and what we are to do with our lives. More than anything, God wants from us mercy, humility, love. Indeed, today's gospels shows us that non-Christians, be they Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, whatever, non-Christians who tend to those in need, who love, that they have a relationship with Jesus. Anyone who cares for those with whom Jesus identifies - the poor, the hungry, the sick, the naked, the imprisoned - anyone who cares for the need of others has ministered to Jesus, has a relationship with Jesus. Anyone who cares for another is honoring the image of God, in which we were all made.

The gospel is about inclusion. The Kingdom of God is not an exclusive club, not a small society of the favored, but a enormous fellowship of people everywhere, people caring for other people. Every day, many times a day, we pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." Because of Jesus, we know what the Kingdom looks like. Because of Jesus, the Kingdom's already breaking into our world, and it's growing. It's everywhere that we let Jesus transform our heart, everywhere that we reach out in love, everywhere we see Jesus in others.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Richard Rolheiser, The Shattered Lantern, The Crossroad Publishing Co. (2001), pp. 200-201.

2. Ibid., p. 201.