Like a magnet to a magnet, I am at once attracted to and repelled by this vision. I find its picture of the end time attractive because it so vividly depicts the transcendent and divine dimension of every earthly act of human mercy. With exquisite simplicity, our Lord says of visits to the sick and imprisoned, bread shared with the hungry and clothing given to the ill-clad, "as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me."
Here we are told that the divine-human nexus, so clear in Christ’s incarnation, baptism and crucifixion, extends also to the risen and exalted Lord, Christ the King, for he identifies himself with the lowly ones, the poor and the little ones of the earth.
I am attracted, too, by the innocent ignorance of those called "righteous". They are surprised, astonished, at the King’s verdict. They can recall no single episode of showing him such charity. Only at the very last are they told that service rendered the needy is service rendered ultimately yet still personally to God. Absent, then, in the righteous is any selfish motivation, the collecting of stars in the crown or heavenly brownie points. No: they serve the needy for no other reason than that they are in fact in need. What a refreshing reason for doing works of justice and mercy!
I am attracted by the universalism of the picture. It is said that "all the nations will be gathered before him." No narrow, parochial vision is this. It is worldwide in its scope.
For two reasons I am attracted by the King’s invitation to the righteous: "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared from you from the foundation of the world." The first reason is this: those who inherit anything are usually the testator’s children; with certain exceptions, heirs are chosen by the testator himself or herself. To be chosen by God, to be adopted as God’s child (and thus made kin to "the least of these, my brethren"!) is indeed to be blessed! The second reason is this: amid human talk of "building the Kingdom," "furthering the Kingdom," "bringing the Kingdom in our day," it is comforting to know that God’s Kingdom has been "prepared from the foundation of the world." To be sure, its presence is hidden from us now, but it will be fully manifest in God’s good time. Meanwhile, those who are citizens in this once and future kingdom provide the world with occasional glimpses into that kingdom’s nature: there the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, the stranger welcomed, and in all these things the King himself is served.
Finally, I am attracted by any king in whose kingdom the down and out are accounted as the siblings of the sovereign and are to be treated as such; indeed, are to be treated like the king himself. What astounding egalitarianism!
But all is not rosy here. Certain things about the text trouble me and repel me.
I am put off by the blatant works-righteousness implied in the king’s judgment and the eternal rewards-and-punishment system inherent in it. Indeed, faith seems to have little to do with anything since the righteous are so-called for their works and the cursed are so-named on the basis of their failure to act.
The flip-side of the surprise and ignorance of the righteous is the surprise and ignorance of those called cursed: are they to be judged on the basis of rules and expectations never explained to them? Are "all the nations" to be expected to know of Jesus’ close identification with the lowliest of every society and the exceptionally high stakes riding on their treatment of such persons?
Finally, our age has seen a monster by the name of Josef Mengele stand before thousands and, with a flick of his Aryan wrist, send some to the left and a fiery death and others to the right and a living hell. In such an age, does the image of a king separating people "as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats" sending some to the left and eternal punishment and others to the right and eternal reward, does such an image of God, I wonder, hold any positive value for us?
The text, you see, is not without its problems. Perhaps the fact that it is the text for the festival of Christ the King give us the clue we need to understand it properly and appropriate its message.
This is the last Sunday of the church year. Next Sunday Advent begins and with it a new year. We stand, then, on a sort of ecclesiastical, liturgical New Year’s Eve! And year end is always a good time for looking backward, reminiscence and stocktaking.
When we look back over this past twelvemonth, we recall the whole of the Christ Event: the promise of the messiah remembered and rehearsed during Advent together with preparation for his coming; the incarnation - the embodiment of God’s Son deep in human flesh - celebrated during the twelve day season of Christmas; Christ’s baptism, transfiguration and manifestation to the world marked the season of Epiphany; his temptation, his challenge to the religious establishment and his call to costly discipleship and cross bearing form the stuff of our Lenten proclamation; his last days, his torment, sufferings and death, contemplated during Holy Week; his bursting forth from death’s dark tomb, love triumphant over death we joyfully recalled and reclaimed during Easter; the gift of his Spirit to guide us in his way we celebrated this long Pentecost season, the last several Sundays of which have focused on his promised return. We are reminded to proclaim "the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27). Observing the seasons of the church year enables us to do precisely that. And when we come at year-end to such a text as this one, a picture of the king’s judgment, we dare not lose the perspective we’ve spent all year developing.
This text does not stand alone in the canon of scripture. It must be understood as one part of the picture, one piece of the puzzle. Another piece or part is the Parable of the Vineyard in Matthew 20. The owner, you remember, rewarded equally those who labored twelve, nine, six, three and one hours in his vineyard. The point is clear: God gives infinitely more than a just wage, "a day’s pay for a day’s work." And those who protest their worthiness and merit before the bar of God’s judgment are precisely those on whom the surprising grace of God is lost.
For that is what we learn from the whole counsel of God: the degree to which we are preoccupied with and anxious about our own performance and perfection is the degree to which the grace of God is an impossibility for us to comprehend and apprehend.
By the same token, the freedom that is ours in Christ Jesus is not the freedom to show either callous disregard or even benign neglect toward the needs of others. What the whole counsel of God tells us is that human beings are to love one another "not because (Jesus) tells them to with threats and promises - not from a regard for themselves, however subconscious - but with a spontaneous sympathy that regards only the other person’s good."
Such a spontaneous sympathy is clearly not a part of the natural person, the homo incurvatus in sei, the man curved in on himself, the woman curved in on herself. Such a spontaneous sympathy is the natural response of the person who is a new being in Christ. We feed because we have been fed - with the very body and blood of Christ; we clothe because we have been clothed - with Christ’s own robes of righteousness; we befriend because we have been befriended - by the God whom we crucified; we welcome because we have been welcomed - into the kingdom of Christ the King.
Our focus is not on our performance; it is on our neighbor’s need. And in this world, that is precisely and exactly where it belongs!
The story is told of Mother Teresa of Calcutta observing a novice using a tweezer to pluck maggots from the leg of a dying leper. The young woman stood at arm’s length to perform the odious task. Gently but firmly, Mother Teresa corrected her charge. Taking the tweezers and putting her face quite near the wound, she said, "You don’t understand, my dear. This is the leg of Christ our Lord. For what you do to this man, you do to him."
Or gain, Leo Tolstoy’s story "Martin the Cobbler" tells of a lonely shoemaker who is promised a visit by our Lord that very day. Eagerly all day he awaits his arrival. But all that comes is a man in need of shoes, a young mother in need of food and shelter, a child in need of a friend. Martin the cobbler ends the day thinking "perhaps tomorrow he will come," only to hear a voice reply, "I did come to you today, Martin; not once, but three times."
A bizarre, mystical attachment to the poor and hungry? I think not. Instead, a clear understanding that all the "least of these" are Christ’s brothers and sisters and therefore ours as well. And as the Spirit draws us to him, the Spirit frees us also and at the same time to serve them, and in serving them, to serve none other than Christ the King.
If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. Only so by the grace of God will we at last hear the kingly words of amazing grace: "Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you."
May it be so. May it be so!
1. Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Matthew, John Knox Press, Atlanta, 1975, page 479.