Today is the Sunday before Advent, known as the Feast Day of Christ the King.  It’s the last Sunday of the Church year and it’s the day on which we remember and celebrate that Christ is King of the whole of creation – the eternal Christ who came to earth for a brief period to show the world the way to God, to live life as God intended it to be lived and to open the doors of salvation and new life for all those who believe in him. But he’s also the “Servant King”; a Humble King – because, as he himself said, he came ‘not to be served but to serve’ – One who washed the feet of the disciples, a job normally done by a slave, and he told us to do the same...

Jane Williams, the better half of the Archbishop of Canterbury and a cracking theologian thinks that Matthew 25 is all about being prepared. (and she’s probably right if you think about it):

we’ve had the foolish bridesmaids who ran out of oil and so missed the wedding then there’s the slave who wasted his chance of increasing his one talent while the master was away,

and now we have the story of the sheep and the goats.

All these people and groups are unprepared for what is about to happen, and as a result they face terrible consequences. Our reading from Matthew’s gospel on this feast of Christ the King is not just about the importance of being ready, but also about judgement. The people in Jesus’ stories make their own judgements. The foolish bridesmaids decide there’s no great rush. The slave decides to do nothing, and the ‘goats’ decide that some people are not worth bothering about. The image we have here is of Jesus seated on a royal throne, with all the people of the earth standing before him as he makes his judgement – and it’s completely different from theirs. 

All the people standing at the throne of glory are taken aback by God’s judgement, and more particularly by Who’s there. They certainly weren’t expecting the one who called himself the Son of Man up there on the throne, with angels around him carrying on as if they thought he was God. And as people are separated into two groups, one on the right hand and one on the left of this awesome but recognizable figure, it’s clear that both groups are equally puzzled – they both seem totally unprepared for this standard of what’s important. Neither group had lived their lives expecting to have them weighed up by this Man in this way. And as their sentences are handed down, both groups say, ‘Well we didn’t know we were going to be judged for that.

There’s no explanation given – but Jesus could have pointed to both the Law and the Prophets, which make it abundantly clear what God expects. The reading from Ezekiel shows God himself looking for the lost sheep and longing to care for them. It also shows what God feels like when the overweight sheep keep the pasture for themselves, and deliberately push away the poor and the needy.

In Matthew the choices are much more starkly presented as humanity is pictured as being divided into sheep and goats (it’s a middle eastern picture where the shepherd would bring in the goats at night because they were less hardy than the sheep): to distinguish between those that are saved and those that are lost; those who have allowed themselves to be rescued by entrusting their lives to Jesus, and those who refuse to even acknowledge they need helping. And apparently it’s the way human beings live out their lives and demonstrate what or whom they place their trust in that will determine which category they’re seen as falling into. 

Any well-brought up Jew listening to Jesus’s parable about sheep and goats would recognize the justice of the judgement handed out to the goats. No one could say that they hadn’t been warned about the nature of God.

So how did they – and how do we – manage to be so deceived? How did we manage to persuade ourselves that there would be no consequences for the way we live – as if it really didn’t matter? As we consume and gorge ourselves to death, how come we do not realize that we are the hopelessly overfed sheep pushing away the starving millions from our green pastures?

That’s what makes the Son of Man such an awesome judge. Judgement is not something alien and distant, but something that bears the human face of the neglected, the tortured, the crucified. God is not far away, and certainly not , and we cannot plead that we didn’t know what he wanted of us. We know perfectly well what the hungry, thirsty, estranged, naked, sick and imprisoned people around us need.

Oh but how they’ve been struggling with Jesus message (as people still do). The ways of experiencing God's grace must have seemed so unexpected and strange to those who first heard Jesus' words, After all:

There’s no mention of following rules.

There’s no mention of or respect for authority.

On the contrary the things we must do to gain salvation are so simple that you can't help wondering why on earth we fail to do them.

The task is at the same time amazingly clear (quite simple) and yet so terribly difficult. It is my Lord’s final warning to me. If I fail to feed him when he’s hungry or to give him something to drink when he’s thirsty, if I do not provide shelter for him when he’s homeless, or warm clothes when he is shivering, if I don’t visit him when he’s ill or imprisoned, then it’s my doom is pictured in these horrible, graphic terms.

(Don’t forget these are word pictures – but pictures that point to the frighteningly high price of failing to take Jesus' words seriously and obey them).  

John Pridmore was reflecting on these final words of Jesus in the Church Times a while ago. He said: “Confronted with such a warning, what matters are not my opinions about hell, if it is, what it is, where it is, or how long it lasts. What matters is whether I recognize Jesus ‘in the least, the last and the lost’ and reach out to him.

Our readings today and indeed the life of Jesus as a whole present such a challenging model of leadership and power. It’s certainly not one I came across in all those years of teaching and researching public service management. These ideas are as foreign to the powerful of today as they were to the rich and great in Jesus' own times. The values are all upside down, counter-intuitive, certainly not the way we’re told the world turns or how we’re supposed to survive.

What we’re told here is that all power was – is - lodged in King Jesus, the Messiah-Deliverer. Yet he didn’t and doesn’t use it to dominate, or exploit, or demean. He uses it only to restore, to give life, to renew. He washed his disciples “minging” (disgusting, rank, smelly) feet, just like a slave would. And in the garden of Gethsemane, when one of his followers struck off the ear of one of the High Priest's slaves, even there Jesus chose to use his power to heal. He never chose the path of retaliation or revenge: the “get them before they get you” mentality that we’re told we have to acquire in order to get on in life. Even in the extreme moment of his agony on the Cross, Jesus was gracious and merciful, praying for those who tormented him, promising salvation to the thief who begged to be remembered.

So today encourages to ask the question: So what kind of Christ-king is this? Certainly different from anything the world has ever known.

The view of kingship Jesus wants us as his disciples to ‘get’ is so radical, isn’t ?. Here’s what he says in Luke 22: 

"(it’s)the kings of the Gentiles (that) exercise lordship, …rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves." 

In Jesus' life and self-sacrifice for us on the Cross, he established a pattern of kingship based on self-giving, of spiritual inspiration and encouraging others, rather than bullying or dominance. 

And as we contemplate the kingship of Christ- as we try  and imagine what it looks like - we get a tantalising glimpse of what his kingdom will be, where love, self-denial and gentleness outweigh the petty tyrannies and concerns of this world.

That is why Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians is that they might come to know Jesus Christ. This ‘knowledge’ is the knowledge that God’s revelation is to be found in the crucified Jesus, and that this human, suffering figure is the one who rules for God, and to whom all creation is subject. When we, his Church, acknowledge him as our King, and become his body, we can have no illusions about what that body looks like. We confess that we believe in God’s great power, at work in Jesus, to bring life out of death. And so we, his body, work to bring life out of the death all around us – by paying attention to the real human beings with whom God came to identify, to rescue, to gibe abundant life

And so it starts here, again, today, with you and me. Lets cut the pride and self-seeking independence. Lets sever the arrogance and boasting. Lets prune the slander and negative criticism that we pick up on from all around us. And instead let’s submit ourselves to Christ the King and to one another – and see Satan, the arch-enemy flee, and instead see people coming to Jesus, see God being exalted.

Some words from the book of Joshua:

“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve... But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Amen