Last Judgment; Christ enthroned, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=43124 [retrieved November 26, 2023]. Original source: image donated by Jim Womack and Anne Richardson.

RCL Year A, Proper 29 (Alternate Readings)
Ezekiel 34:11-16 and 20-24, Psalm 95:1-7a, Ephesians 1:15-23, Saint Matthew 25:31-46

“Which of you shall we say doth love us most?”[1] With these words, Shakespeare’s King Lear asks his children exactly how much they love him. He makes a tragic and very human mistake. Before the play is over, Lear becomes very like the strangers in today’s Gospel, the strangers who are naked, sick, imprisoned, and hungry, for such are the consequences of Lear’s tragic mistake, a mistake that only a foolish, old man could make.

For ninety-eight years, Christians of nearly every denomination have set aside a Sunday to recognize the Kingship of Christ. Our Prayer Book gives us the Feast of Christ the King in every aspect but the name.

The King we choose to worship made kingship so attractive, that we want to be his and his forever. The King we worship lives in those strangers mentioned in the Gospel, those strangers who need clothing, who are sick or in prison, and who need food.  Christ the King lives in them, giving them hope and giving us the opportunity to serve him in them. That is the King we worship—the King whose bearing toward us is that of a servant, the servant who lays down his life for us that we might live. For our King is not a foolish, old man. Our King, our Shepherd, lays down not his crown but his life. He lays down his life for the life of the sheep.

And he lays down his life for more than that. He lays down his life so that we might become like him, a true king in our own right; that we may serve alongside him, a king quick to give and to be generous, a king quick to meet another’s need, a king eager to find and to serve Christ in others; and, in so serving, we may become more like Christ the King, little by little, one act of kindness or mercy at a time, as Christ would have us be. The King we worship calls each of us by name to be more like him, the servant who serves all and who serves the deepest needs in all.

Christ the King is also a Judge. We see him as such in the fearful separation of the sheep from the goats. We have been prepared for this by the separation of the wise bridesmaids with oil for their lamps from the foolish ones with no oil and by the separation of the trustworthy slaves who double their talents from the wicked and lazy slave who buries his. Christ’s judgment brings home to us that we are to be Christ’s agents in a broken and despairing world. Our service of that world identifies us as sheep or goats. We can be like our King and our Judge, and serve this world in his name. The world remains forever desperate for the love which Christ came to give and which Christ asks us to give. We can share Christ’s love in this desperate world if we do but one thing: if we share the love he has shown us. If only we give away the love we’ve been given. We can do that, and we can become the kind of king Christ is before our time runs out.

I say to you what Saint Paul said to the Ephesians: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.”[2]

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[1] King Lear, I.i.51.

[2] Ephesians 1:17-18a.