November 26th 2023 “Christ The King”

Readings:  Ezekiel 34:11-16,20-24, Psalm 100, Ephesians 1:15-23, Matthew 25:31-46
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church on Christ the King Sunday, November 26th 2023

Today in the church calendar is the last Sunday of the Liturgical year known as "Christ the King" or "Reign of Christ" Sunday. One of the readings suggested for today was Matthew 25:31-46, the passage where Jesus speaks of the Son of Man separating sheep from goats, as a King bringing righteous judgment upon all nations. It is that image of "Christ the King" I would like to explore with you this morning.

Coming as I originally do from the British Isles, where they still have a monarchy, you'd think that maybe I had an advantage in understanding this text. However, the role of the royal family in Great Britain in no way reflects the image of Christ as King in our passage. Any notion of "The Divine right of Kings" has long since passed into memory and the King and his family occupy a role that has more to do with promoting a charitable spirit and celebrating state occasions than wielding political power.

Now that I’m living in America where July 4th is celebrated as the day that the tyranny of King George was overthrown, I realize that the notion of "Christ as King" needs re-interpreting. The whole idea of power and authority being invested in some despotic force out there, answerable to nobody and far from benevolent, makes the whole idea of Kingship difficult.

Yet I wonder if it was any easier for those who first heard these words. I say that because Matthew’s gospel, from where our scripture was taken, begins by painting a picture for us of a King called Herod who is little more than a puppet in the hands of Rome.

And as such he is consumed by fear for his position, so consumed that when visitors arrive from the East asking questions about a newborn King, Herod is driven to embark upon a course of infant genocide just in case some rival to his precarious position were to arise. Not exactly a flattering portrait of Kingship!

For a positive image those who first heard these words would need to reflect on their history, and in particular the figure of King David, who led the nation through a period of great prosperity and advance, and under whom they had never had it so good. The image of David as the Shepherd King, chosen and anointed by God was a powerful one for a people who were beaten down under the rule of a faraway Caesar.

The image of David was associated with passages full of promise like Ezekial 34:22-24, where God declares; “I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.  I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken.”  

In our passage from Matthew the separation of the sheep and goats brings in an unexpected and radical view of the King. Judgment is made upon the basis of compassion and service. The Kings family are revealed not to be the wealthy and privileged but the unfortunate, the sick and imprisoned, the stranger, the hurting and the needy. “Truly I tell you," says the King, "Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Jesus takes things further. He pictures the role of the Son of Man as not being just as Shepherd/King, but as being the Servant/King. My mind wanders to that encounter in the upper room, where He who reigned over the disciples takes a bowl, wraps a towel around Himself and proceeds to wash their feet. John 13:14-15 “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

What can we glean from this scriptural picture of "Christ as King" to help us live our lives today? Let me suggest three things I gained from this passage. Hope, Motivation and Encouragement.

Firstly, Considering Christ as King can bring Hope.  

The notion that there will come a time when all will be right with the world, when those who currently are making life intolerable for others will be called to account, the hope of both future justice and future reward shines a ray of light in times of darkness. This life is not the end of the story. The story ends with Christ enthroned as King.

Christ's coming has not been the arrival of a now lost and lamented hero, but death and resurrection have unleashed a sequence of events that will lead to His enthronement. The lectionary reading from the epistle to the Ephesians seeks to capture this hope. Ephesians 1:20-21 “God put this power to work in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come."

The picture of Christ as the Victor occurs time and time again throughout the New Testament. To commit to Christ is to align oneself with the winning side, even though it is a victory in anticipation rather than one that is fully realized. But as in people’s lives we glimpse daily miracles of grace, we understand this hope is not an illusion, but a reality that sneaks upon us and takes us by surprise.

Christian singer/songwriter/peacemaker David Lamont speaks about hopes for peace with the thought that "God is not only mysterious, God is also mischievous." He reflects that God has a habit of shattering the traditional viewpoints and stereotypes that we try and label the Divine with. A shepherd who is really a King? A servant who reigns? An all-powerful slave? Such are images that make mischief of our understanding of power and position. Christ as King can be for us an image of hope.

Secondly, the image of Christ as King can be a powerful motivator.

In a world that continues to play the game of the "one who has the most toys wins" the picture of Christ as the Servant/King invites us to invest in what really matters. This whole passage about “In as much as you did it for the least of these who are my brothers and sisters" suggests to me that we are at our best when we seek to lift those who are at their worst.

When we celebrate our blessings, by being a blessing to others, when we invest our time in those who others have little time for, we imitate the example of the Shepherd King. The Good Shepherd allowed 99 well capable ones to look after themselves in order that one who was lost and abandoned could be rescued.

God's Kingdom takes all our notions and turns them inside out and upside down. Blessed are the peacemakers, Blessed are the meek, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, Blessed are those who mourn? The little things become the big things. The unexpected becomes the defining moment. The improbable becomes the possible.

And in the end, it all boils down to a couple of principles that are easily remembered but so seldom truly lived. "Love God" and "Love your neighbor.” That is the Servant/Kings manifesto. That’s the line He draws in the sand that separates sheep and goats, good sheep from bad sheep.

Christ's Kingship is expressed through a Kingdom that is plainly not of this world, does not respect the false values and motivations that this world counts important and stands at times in radical opposition to ideals we thought were the important ones!

Seeing Christ as a King… a King who is everything we don’t expect a King to be… is to me a powerful motivator to try and be like a child of that King and rejoice in such a radical heritage.

Thirdly, the image of Christ as King can be a tremendous encouragement.

There's a lovely chorus that comes from the monastic community in France known as  Taizė. “Jesus, Remember me, when you come into Your Kingdom.” Usually, the song is sung acapella and repeated numerous times... almost creating a wave of sound as people interject their own harmonies and nuances. The power in such repeated chants is that as you allow yourself to become absorbed in them, God is able to take you all sorts of places.

The words "Remember me when you come into Your Kingdom" were the last request of a penitent criminal. Those words received a response. “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” With all this talk of sheep and goats and casting out into the darkness and “in as much as you failed to do this unto them, you failed me,” we do well to recall that the dominant note sounded through the life of Jesus was not that of judgment but of grace.  

That grace is there for all who seek it. Even dying criminals. The only excluded ones are those who choose to put aside the invitation to feast at the Kingdoms heavenly banquet. There is hymn in our hymnbooks that puts it this way, reflecting on the 23rd Psalm;

“The King of Love, My Shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never,
I nothing lack if I am His
And He is mine forever”

CHRIST THE KING!
THE KING OF LOVE!
THE SHEPHERD KING!
THE SERVANT KING!

Worship is such a privilege! The King has invited us to His banqueting house and His banner over us is love. I pray that our reflections upon Jesus, the Servant King, may lead us to places of hope, motivation and encouragement.

•    Hope that one day all things will be well.
•    Motivation to pursue a servant lifestyle that reflects the love of a Shepherd King
•    And encouragement from the Holy Spirit that as Jesus Christ is the King of love our labor in Him shall never be in vain.

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.

New Years Day Communion 2023 "Look Back, Look Ahead, Look Now"

Readings; Psalm 34:1-10, Philippians 3:7-14, Deuteronomy 4:5-10, Matthew 7:7-12.
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, January 1, 2023

It's amazing how much importance we place on one single night. The sun sets on 31st December and when it rises the next morning a New Year has begun. Everything from the last year has passed and gone and the New Year is here. New possibilities, new hopes, new ideas and dreams.

 Are you are a resolution person? Some years I am, some years I'm not. Some years I can be kind of flippant about it, “This year I'll give up smoking.” Easy to do when you have never actually taken up smoking in the first place. Other years I'm serious and I'll commit to something like reading through the whole Bible in a translation I've never done before. I've managed to keep that one, but then I am a preacher and Bible reading is a discipline that's part of my job description. Sometimes I'll make resolutions about exercise or diet or to not do certain things, like stay up late watching mindless TV shows and I fail dismally to see them through.

Why do we put ourselves through that resolution thing? Maybe it's because New Year is an opportunity to do some thinking and take an inventory of our lives. We realize what unrealistic and complicated human beings we can be, so we take a breath and contemplate that, maybe, we could do better. Sometimes it works. Sometimes we've already lost sight of our new ideals before we’ve remembered to write the right year at the top of our checks. 

The month of January gets its name from the Roman god Janus. Janus is pictured as a two-faced man. One face looks towards the past and the other towards the future. As we think about New Year’s resolutions we can look, not in two, but three different directions: looking back, looking ahead and looking at now.

Looking Back

The Hebrew people were no strangers to looking back. They were constantly challenged to remember their heritage and God’s dealings with them. Moses once encouraged them with these words: “Be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your hearts as long as you live” (Deuteronomy 4 v 9).

It’s important to face yesterday and the year that has closed. If we don’t our resolutions won’t last. How many times have we made completely unrealistic resolutions because we didn’t take seriously whether last year had left us? We need to face it honestly, not with rose-colored spectacles or seeing shadows everywhere so it might be painful. Last year might have been one you don’t particularly want to remember. On the other hand, it might have been so good you’re now worried that it can’t continue.

Whatever the last year has held, I'd encourage you to spend some time remembering. Pull out your calendar or look at some old photographs. Scan through some posts on your Facebook page. What were the highlights? What were the low points? Where did you feel God's presence in those moments?

As much as we might want this year to be a completely new start, it doesn’t start in a vacuum. It follows what’s been. And what’s been, has brought us to where we are. Our resolutions can be flawed because they don’t look backwards first. Think about the past year. What can we be thankful for, what is there to be pleased about, what was hard, what did we learn, what habits do we want to get out of, what habits are good ones to keep doing?

If we don’t learn lessons from what we’ve seen and heard, then it’s like looking in a mirror and then forgetting what we just saw. The past is important, we can learn a lot. If we don’t learn, we’ll find things repeating themselves. God doesn’t intend us to live in the past. Looking back is intended to root us firmly in the rich soil of faith, which provides the environment in which we can grow into new things. Paul writes in Philippians 3:13 “Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus”

Looking Ahead

We can't spend our whole time looking back and reminiscing about days gone by. Looking backwards all the time can be dangerous. You may well bump into things you can't see and cause yourself serious harm. We need to focus on where we are going.

Remembering what you have learned from the year gone by, and full of hope for what might be, what are you aiming at this year? It has been rightly said that if we aim at nothing, we have 100% chance of hitting it.

It might be that we want to know our friends better by this time next year, or to have grown closer with God, our spouse, our family, to be healthier, fitter, slimmer. Whatever, think about tomorrow, the kind of person you want to be, the kind of friend, mother, father, sister, brother, employer, employee, friend, neighbor you'd like to be.

What are your dreams for your faith community this year? What steps will you take to make those things happen? You know, in church life, I've often had folk come to me and say that they think this should happen or that should happen and what am I going to do about that?

Friends, it's not about what I'm going to do, but what you are going to do. God has given you that vision for a purpose and the reason is not so you can get somebody else to do something about it, but so that you can live into it! If God gives you a vision, it's because it's one that God wants to equip you to fulfill.

So, look ahead. Be prepared to dream. But also, be prepared to act upon your dreams not re-assign them to somebody else. That's the tricky part about resolutions. We must resolve to take personal responsibility for seeing them through!

Looking at Now

If our aim is to be healthier, how can we do it? How do you eat an elephant? Answer, one bite at a time, inch by inch. But, to be clear, I don't recommend eating elephants. If you want to get fitter, certainly don't eat an elephant. What can you realistically do?

If you want to develop relationships, then do it in manageable time segments. If it's with your children, then why not resolve to spend an hour more a week with them doing things they want to do. If it's with your spouse set a date night once a month.  If you want to grow in your relationship with God, don’t resolve to spend every hour of every day praying, make a resolution to spend at least some portion of the day in meditation, bible reading or prayer. Listen to an audio devotion on the way to work, join a bible study group or volunteer to help out at the Food Pantry.

I’m not saying don’t stretch yourself. I want to encourage us all to set our sights high, and work hard at those things in our lives we feel are most important, but let’s be realistic. Because then we can be optimistic. Reachable goals are far more likely to be attained than unreachable ones!

Certainly, as your pastor, I would encourage you to make this year one in which you grow in the grace, love and faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'd encourage you to be a regular supporter and attender of our worship services. That's only about an hour and a half out of your weekly schedule. This hour when we gather can really set the agenda for every other hour in our week!

In particular, I would invite you to make the most of this wonderful privilege we have once a month to come around the communion table. Communion speaks to us in ways preachers can never do. The sacrament communicates not just though words, but though touch and taste and smell and memory.

Jesus was completely purposeful in telling us to remember Him in this way. It calls to mind His Cross. It calls to mind His promise. It reminds us that unless we feed upon His love, our own love quickly fades, our resolve quickly falters and we easily become disconnected to our passion and pursuit of higher things.

So I encourage you this New Year to look back to all that last year was, to look ahead to all that you want to do and to be in this new year, and to face today, to work out how you’ll get there. Don’t just seize the day, seize the year, and all to the glory of God. Amen.

The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.