Readings for today.
I find it intriguing that the final Sunday of the church year (that’s today) most often falls on Thanksgiving weekend. We have just spent a few days taking stock of the parts of our lives for which we are grateful and feel blessed. The orientation to gratitude and its sister generosity gets our hearts ready for the new year and the season of Advent.
This Sunday marks one of the rare times when Christianity’s two Advents come into close connection. Yes, I said TWO Advents. The word ‘Advent’ means ‘coming.’ The first Advent is the coming of Jesus at Christmas, and the second Advent is the Second Coming at the end of the age. The one who rules on the ‘throne of glory’ this week is the same one whose birth as a helpless child in a nowhere town we will celebrate in a few weeks.
These two Advents create a necessary tension. The ‘King of kings’ is hailed by a glorious choir in full harmony and voice in contrast to a single voice quietly, barely, singing of ‘Mary’s baby boy.’ The two sing back and forth, evoking the complexity of the relationship of a God who meets us in the middle of our inglorious, messy humanity AND who, knowing our human frailties, holds us to account at the end of days. Each needs the other for the truth to shine through.
As if that were not enough, we add a THIRD Advent. A ‘middle’ Advent that sits between Jesus’ birth and final Judgment in our linear understanding of time. The Advent of Jesus’ arrival in everyday life. Jesus who was, and is, and is to come.
The gospel reading today combines the latter two Advents, as Christ the King, the Child of Humanity, sitting on the throne, reveals his daily appearance among us in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the impoverished, the sick, and the prisoner. Jesus in every sister, brother, sibling of all human-kind.
This is Matthew’s final parable, Jesus’ last teaching with his disciples before his arrest and execution. We have come full circle from Jesus’ first words in Matthew 4:17, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Jesus’ first teaching with his newly-called disciples begins with the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. For Matthew, Jesus’ whole message, from beginning to end, is about how we, as Jesus’ followers, are to live our lives.
Throughout his ministry, in his words and actions as he travels and meets all kinds of people, Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of heaven is a present reality. In him, we glimpse a kingdom that refutes the assumptions of the principalities and rulers of this world. He uses words like ‘blessed’ and ‘meek’ and ‘peacemaker’ as qualities to emulate. His power derives from humility. He heals and eats and talks with people from every class and culture, focusing more on those who feel marginalized and forgotten by the power structures of the day. The repentance he advocates is followed by blessing instead of lashing.
Living for the kingdom of heaven is SO different from competing for survival in a highly judgmental culture of disposability. Jesus uses his last lecture to remind us to live in the kingdom NOW. Because of our own human frailties and defensiveness, we will not recognize him among us - in the face of the hungry, the homeless, the sick and sorrowful, those imprisoned by power or addiction or racism. The antidote to not recognizing him among us is humility, generosity and compassion.
When Christ the King addresses the sheep, he invites them to “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34). God’s blessing precedes the creation of the sheep. It is not earned or lost. It just is. God’s blessing makes the sheeps’ actions possible. God makes sheep and goats, and every living thing, and God cannot hate anything that God has made. God alone receives our repentance and grants forgiveness.
Jesus refutes the idea that salvation can be earned by good works. Since we cannot know which interactions are more important for our good works report card, we are called to respond to every person with love and mercy.
Salvation is ultimately God’s business, not ours. We cannot rule out the possibility that, in the end, we will all live with love and mercy, or that we will all fail and God will forgive every one of us who falls short. Salvation, by definition, is love come to rescue those who fall short.
Which brings us back to gratitude for God’s unfailing love - and how we live our lives in reflection of that gratitude.
I could list any number of ways for us to live into gratitude by creating the kingdom of God here and now. I don’t need to do that. Each of us already has something we know we could do to extend ourselves in compassion and grace. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, we have strength and courage to risk discomfort and meet Jesus in those who most need to know love and mercy.
Three Advents pulse in a creative tension. Three comings of Christ: Jesus, who was born of Mary and lived and died and rose; Jesus who is invisible and ever-present among us; and Jesus Child of Humanity who will come again in power and great glory. The grand chorus of ‘king of kings’ counterpoints with a solo of ‘Mary’s baby’ while the very present murmur of human need percusses the rhythm of present life. Each needs the other for the truth to shine through. The creative tension lifts, inspires, and invites us to become a glimpse, a sacrament, an experience of God’s reign of love, justice, and mercy.
Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:20,21)
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