Sermon “The King’s”

Texts: Ezekiel 34:11-20; Matthew 25:31-46

Date: November 20, 2011

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

[Begin with http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=LyviyF-N23A.  Watch for the grammatical faux pas.]

          Did you spot the grammatical error in the charming video?  It was misplaced apostrophes.  “King of kings” and “Lord of lords” require no apostrophes; one doesn’t use them when one is making a noun from a singular into a plural form.  When is an apostrophe used?  Either in a contraction, to stand for the letter or letters that are being left out [as in don’t, where the apostrophe stands in for the letter o]; or to indicate a possessive [as in “it is my sister Jill’s birthday today”].  If you desire more instruction on this point, you can tune into Youtube and watch first graders rap about it, linguists rant, or members of the Electric Company sing.

          Why, you may wonder, am I pointing it out?  Couldn’t we just let the villagers’ little (very common) error slide by?  Of course; but they unintentionally made a great point about the kingdom of God, to my way of thinking.  The kingdom of God, the most common topic in Jesus’ preaching, points to the possessive.  When Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, he’s teaching about God’s reign, God functioning as a king in a given place or circumstance.  A dangling apostrophe such as you see in the Yupik villagers’ rendition of “King of King’s” and “Lord of Lord’s” begs the question of what the king or the lord possess.  What belongs to the king?  What belongs to the lord?  I think the thrust of Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God presses faithful people to ask that same question about their earthly life on every topic from land to money to time.  What territory, possession, or authority belongs to God as I go about my life?  What is the King of King’s?  What is the Lord of Lord’s? 

          From the overarching biblical perspective, everything ultimately belongs to God.  God is the creator and sovereign over all.  God has no superiors and no peers.  Nothing exists that is not part of God’s creation, and for which God does not have the ultimate responsibility.

          Yet anyone can look around and immediately see that this world is not being run as if God were sovereign over all.  In the gospel of Matthew and elsewhere in the scripture we see an assumption that “the rulership of the world has been usurped by anti-God forces.  The present condition of the world does not correspond to the will of the sovereign creator…Something happened to subject the world to forces that usurp the kingly authority of the Creator, so that the world exists in a state of rebellion against its true sovereign.”[1]  The scriptures offer this diagnosis of the present situation without filling in many details about exactly how this came to be; it’s just an apparent fact of life in this age.  “Although God remains as King, we find ourselves in a rebellious world that gives its allegiance to other sovereignties.”

          Even though the world in general is in a rebellious state, people of faith may still accept the yoke of the Kingdom.  That is, we are invited and urged to live as though God is King even in the messed-up rebellious world.  The Kingdom of God, while not everywhere present, is present in this world as people do God’s will and act as if God rules.  Someday the whole Creation will once again be in harmony with the sovereign will of God, and until that time, the Kingdom draws near here and there, now and then.  The Kingdom is a dynamic reality.  “Kingdom”…is a noun of action, like the world love in the phrase ‘love of God.’”[2]  Matthew associates God’s kingdom very closely with ethics, with justice and righteousness.  Ethical action is evidence that one has accepted the authority of God rather than the usurping powers that rule unjustly.

          The author of the gospel of Matthew apparently believed strongly that there were two kingdoms operating in the world—the kingdom of the true sovereign, God, and the this-worldly demonic kingdom represented by God’s opponents.  The two kingdoms are, as biblical scholar Eugene M. Boring puts it, “confused and interwoven in the ambiguities of history.”  But in the parable we heard today, the parable of the Last Judgment, these confused and interwoven kingdoms are going to be disclosed and sorted out.  God will be revealed as the only true king, and those who were not subject to God’s will may expect to be separated and sequestered.  “Sequestered” sounds a lot nicer than “sent packing off to Hell,” don’t you think?    Let’s use it for a place holder, since the threat of Hell, here as in so much theological discourse, is a powerful distraction.

          One of the commentators I was reading notes that this last parable of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel is one of his most memorable.  He can remember how old he was and where he was when he first heard it.  I can’t say the same, but I do believe that the sorting of sheep and goats is a concept that sticks with you, even if you’re not the most biblically literate.  Perhaps you feel guilty every time you pass up an opportunity to give a little something to a beggar.  Guilty, and maybe vaguely frightened—because it feels like black marks in your eternal grade book that might win you a trip to Hell later on.  You may even wonder if you helped more often than you didn’t help, and start unconsciously keeping a scorecard on yourself.  `Cuz nobody wants to wind up in Hell, right?  Doesn’t it make you wish you could get an ethics report on yourself, like one of those credit reports various agencies sell, to find out how you’re doing in the overall scheme of things?

          That can’t be what Jesus had in mind.  Jesus was not a bean-counter or a scorekeeper, nor was Jesus a fear-monger.  One can make a very respectable scholarly case that Jesus rarely or never talked about Hell, certainly not as we imagine it in our post-Dante age.  Matthew, yes; Jesus, maybe not.  I suggest, then, that we put Hell on the back burner, and approach the parable as a guide for us in living before the Last Judgment.  How does such a story help us live as though God is sovereign in our lives?  Go back to the earlier questions:   What territory, possession, or authority belongs to God as I go about my life?  What is the King of King’s?  What is the Lord of Lord’s? 

          Since we do live in a time when there seem to be both for-God and against-God forces abroad, how can we make choices that reveal our desire to cede authority to God?  It’s hard, because the two kingdoms are so confused and interwoven.  The first step has to be acknowledging that God is sovereign, though not everywhere in evidence.  I got to thinking about Disney’s version of Robin Hood.  In that rendering of the tale, King Richard the lion-hearted, the true king of England, was away from the country.  In his place Prince John was ruling.  John was a greedy prince who vigorously hoped Richard would never return, because he wanted to go on ruling forever.  He was pretty tough on the poor, impoverishing many in the kingdom.  That’s why Robin Hood started his bandit’s career; he wanted to return some of what had been taken from the poor to them so they could get by.  Robin Hood was very clear that his allegiance was to King Richard, not to Prince John.  Besides ambushing the rich and taking back some of the treasure, Robin Hood and his merry men wrote a hit song that mocked Prince John and exposed what he was: “The snivellin' grovellin' / Measly weasely / Blabberin' jabberin' / Gibberin' jabberin' / Blunderin' plunderin' / Wheelin' dealin' / Prince John, that phony king of England.” 

          Cartoony as this is, there may be some hints here for us.  Be clear about which ruler is truly sovereign, even if there is more than one.  Challenge the power and authority of the usurping ruler, if that ruler is overstepping its bounds and taking actions that are not in line with the true king’s justice.  Use direct action, expose the truth, irritate the unjust.  Stand up for the poor and vulnerable.

          If you can avoid the distraction of the threat of Hell in Matthew’s parable, surely the clearest message that is communicated in the story is that Christ stands with the vulnerable: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned.  If there is confusion and ambiguity in our two-kingdom era, and you aren’t sure what to do, you can’t go wrong as one of God’s true subjects by siding with the “little, least, last, lost, and lame.” (Robert Farrar Capon)  The scriptures are quite clear that the least of these are the King’s, they are the Lord’s—they are so near and dear to the Lord’s heart that this parable makes the bold claim that service to them is the same as serving Christ.  Rendering service to Christ the King suddenly has some staggering practical implications.  One biblical scholar notes, “when Jesus does come into our heart, he brings all of needy humanity along with him!”

          This is undoubtedly daunting, but we might look at it this way: We will never, ever run out of handy opportunities to serve the Lord, and by so doing claim territory in our own lives for the Lord.  I suspect most of us live rather checkered lives.  We sometimes think and act as though Christ is King, and sometimes we think and act as subjects of the rebellious anti-God forces that make claims on our allegiance.  My grandparents had a black-and-white checkered linoleum floor in the kitchen; in a playful mood you could move across the floor on one color of tile, if you were paying attention.  More often, your foot would fall randomly on one or the other without your noticing.  I wonder if our rendering service to one kingdom or the other in the world isn’t a little like that.  Sometimes a clear choice presents itself, an ethical choice in which your stated values inform what you do, and you consciously step toward serving Christ in that moment, in that circumstance.  Perhaps more often we just proceed as usual without thinking much about to whom we are rendering our allegiance.  But if we want to put our life where our values are, we may need to spend more time deciding and acting as if serving Christ is always the goal, for this step, for this moment, for this talent or skill, for this resource.  Paying attention, and putting our whole selves under the banner of Christ, putting every moment under the apostrophe of Christ, until it becomes second nature.  And if we’re confused about which way to step, there are always the little, least, last, lost, and lame around to give us a directional clue.  Walk this way.

          For the last couple of months in this country, some folks who might identify as being among “the least of these” have been stirring up some protest against the powers that be.  As some of you know, I have visited the Occupy Seattle movement a few times now, pretty much like a tourist who wants to understand what it’s about.  Because there is no central leadership or uniform set of demands coming from the movement, in some ways I think it is an inarticulate YAWP of discontent from those who are enraged about and hurt by the current economy.   The occupiers are a mixed bag of well-educated, eloquent people with high ideals and deeply troubled folks who are finding a voice, maybe for the first time.  It’s an inefficient community that struggles mightily to find consensus on issues over which they are divided, and it is wrestling daily with how to make people welcome and at the same time set appropriate boundaries that will allow the community to thrive.    It’s fascinating from a sociological angle.

          But maybe it’s more than that.  Is the Occupy movement a movement of the Holy Spirit?  I don’t know the answer to that; but I am convinced that it is a question we have to ask ourselves.  You see, it is where some of the most vulnerable and trampled on people are gathering, which implies it may be a place where Christians ought to be hanging out.  Even if we’re not joining the Occupy movement (for whatever reason), its messy, noisy fuss should be inspiring our questions about who is in power, who gave them authority, and how we got to where we are today.  The wreck of the economy was not a natural disaster, you know.  Are we on the sidelines, or are we part of what is unfolding?  What would Christ call us to do at this crossroads? 

One of my more radical friends, Rev. Rich Lang,  has joined the Occupy Chaplains and was thoroughly and deliberately pepper sprayed by the police on a march last Tuesday (while wearing all his clergy gear, and trying to get between ranks of police and marchers as a peacemaker).  He has written a sharp challenge to his colleagues in the clergy.  In a piece titled “A Pastoral Lament” he wrote, “My question to my clergy colleagues is this:  Where are you?  How much longer can you preach without practice?  How dare you remain protected in your sanctuary while your people (the rag-tag mob of the least, last and lost whom Jesus loved) are slaughtered doing that which God has commissioned you to do (prophesy!).   Where are you?   Who have you become in this age of baptism by pepper spray?   Do you not know how much power you have to stop our national descent into chaos?  Don’t you realize that the world is your parish and right before your eyes the Spirit of God is doing a new thing?  Can’t you hear that God’s judgment is upon the land?  God is against the thieves that bankrupted our nation.  God is against the armies of the Beast who pillage other lands in our name, and turn and destroy our people on our own soil.  Are you blind? --- Perhaps you need a baptism of pepper spray in your eyes to restore your vision.”[3] 

          Strong words.  How do you think a mild-mannered small-town small-church milk-toast clergy person such as myself should respond?  What kind of power do we wield to change the way things are?  How do we claim this moment in history as an opportunity to stand with the downtrodden so that this moment truly belongs to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? 

          We in the UCC are rather fond of our comma, reminding us with the phrase “Never put a period where God has put a comma” that God is still speaking.  It occurs to me that the comma and the apostrophe are really the same symbol; identifying which is which is all about placement on the page.  I believe God is still speaking.  And I believe that God is still making claims on us, still inviting and urging us to make each step, each moment, each decision, each expenditure of time and money, each interaction with our neighbors—the Lord’s.  Comma, yes.  Apostrophe, yes!  May God bless us with the guts to stand with the little, least, last, lost, and lame and by so doing honor Christ as King, making each of our lives the King’s.