Christ the King

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
November 23, 2014

Christ the King

My friend Sue picks up hitchikers.  Sue is about my size, 10 years younger, and obviously way more adventuresome than I.  When she told me about picking up hitchhikers, my pastoral response was "Sue, you are an idiot."  Sue's reply was "What if the person is really Jesus and this is a test?  I don't want to fail."  My concerned response was "What if it's not Jesus?"

Of course, theologically, Sue is more correct than I.  Two weeks ago when Bishop Tom was here, in the baptismal covenant he asked us if we will seek and serve Christ in all people.  And we said "We will, with God's help."  We believe that Christ is in all people.  Period.  Christ may be more obviously present in some people than others, or more obscure in some people than others.  But Christ is there.  Today is Christ the King Sunday and we are Christ Episcopal Church.  Today is our feast day and on this day we are especially called to think about our identity as people who seek and serve Christ in all people, no matter how obscure Christ might be.

Our belief that we are called to seek and serve Christ in all people comes straight out of Jesus' words this morning.  This morning, we watch as Jesus separates the sheep from the goats.  The sheep are those who have fed, clothed, visited, and cared for Jesus.  The goats are those who have not.  When the sheep are surprised to find that they have served Jesus, Jesus tells them that whenever they have served the least of these who are members of his family, they have served Jesus.  When the goats are surprised, shocked even, to learn that they have failed to serve Jesus, they are told that when they failed to serve the least of these, they failed to serve Jesus.

Countless times over the years I have thought and preached about the way we serve Jesus at the food pantry, at the door of Hollenbeck House, at the Rainbow Table, or any of the many other places we serve those in some kind of need.  I don't know about you, but I know that I respond differently when I remind myself that when I serve the person standing before me, I serve Jesus.  I want to serve Jesus well, and remembering that I serve Jesus also reminds me that I am connected to the person I am with, no matter how different we might appear to be.

But here's the catch: In our parable this morning, the sheep had fed the hungry and visited the sick without knowing that they were serving Jesus.  They were as surprised as anyone when Jesus said "Come you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundations of the world."  They were not serving the hungry and the sick because they thought they were serving Jesus or in order to earn their way into the Kingdom, or to pass a test for that matter.  They were serving for some other reason.

The idea that people of faith should serve others is hardly something new with Jesus.  Matthew's gospel was written to a largely Jewish audience.  The Hebrew scriptures are full of admonitions to live with mercy and kindness, not just to people of like faith, but to all people.  Over and over again in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, we hear the command to show love to foreigners for the Hebrew people were once strangers in the land of Egypt.  The Hebrew people and the stranger were connected by the common experience of being in a foreign land.  The prophet Micah sums up the Hebrew teaching with the words "What does the Lord require? That you do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God."  In the reading from Ezekiel, we hear God model the very behavior God expects of God's faithful people.  "I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed.  I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak."  Acts of mercy and kindness are part of the identity of the Hebrew people because they are the people of the God of mercy and kindness.

The sheep we hear about this morning are sheep because they live as the people of God they were created to be.  Acts of mercy and kindness were part of the identity of the sheep because they belong to the God of mercy and kindness.  The sheep were completely surprised to find that they had served Jesus.   Jesus says in Matthew's gospel "I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it" so for Christians, belonging to God through Christ means living out the same acts of mercy and kindness.  Matthew is not the least bit interested in a debate over whether we are saved by works or by grace alone. Matthew is interested in faithful living.  Ironically, for Matthew, faithful living is not about serving others lest we neglect to serve Jesus and fail the test.  Faithful living is about living as people of God redeemed in Christ.  Then, to our surprise, we recognize Jesus.

At Christ Church, outreach is what we do simply because we belong to God.  In living out that identity, we do meet Jesus.  In meeting Jesus, we realize that we are connected to the whole human family.  My friend Sue is correct, even if her judgement might be a bit questionable.  The hitchhiker is Jesus.  But there is no test we are trying to pass to earn our way into the Kingdom.  We are already there.  And God assumes we will live like the Kingdom people we are and find a way to respond to the hitchhiker which may or may not involve giving that person a ride.  The challenge of Christ the King Sunday is to live into our identity as children of God by the way we live our lives and allow ourselves to be surprised by the many ways we encounter Jesus along the way.

Amen.

Thin Places

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
November 2, 2014

All Saints Sunday

In the Celtic tradition a "thin place" is a place where earth and heaven draw close.  I encountered such a thin place when my colleague Anne Reed and I were in England last spring.  We spent a day on Holy Island where an ancient monastery was located and where the ruins still stand.  Part of the outside wall of the monastery is still intact, and there are markers to show where the monks prayed, worked, ate, and slept on the inside.  The construction of the monastery in the 13th or 14th century was an epic engineering feat as even the ruins show the skeleton of a magnificent stone edifice.  The part of the English reformation that we would prefer to forget is the part where the monasteries were ransacked, often for the lead in the roofs to be used for weapons, and the stone walls left to be re-purposed by whoever could haul away the rocks.  As we walked through the areas where the monks lived and prayed hundreds of years ago, in a space that was now destroyed, we realized that there was still a sense of deep peace there.  The ground that had soaked up the prayers of the faithful all those years ago still held those prayers.  The reformers could destroy the building, but they could not take the prayers of the faithful from the soil.  Between the howling of the wind and the ruins of what was once a great house of faith, we were reminded both of the words of Ash Wednesday "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" and the powerful presence of God in the midst of the dust.  Heaven and earth came close for us that day.

All Saints Day is another thin place as we remember the lives of our loved ones and the great saints of the church.  In our music, our prayers, the candles and our memories, heaven and earth come close as we hold in our hearts those we love but see no longer.  We remember their love, their impact on our lives, and are hearts  fill with joy and sadness at the same time.   Heaven and earth come close for me right here in this place every time we sing the great hymns of the church with great joy and gladness.  A thin place is a place where the glory of God comes so close we can almost touch it, right here on earth.

As we remember those we love today, we might expect, or even hope, for Jesus to say something about love this morning.  We remember our loved ones, or we remember the great love of the saints for God and the church.  Something from John's gospel, perhaps, would be appropriate as we remember our own loved ones such as "By this the world will know that you are my disciples, by your love for each other."  Or as we remember the saints of the church who endured much for the sake of the gospel, these words from a just a few verses later in Matthew's gospel would be appropriate: "Love your enemies and pray for those who hurt you."  But instead, we hear Jesus say "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." And "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."  What do those words have to do with All Saints Day?

In the beatitudes, Jesus is not telling us that we should be meek so we can inherit the earth, or that we should be merciful, even though we should, so that we will receive mercy.  Jesus is telling us something of what the kingdom of heaven looks like.  Our world tells us things like "Blessed are those who have resources for they will have more," or "Blessed are the educated, for they will get ahead," or "Blessed are those who have health care, for they will live longer." Education, resources, and health care are all good things and the beatitudes do not glorify poverty, illiteracy, or poor health.  But Jesus is describing a different reality, similar to the one we heard about in the reading from Revelation. "For they will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd and will guide them to the springs of the water of life."  In this new reality, the poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied.  Because they will be blessed in God's new reality, they are blessed now.

If Jesus is correct about the Kingdom of Heaven, and I suspect he is, then I believe we also experience thin places where earth and heaven come close in unlikely places.  Also while on sabbatical, I participated in a foot washing at our Cathedral on Maundy Thursday.  This was not a sanitized quick foot washing of people we knew.  This was a real live honest to God smelly dirty foot washing for people who live on the streets of Cincinnati.  People could come in, have their feet washed, receive a couple of clean pair of socks and leave with a sandwich.  A soak, socks, and a sandwich.  And I tell you the truth when I tell you some of those folks had not washed their feet in a very long time.  I watched as folks from the Cathedral greeted their guests, made them comfortable, both physically and emotionally, and washed their feet.  And I watched as the guests bared their dirty, smelly feet and propped them up for a stranger to wash in an act of great vulnerability.  And once feet were washed and dried, I watched as the two people hugged and said good bye.  Who was blessed in that encounter?  Hopefully the person who had his or her feet washed.  But even more so, the parishioner who washed the feet, who encountered someone willing to make him or herself so vulnerable as to allow a stranger to wash their feet..  Heaven and earth came close that day in an unexpected way.

Likewise, after many years of participating in the Neighborhood Fair by saying "Would you like sour cream or salsa on your taco?" this year we opened Charlotte's prayer parlor and tatoo booth.  Credit for the tatoo part goes to Amy Alduino who quickly realized my booth needed a hook of some sort and I do hope my prayers stuck better than my tatoos did.  But out in the parking lot, I prayed with lots of folks, many of them children.  Some wanted to say their own prayers.  Others prayed for me after I prayed for them.  Out there in our parking lot, a little piece of heaven came close.  As we welcome people to the Neighborhood Fair who look a lot like some of the people Jesus describes this morning, we are blessed by their presence as earth and heaven come close.

All Saints Day is a thin place in which heaven and earth draw close as we remember our loved ones who have gone before us and dwell for a moment in our memories and in their eternal love.  But All Saints is not just about the past.  All Saints also calls us to be open to the thin places where heaven and earth draw close in places we least expect and our lives are blessed by those who are blessed by God.                                                                  

Amen.