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Christ the King Sunday
Matthew 25:31-46

I remember a scene I saw in a film a long, long time ago. I don't remember the title or even much about the plot, but I remember the opening scene. There's a helicopter flying low and suspended from the helicopter by a long cable is a bigger than life-sized statue of a man dressed in robes with his arms out-stretched so that he looks as if he is almost flying by himself.

The location is the Italian countryside and the helicopter flies over a vineyard, and below there are some workers, and one of the workers recognizes who the statue represents, and it causes quite a stir when the worker shouts, "Hey, it's Jesus! It's Jesus!" Some of the workers begin running and stumbling along the ground underneath the statue shouting, "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" almost as if they are calling to it. But, the helicopter keeps going and fades away into the distance.

Soon after, the helicopter reaches the outskirts of Rome. The great city looms before them. The helicopter passes over a building that has a swimming pool on the roof. And, the pool is surrounded by very scantily clad beautiful young women in bikinis, basking in the sun. Well, like the workers in the fields, the women look up and start waving, only they are waving and shouting at the statue of Jesus, but rather to the young men in the helicopter. The young men do a double-take, and the helicopter stops and hovers so the young men can get a better look. Suspended over the pool where, above the roar of the engine, they shout down some rather, shall I say, lustful comments!

What an incredible contrast... what an shocking antithesis... the whole business was! On the one hand, there were the profane and vulgar young men in the helicopter and the fleshy, sexy, young women on the rooftop around the pool... AND... on the other hand there was that sacred stone statue of Christ dangling from the sky on a cable! The CONTRAST between the figures was stark and glaring and powerful. The one figure made of STONE -- so remote, so out-of-place, so irrelevant, so cold... just hanging there from the sky from a rope... And the other figures made of flesh and blood and so full of life... so bursting and brimming with life and vitality... and, yes so profane.

About this time I became aware of the audience around me. When the scene started, with the helicopter flying over the field, there were a few smiles in the audience. And when the helicopter arrived over the swimming pool, the young men shouting their vulgar comments, the laughter in the audience heightened, but then suddenly and abruptly, the audience became conscious of this CONTRAST... and the laughing stopped... and it became quiet... because, at that moment, everybody BECAME AWARE at whose expense the laughing was... It was of course, at the expense of the figure of Jesus! And of course, that's what the director of the movie wanted to happened.

Even though I've lost almost all of that movie, that image has stayed with me.. Even though the laughing stopped in the audience that night, my experience tells me that the laughing never really stops but continues on! It may be QUIET and subdued, but it's never SILENT! The laughing quietly perseveres inside the lives of so many... maybe even in your life and mine?

We had dinner with a friend last week who was a neighbor when we lived here before. Since we moved thirteen years ago a lot has happened in his life especially with his faith life. He once was a devout Catholic Christian, but he's bagged his Christian faith and replaced it with some sort of vague cosmic New Age mumbo-jumbo - and I perceived that deep inside he is laughing at us in our "Christian mythology" as he calls it. He sees himself as liberated from all of that now - and he is laughing - and I could hear it ever so quietly!

Oh, it's not the kind of laugh I would describe as a good "belly-laugh" that comes when we hear a good joke... BUT RATHER... it's a nervous, sardonic, cynical, half-bitter, sad little laugh that may be barely audible on the outside... but a laugh that comes as a result of experiencing God, more as a GOD OF STONE than a God of flesh and blood... experiencing God more as a STATUE that we bow down to... cold... distant... dislocated... disconnected from the real flesh and blood, profane issues of our lives.

So our friend laughs, but not just him alone. I'm not picking on him! If I'm honest, sometimes I laugh that cynical laugh too, or I weep - essentially they are about the same thing - as I look out at a world destroying itself and we wonder just exactly what kind of a world our children or our children's children are going to inherit, if any. AND SOMETIMES I, along with my friend, WONDER WHERE GOD IS? We laugh... or cry... as we look out at the people around us... or as we look into ourselves and see how complicated and riddled with trouble our lives can be... and how incredibly vulnerable we really are! AND WE CAN WONDER WHERE GOD IS? Sometimes I picture myself like those workers in the vineyard, running along the ground looking up yelling, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!" And it feels like I'm running after a STONE STATUE that's fading away into the distance!

Now, this Sunday (today) has been given a name by somebody, it's called CHRIST THE KING SUNDAY! I've got to be honest at this point and tell you, that the metaphor of Christ as a KING... of JESUS AS A KING... has never really been very helpful to me... has never really touched my heart... it's a metaphor that doesn't get inside of me... and stir me up... and inspire me... and change me... and move me... and warm me... and fill me! The image of Christ as a King, for me, feels more like that STATUE OF STONE, dangling somewhere between heaven and earth... not really having very much to do at all with what's going on down below. It's an image of Christ that causes me to LAUGH that sardonic little laugh or CRY that sad, despairing little cry.

Maybe it's because the imagery of a king is foreign to our experience. Maybe there was a day and there was a time when that image had more meaning for people... but for me, in the kind of world in which we live, when I think of a king I think of royalty... someone who is remote and distant... someone stone-like living in a big palace surrounded by opulence... someone who rules by intervention and power... someone who forcefully and sometimes violently controls and manipulates his subjects... subjects whose value is solely determined by what they can do for the king... by the obedience they render.

And even if we make the king into a good king, a kind king, a benevolent king - it still doesn't get in my soul! It still offers little comfort and little help, because if God is a good, kind, benevolent king, some serious questions are still raised about how God works in the world. If God is a kind and benevolent king, then why does God seem to be kinder to some than to others. There seems to be a real problem with an unjust distribution system of kindness and goodness. If Jesus is a good and kind king, then why are so many of our prayers left unanswered? I MEAN GOOD PRAYERS, not selfish prayers: prayers for healing... employment... comfort... and on it goes!

For sure, Jesus talks about a KING in our Gospel for today. But like so many other times and with so many other things, he talks about it in a WAY, and describes in a MANNER, that seems to stand it on it's head and turn it inside out!

Maybe God seems like the cold stone KINGLY statue in the sky, not because God is really like that, but rather because it is WE who keep on insisting that Jesus Christ MUST BE a King... and if WE insist he's a king... then we MUST ALSO INSIST that he behave like a king... and we buy into the notion so much THAT we even created a day to affirm it called CHRIST THE KING!

But when we begin to look closely at what Jesus SAID... and what Jesus DID... and how Jesus LIVED... we begin to see... that at minimum, if he is a KING, he is in no way, shape, or form like any KING that we have ever known... and, at maximum, maybe he is trying to tell us that he ISN'T A KING AT ALL! ... that he only uses the imagery of king to change it and transform it and make that very point! Maybe, we have MIS-UNDERSTOOD! You see I think it's possible that this day has been mis-named... mis-labeled! I think it's possible that this image sends us off on all sorts of wild goose chases... that inevitably leads us to a God who is more like a stone statue dangling from a cable in the sky NOT CONNECTED TO ANYTHING... than a warm God of FLESH AND BLOOD who loves me, not as a subject, but as someone PRECIOUS, and who loves you, not as a subordinate, but as someone VALUABLE, and who loves this world, not as something to overpower, but as something to embrace!

Think about it! NO ROYALTY THAT I'VE EVER HEARD OF:

-was born in a stinking stable, surrounded by animals doing all the things that animals do!

-would choose the common folk, the losers and the outcasts of the community to make up his royal court!

-would walk the streets and back alleys of the community deliberately seeking out and touching the hideous sores of lepers and giving encouragement to the community rejects!

-would sit down at a banquet table of a respected community official, and allow a woman of very questionable reputation wash his feet with her tears and her hair.

-would stand on a hill over-looking a great cosmopolitan city and be so stricken with grief over what was going on that he would sob out of control!

-would get so close to his subjects... so incredibly intimate... so familiar with their lives and their struggles that he could say "as you did it to one of the most insignificant of these you did it to me... for I was hungry... I was thirsty... I was a stranger... I was naked... I was sick... I was in prison..."

-would go to a cross to die because he cherished the ones who put him there even more than he cherished himself!

When our son David was 1 year old he got the flu and was seriously ill and we had to rush him to the hospital where he spent several days. The thing I remember most was how frightened he was at the unfamiliar surroundings. In those 23 years ago, and at this hospital, they didn't let us stay in his room with him, but encouraged us to go home to get some rest. I'll never forget the feeling inside of me as we left his room... he was screaming with every ounce of energy he had in him... he was so sick... he was so afraid... and he didn't know where he was... he saw only unfamiliar faces... and he saw us LEAVING... and at that moment I died... I'm telling you I died... at that moment I would have given ANYTHING... anything to change places with him... and take his fear and his pain and his suffering into myself!

The God and the Jesus that I am meeting in these verses this morning, rather than like a king, is far more like that parent... that loving, suffering parent... that mother... that father... who would gladly and willingly take into their own body the pain... and the fear... of their child... and if they couldn't take it for them, then at least SHARE IN IT with them!

The CROSS OF JESUS tells us that, unlike a king, God is NOT insulated and protected from the struggle and evil of life, but rather is VULNERABLE to it, and takes it into self and shares it with us... and the RESURRECTION tells us that Jesus' suffering is not over, but continues on... Jesus is still "nailed to the cross" ..."for as you do it to the littlest of these you do it to me."

Some years ago in another congregation, we expanded and remodeled our Sanctuary and for couple of months there was no cross on the wall. The day that the cross was to be re-hung, the construction supervisor knocked on my office door and asked to come out and watch. It turned out to a very HOLY MOMENT! As I watched the carpenters re-hang the cross... with the radio blasting some profane music in the back-ground, I started thinking, "What if we didn't re-hang it? What if we left the wall blank? Would anybody notice or protest? What's so special about it? What if we hung something else there? What if we burned into the wall the TEN COMMANDMENTS? What if put a nice rendering of a BIBLE up there? Or maybe a TONGUE OF FIRE or a DOVE? Or how about a king's CROWN? Or maybe a "Diamond Vision" screen like they have at the football stadium and we could change the symbol every week! Why the CROSS?

A little girl asked me one Sunday, "Where does God live?" Well, that's our question too! Where does God live? And there's only one place to point... and that's to a cross! THAT'S WHY THE CROSS! ...a cross that serves as a powerful reminder... and a potent metaphor... that God doesn't live in a far away KINGLY CASTLE CALLED HEAVEN, where the king relates from a distance... but God is here, living, dying and struggling on with you and with me... "as you do it to the littlest of these, you do it to me!"

These words of Jesus are much more than just an imperative for Social Action. They tell us WHERE GOD IS in the world. These words are not a THREAT... they are an INVITATION... AN INVITATION to join God... FOR BY THE CHRIST IN ME... AND BY THE CHRIST IN YOU we have the power to be Christ to each other... and maybe even to be Christ to God! We now have it in us to work miracles of love and healing, as well as to have them worked upon us. We have the power to bless with him... forgive with him... comfort with him... heal with him... to grieve with him.. Suffer with him as we suffer with each other... even to rejoice with him at another's joy almost as if it were our own!

-In every HUNGRY face... In every LONELY face... In every SUFFERING face... In every GRIEVING face... In every ANGRY face...

-In EVERY face that we have the courage to look into, Jesus Christ is present... and waiting... eagerly waiting for someone like you and me to touch him. "As you did it to one of the least of these... you do it to me!"

Many years ago in a mental institution near Boston, a young girl known as "Little Annie" was locked in a dungeon. In those days the doctors felt the dungeon was the only place for the "Hopelessly insane." Little Annie, violent and being regarded as hopeless was confined to this same cell with one little light.

There was an elderly nurse working there who felt there was hope for all of God's people, so every day she would take her lunch down to the dungeon and eat it outside of Little Annie's cage. This nurse would sit and eat and talk words of love and hope to the little girl.

One day the nurse brought some cookies along, and when it came time to leave she left them just outside her cage door. Little Annie paid no attention to the nurse at all and gave no indication she even knew the cookies were there, let alone even acknowledging the nurse's efforts. When the nurse returned the next day, the cookies wee gone. From then on the nurse brought cookies whenever she visited. Little Annie began to acknowledge the presence of the nurse, and over a long period of time, even began to communicate. The doctors began to notice a difference in Little Annie and they encouraged the nurse to keep on with her "therapy." The day finally came when Little Annie was moved out of the dungeon and upstairs with the rest of the patients, and finally a day came when they told her she go leave the institution. But Little Annie decided not to leave, but chose to remain in the security of the institution where she could helps others as she had been helped.

Many years later Queen Victoria was pinning England's highest award on another woman. And when this other woman was asked how she accounted for her remarkable accomplishments in the face of incredible handicaps, the other woman said she could have done nothing without her devoted teacher.

The "other woman" was Helen Keller, and her devoted teacher was Anne Sullivan, none other than Little Annie. Anne Sullivan treated Helen Keller as one of God's very special people. She loved her, prayed, played, pushed hard and worked with her, until Helen Keller's life became a beacon of encouragement to people all over the world.

Helen Keller influenced millions after she had been touched by Little Annie, and Little Annie was rescued from tragic oblivion by the love and care of an elderly nurse whose name we do not even know.

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