Sermon at Parish Mass, Christ the King 2020

Ezekiel 34.11-16,20-24

Ephesians 1.15-23

Matthew 25.31-46

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”, said the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. Except it turned out that the little man behind the curtain, working the levers and dials and fireworks, was the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. Appearances were deceptive. When the curtain was drawn aside by Toto the dog, Dorothy and her companions saw what was really going on behind the scenes. That unveiling became a moment of truth telling, and then of new beginnings. 

At the end of the Church’s year, on the Feast of Christ the King, and as we look towards Advent, we read those parts of scripture that are often called apocalypse. In common use, that means some great cataclysmic disaster. But in the Bible, the Greek word “apocalypse” means “unveiling”, a disclosure of the realities at work behind the appearances of world events. 

We think, too, at this time of year, about the second coming of Christ. The word we translate as “second coming” is parousia, which means “presence”. Not just any presence, but an intensified, royal, powerful presence, like a king appearing at a State occasion. 

Today’s Gospel reading is about that presence of Christ, his parousia, and about apocalypse, that is, the unveiling of what has been going on through history. It is the last public teaching of Jesus, the judgement of the nations. 

It is the nations of the whole world that gather before the throne of glory. Human society as a whole, not just individuals, comes under the judgment of Christ. And the basis of that judgement is whether or not the nations have been merciful. What is described are the works of mercy. Feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison. The nations are not asked what gods they have worshipped, or whether they believed the correct things.

What is unveiled to the nations is that Christ has been the ultimate object of the works of mercy all along. Christ, the Word of creation, who hung on a cross for all to see, and now has ascended to fill all things, has always been there behind the story, and now is revealed as the standard and measure by which all things will be judged. 

It’s about seeing. The nations have not known this until this moment of unveiling, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger?” The Son of Man has been concealed behind the veil of ordinary events and ordinary people. But mercy has always been there right on the surface, always present, always possible. Always a choice that can be made. Judgement is simply the truth of things appearing as they really are, in the light of Christ, from whom all things come and to whom all things return. 

Those who have lived mercifully discover, even to their surprise, that they are blessed by the Father. In being merciful, they have ministered to Christ, even without knowing it, and in the final unveiling discover that this means they are inheritors of the Kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world.

Those who have refused to be merciful, however, discover that they are accursed, destined for the fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Which is surely a metaphor for what refusing mercy does to us, the misery of being consumed by hatred and the desire to cast out and destroy. 

Today’s Gospel may help us to understand the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ more fully. As Ephesians tells us, Christ has not gone away. He is “the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all”. The Second Coming of Christ is both parousia and apocalypse, the unveiling of his royal presence that has been there all along. Christ appearing to the whole universe as he truly is: the one who fills all things, the origin, the meaning, and the end, of all our actions and choices. All things are then seen in their true perspective as they relate to Christ, who is their ultimate object.

Not just our actions and choices as individuals, but as nations, as human societies great and small. We have to organize ourselves in order to be merciful, or to choose not to be. We have to give our consent to the choices our society makes – or withhold it, and speak out. 

The choices are nothing complicated at all. Feed the hungry. In a nation of tremendous disparity of wealth where some children still starve in the school holidays. Welcome the stranger. Not just when they can stack up points for immigration status, but also when the stranger is in danger of drowning in the English Channel. Care for the sick, which many do heroically, but this time of pandemic reminds us that this means putting other people’s needs before our own convenience. Visiting those in prison means building a justice system that does not forget the possibility of redemption. Care for our planet, real action on climate change, because Christ is the Word of creation, and climate change disproportionately impacts the poorest nations.

Do we do this? Does our nation? To live according to mercy is also to come under Christ’s judgement. We are there in this picture, among the nations gathered before the throne. But, received in mercy, his judgement enables us to be truthful, to confess our sins, and to repent. The judgement of Christ should not bring us despair, but, rather, hope, because it is founded on mercy. 

The judgement of the nations is a story of the end, the final fulfilment when Christ will appear as the origin, meaning and end of all things. But it is a story told for the benefit of those who are not yet at the end. We are still in this in-between time, the time of mercy, the time of grace. All options are still open, all choices are still available. 

This is the time when we can learn to hear and tell the truth, so the truth will not surprise us when it is unveiled at the end. It is the time given to us to discover God’s mercy towards us in Jesus, and so repent of our sins, and learn to be merciful towards others ourselves. It is the time in which we can learn to see that Christ fills all things, Christ the King of the Universe, whose measure of judgement is mercy.