The Rev. Austin K. Rios
26th November 2023: Christ the King
As I looked around at tables filled with joyful faces and a line of people extending out the door downstairs, I glimpsed a vision of the reign of the Good Shepherd.
I saw abundant food—satisfying rice and beef made with love by a man from Afghanistan—vegetables and desserts made by Italians, Ecuadorians, Nigerians, Ugandans—wine and turkey offered by Japanese, Germans, Filipinos, and Americans.
I felt the energy of people of different cultures and different languages seated together at tables of blessing and could imagine the day when peace and unity beat the weapons of war into tools for the construction of a new world.
If you were one of the over 200 people who joined us last Wednesday night for our Thanksgiving celebration, you know this vision of which I speak.
It was a glimpse of the way the world might be—a foretaste of the kingdom to which Christ has called us—a reality that stands out in comparison to the division, despair, and destruction to which we are too well accustomed.
On this last Sunday of the church year, the Sunday in which we proclaim Christ as the Shepherd King, whose Lordship overrides all our other allegiances and fealties—we encounter readings which speak of restoration, justice, and the acts of mercy that link us to the Good Shepherd.
The prophet Ezekiel speaks from the experience of exile citing the failure of leaders who “pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with [their] horns” until the people were scattered throughout creation, and contrasts it with the active seeking, nurture, and salvation of God.
Instead of a host of opportunistic and uncaring shepherds, Ezekiel prophesies the reign of the One Shepherd connected to the once shepherd-king David, and who will “seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured, strengthen the weak,” destroy the fat and the strong and feed us all with justice[1].
Imagine for a moment that you are a person far from your homeland.
Imagine that war, political infighting, or injustice have cast you as an exile in a strange land.
Or perhaps you find yourself an exile in your home country that has grown inhospitable and unrecognizable due to callous and short-sighted shepherds.
Ezekiel’s words hit at the soul of those who know the sting and pain of exile—whether as refugees fleeing for safety or as the host of global citizens who feel powerless to confront the forces that keep people marching toward division and isolation in order to better capitalize and control.
The human soul is not so simply reduced to an economic or voting unit.
We are part of the larger network of creation—meant to live in harmony with one another and with the wondrous complexity of our natural world.
And when we recognize those connections and turn our energies and resources over to nurturing them, then we begin to experience the possibilities of the reign of the Good Shepherd.
This iconic scene from Matthew’s gospel is a window into the pivotal shift that separates sheep who enjoy eternal life from goats who experience eternal punishment.
In the passage, neither the sheep nor the goats have any clue that their choice to care or not care for their neighbor has anything to do with the Good Shepherd.
Neither recognize their actions or inactions to be related to the shepherd king who sits on the judgement throne at the end of days.
And yet, it is those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and those in prison who know the fullness of eternal life.
They are accounted righteous, while the ones who do not care for their neighbors in this way are sent away into the fiery realm of the devil and his angels.
One of the most frightening aspects of this stark judgment scene from Matthew is that anyone who engages in honest spiritual self-assessment knows that we are never all goat or all sheep.
Each of us can remember the times in which we have denied food to the hungry, turned away from the strange, and ignored the cries of the thirsty, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned.
But rather than allow guilt to keep us in exile and apart from a restored relationship, we seek forgiveness as we confess these sins and then seek to better see and serve our neighbors in more constant ways.
Because once we begin to do that, it becomes impossible not to know our neighbors’ lives as bound to our own and to see all our mutual connections and ministries flowing from the steady heartbeat of the Good Shepherd.
And the more we experience the life that flows out of that way of being, and the abiding joy that actions of justice and mercy produce, the more we long to make the contours of eternal life present in this one.
We align our lives with the Good Shepherd’s, knowing that service and sacrifice empowered by love is what heals and connects our entire world.
To some it may have seemed a simple Thanksgiving meal on an average Wednesday night in Rome.
But for those with eyes to see and ears to hear—it was the feast of the Lamb infused with abundant life and the well-aged wine of the new creation.
Because members of this church and a host of neighbors sat down with one another to feed the hungry, to provide drink for parched souls, to welcome strangers as friends, and to make sure no one felt alone.
While the Good Shepherd—the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords—was among us, encouraging us to keep going, to keep working together for a world where all the exiles find home and where life is abundant and eternal.