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On Thursday night I happened to be in London’s Bond Street which had been closed to traffic for the switching on of the Christmas lights. I missed Kelly Brook’s actual performance in flicking the switch but I was able to listen to a rather good, if ageing rock band. They were followed by a dancing ballerinas, performing on stilts. All the while, gently drifting snowflakes fluttered around us – courtesy of snow-making machines perched on the rooftops. It was actually quite enjoyable and further down the street other performers were entertaining the shoppers who thronged for the annual Bond Noel.
I didn’t avail myself of the bargains at Tiffany’s and I missed out on the luxury tombola but I did reflect on the generosity of those artists who were performing free for a good cause. The whole event was raising money for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. It was for this cause that they gave freely of their time and more especially, their talents.
It is perhaps something we could remember as we fill in our Faith & Skills Audit – we are asked to use what God has given us by way of gifts and talents not only within Church but also in the wider community, especially for the betterment of those in need and who are disadvantaged. It needn’t be as spectacular as the Bond Street event but there are plenty of opportunities to use our gifts in small but significant ways.
All that may seem a long way from today’s Gospel for the Feast of Christ the King which centres on the parable of the Sheep and the Goats and on the Judgement Christ makes about the way we live our lives. Yet it is exactly about that. Generosity of spirit and of Giving in all sorts of ways is a reflection of what Jesus expects of those who are seeking His Kingdom. I don’t think for a moment that most of those artists taking part in the Bond Street Charity event would see it that way but then those in the parable who did good to others had no idea either.
When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food…
They did what they did because they were responding to a higher part of their human nature. It might be described as altruism or philanthropy or simply just good nature but, because it is about giving of oneself for the benefit of others, it is Godly stuff. It isn’t the deed but the motivation which points to the sense of Godliness in people. The deed is an important display of something inward which is much more God-centred than many understand.
This too is important for us because we Christians can so easily sit in judgement on those whom we consider to be ‘outsiders’; those who don’t darken our doors and who don’t have our Vision of God. Or who don’t realise that it is such a vision which is at work silently within them. They may well be living a generous and self-giving life whilst not recognizing that it is a Godly life.
A missionary once met a man and told him all about Jesus Christ in the hope of converting him. When the missionary had finished the man said, “Thank you. I have been worshipping him all my life. Now you have told me his name.”
When we read the parable of the Sheep and the goats we Christians generally cast ourselves on the side of the sheep – we are the righteous ones who know that we must help the poor, visit the sick, be concerned for the prisoner; feed the hungry and clothe the naked. There is a huge Christian movement which does all that and we, ourselves, are part of it. But we must admit that many who are not Christians do as much, if not more to alleviate human and animal need. Are we to say that, because they aren’t Christians, Christ will sit in judgement on them? That somehow they are all goats who are destined for eternal damnation. The danger with such a judgement is that, no matter how hard we try, we fail others from time to time. We walk by on the other side. We pretend they don’t exist.
Haven’t we all put off visiting the sick and sometimes ignored the stranger. Have we passed by the dishevelled figure in a London doorway whose eyes beg our help? Do we truly understand what it means to be hungry to the point of death? If we did would we spend unnecessary amounts on trivial presents for Christmas? Where does that place us in the scheme of our Lord’s Judgement? Of course, the problems we are thinking about – the sheer scale of human need throughout the world - is too much for us – what difference can we make?
Well Jesus actually gives us the answer – He doesn’t ask us to take on all the world’s need. He says simply,
Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family…
Just by responding to the needs of one or a few we are already making a difference. We are already moving towards the Kingdom of God – and much more importantly, we are taking the needy with us. But there is something else we need to note about this parable of judgement. It is not entirely about doing good to others – it is about recognizing in others the image of Christ. To continue the quotation – You did it to me.
Now perhaps we might begin to understand something of why this Gospel has been chosen for the Feast of Christ the King.
The image of our Lord’s Kingship has been about him reigning in glory – enthroned in heaven. Indeed, Matthew lends his authority to such a view at the beginning of the parable –
When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.
Artists have allowed free reign to their brushes and icon painters their imagination on this imagery. (I say this mindful that we are hosting an Art Exhibition this weekend!) I have mentioned before the East window of one of the churches I served which has a magnificent portrayal of Christ in all his kingly glory. I have a splendid photo of it above my desk. Of all the images of Christ the King that I have seen, it is this which moves me most – and perhaps that is because, Sunday after Sunday, I prayed in front of it. But I often did so, during ten years of rural deprivation, with some very needy people kneeling behind me. As we went through, first the BSE crisis and then the sheep crisis, I knew just how hard it was for that poor farming community to make ends meet. I knew who was going to the wall and which family were struggling to keep even bread on the table. There seemed such a gulf between the vision in the window in front of me and the need behind me. Where truly did God’s glory lie for that struggling community?
There is, however, another vision of Christ’s glory which is different from that East window and from all the imagery which surrounds Christ the King. It’s there in the parable.
When you cared for any in need, you cared for me
What is perhaps different about Christian caring and Christian generosity is that we are not just responding to a need in others, we are responding to the Christ in them. We recognize in each and every one something of the image of Jesus.
In Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthians he speaks of our seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, but just before those words, Paul wrote that all of us see the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror because through God’s grace we are being transformed into the same image. The Kingdom of God is within you, Jesus once said. If we recognize this in ourselves then we should also recognize it in others. What Jesus is saying in his imaginative story is that we should see Him in all who are needy, all whom we seek to touch with Christ’s love. When we do we are closer to the Kingdom than we might believe. For while the Feast of Christ the King centres on our Lord’s Glory and is certainly about his Divine heavenly status – about how he now reigns at His Father’s right hand as God– it is also about discovering his Kingly love in each other and especially in those in need – which, when you come to think of it, includes all of us.
If it is hard for us to believe that in disfigured humanity the glory of Christ really does shine out, then we must remember that from our human point of view it is not some unapproachable vision of heaven that draws us to him but the all-too-earthly Cross. For it is the Crucified Christ, wounded and disfigured by men, who gives us the most approachable sense of God’s glory. It was on the Cross that Jesus vanquished all the dark images of the world and transformed them by an incredible love. This was true glory – that God refused to be vanquished and chose the moment of his lowest ebb as a human being to proclaim his divinity which is seen through an act of sheer and total love.
It is this love which forms the judgement on us.
As a great spiritual writer of the Church, St. John of the Cross, once put it:
At the eventide of our lives we shall be judged on how much we have loved.
Not just those who are easy to love, but especially those who are not so easy. The secret is always to look beyond what we see to that divine image within. To love the Christ in them – to recognize that what we see on the surface is not always the truth of what is inside. So many stories of the saints include encounters with the disfigured – such as St. Francis touching the leper; St Martin giving his cloak to a beggar; Mother Teresa looking out of her safe convent window on the poor in the streets below; and for all of them this was the converting moment because in reaching out to those in need they reached in to a need within themselves – a need to be part of Christ’s on-going care of humanity and his longing to draw all to His Kingdom of infinite love. The Christ in them was awakened by the Christ in others. And it’s that which makes the real difference between those who do good for humanitarian reasons and those who do good for Godly ones.
The Parable of the sheep and the goats is a judgement parable. Through it, Jesus challenges each one of us to learn how to love with his love and in that loving to discover that, all the time, he has been building a throne, so that he can rule a little more of the world through our hearts and our lives.