Proper 29A

This Sunday always represents for me an internal contradiction: the church holds up Jesus as King, while focusing on his ministry as reconciler and companion of the disenfranchised and people on the fringes of society. The contradiction is further cemented as we think in apocalyptic, end-time terms, thinking of Jesus as the shepherd in our midst. It’s like putting forward a model of a hierarchical structure while trying to work at the grass-roots level.

The problem lies not in these two images — king and shepherd — but what tradition has done to them. It was easy for the church in the Middle Ages to emphasise the royal trappings of Christ, as it witnessed the rise of divine-monarchs, such as Charlemagne. But it did so at the expense of ignoring Jesus’ own statement (as found in the fourth gospel) that he was not of this world. He was of this world of flesh-and-blood, yes, but he was not of the world of misused power and abuse; instead, he was the foot-washer. By the same token, you and I, through our baptism, are not or should not be of the world that abuses or takes advantage of others; we should be of a world that opens its eyes and heart to our complicity of participating in a system that often promotes injustice.

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This is the last regular Sunday reading we will hear from the gospel according to Matthew; next Sunday we begin a new cycle of readings from Mark for the on-coming year. It is fitting, therefore, that what we hear this morning from Matthew — a passage focusing on the end-times, the moment when Christ, the cosmic Judge, returns to look at what we have and have not done and who we have and have not been — should be our last glimpse into the gospel… not precisely because of the themes of separation and judgement — the goats from the sheep and the bad from the good — but because it touches upon all the other large themes we have heard during this past year’s journey with Matthew.

As Matthew’s Jesus speaks these key images, ‘I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was a stranger, I was naked, I was sick, I was in prison,’ he is recalling for us other great images of the gospel. Think back to the very beginning, when Jesus goes to the synagogue — not as a rabbi but a young man — unrolls the scroll and quotes from the prophet Isaiah. Back then, Jesus instructs his followers in terms of bringing good news to the poor, release for the captives, sight for the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.

A bit later on, Jesus will teach his followers the familiar words of the beatitudes, the ‘blessed be’s, again promoting a world that is not based on kingly power but divine justice. He speaks of a world where values are turned upside down and where our call, as human beings, is to give, be concerned, and use our prophetic voice so that the frail shall be strong and God’s peace become real.

Still later, Jesus will teach the lawyer the greatest commandment, Love of God and love of neighbour. He will teach that the person’s faith is not just one based on prayer but also one based on action.

By the time all Jesus’ teachings pile up and we reach this point in his gospel — before self-giving at the last supper and in the crucifixion — we may have forgotten what Jesus did after he read from the prophet Isaiah. That is, he rolled the scroll back up, looked at the congregation and said, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (1)

Can we say the same: ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, today, God’s realm has come close to us’? A major piece of bringing about God’s realm is to say ‘yes’ to those who so often hear, ‘no.’

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That is the world I want to create in our midst, here in Rutland. I want to be a part of a world where the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, the prisoners of oppression are set free, the blind see, the poor are raised up and all are brought to completion in Christ. To do that, I have to be in this world, working for justice, a major piece of our baptismal covenant. For in working toward justice, I am also proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ.

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador understood what it means to bring about the realm that Christ the King represents when he said: ‘I am a shepherd who, with his people, has begun to live the beautiful and difficult truth: our Christian faith requires that we submerge ourselves in this world.’ And, as Bishop Ely said in his Convention address several years ago, ‘Outreach and social justice are not extra-curricular activities for the body of Christ.’

Often we do not see God’s reign on earth because we are doing our work individually and not corporately. So part of bringing about God’s realm today is to work and pray together as if our lives depend on it, because they do.

If you have doubts about how to participate in bringing about God’s realm, go back to those baptismal vows we reaffirmed on the first Sunday in November. With them in our heart, the seal in water and oil of the Holy Spirit on our forehead and God’s grace in our heart, we can do it! We are already Christ’s own; now let Christ work within us to bring about God’s completeness and peace in the here and now.

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In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel that we read this morning, God is pictured as a shepherd leading his exiled people back to their own land, gently and with compassion. While the priest in a congregation serves as a leader, a shepherd of sorts, the priest also is a servant, doing his or her best to live humbly. Indeed, one of the greatest privileges and most humbling moments for a priest is to be invited into the depths of people’s lives. To experience the ineffable joy of new life, and the intimacy and mystery of one’s passage from this life into the resurrected life places the priest at those liminal moments where heaven and earth come close and we stand in the middle. I am truly humbled to be invited into your lives as your priest and I look forward to sharing these moments with you.

The priest without a congregation is nothing, however. The whole people of God, all the baptized, you and I, we all make up the church. Trinity has such a richness of lay leaders, people who have led the congregation well during the past year. I trust this leadership will continue despite the arrival of a priest. The title, priest in partnership, expresses well who and what I will be — a priest and a partner in this body of Christ called Trinity Episcopal Church, Rutland. We are all partners in building God’s new creation.

However, the priest and congregation need to remind themselves that there is only one saviour, and that is Jesus Christ. If we follow Jesus and live our lives as people of the beatitudes and Magnificat, together we will come closer to God.

As the church year ends, and we turn the corner to the new year, we are about to start a grand adventure. We are about to embark on a new segment of Trinity’s pilgrimage. We don’t necessarily know where this road will lead us — as the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado wrote, ‘Traveller, there is no way; the way is made by walking.’ As we journey together, loving mercy, doing justice and walking humbly with our God, we will find all manner of ways to seek and serve Christ, loving our neighbour and God. May God give us today and in the years to an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love God, and the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works. With those graces, then we can bring about God’s realm in our place and time.

END NOTE
(1) The kernel of the discussion about Jesus’ reading from the scroll comes from Herbert O’Driscoll, The Word Among Us, Year A: Vol. 3 (Toronto, Canada: Anglican Book Centre, 1999), 187.