First Reading: Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
11“For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. 12As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. 13And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. 14I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. 15I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. 16I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.
20“Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21Because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad, 22I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep. 23And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken.”
Psalm 95:1-7a
1Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation. 2Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and raise a loud shout to him with psalms. 3For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4In his hand are the caverns of the earth, and the heights of the hills are his also. 5The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands have molded the dry land. 6Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. 7aFor he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:20-28
20But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. 28When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46
31{Jesus said to the disciples,} “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. 34Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ 41“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
A Friend in High Places
It’s an event those there that day will never forget. A skyscraper was going up. Hundreds of people paused each day to watch the progress. One day, as the gathered crowd watched, they saw a giant metal beam being raised to be placed high on the enormous steel skeleton of the skyscraper. Then it happened. As the girder came near, a workman leaned out from the sixteenth floor to grab it. The spectators gasped as he lost his balance and fell. Fortunately, he was able to catch the end of the giant beam and hold on with both his arms and legs.
The ground crew stopped hoisting the beam so the man could continue to hold on, but the man’s weight on the end of the beam began to tilt the beam to a vertical position, which would surely cause him to lose his grasp and fall to his death. Just when all seemed lost, something else occurred that seemed almost miraculous to the onlookers below. Without pause, another worker on the same floor, seeing his friend’s predicament, leaped through space, and landed on the other end of the girder, where his weight leveled the beam. Amid the applause of the crowd, both men were safely lowered to the street.
It pays to have a friend in high places, doesn’t it: someone who will literally risk their life to save ours? It pays to have friends in prominent positions–even if they never risk much on our behalf. What is it we say? It’s not what you know . . . it’s who you know that counts.
It reminds me of the story about a scrappy little boy who came home from the playground with a bloody nose, a black eye, and torn clothes. It was obvious the boy had been in a fight and lost. While his father was patching him up, he asked his son what happened. “Well, Dad,” he said, “I challenged Larry to a duel, and I gave him his choice of weapons.” “Uh-huh,” said the father, “that seems fair.” “I know,” said the boy, “but I never thought he’d choose his big brother!” You know where I’m headed with this don’t you? Thank God, we have a big brother! Thank God we have a Friend in the highest place possible.
Today is the last Sunday of the church year. Next Sunday, the First Sunday in Advent, begins Year B of the 3-year liturgical calendar. Next week we’ll begin preparing for Christ’s coming as we celebrate His birth. Then, in the next 11 months, we’ll focus on the life of Jesus through the gospels of Mark and John, on His passion, death, and resurrection, His ascension back to the Father, then on the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church and finally, on His ministry and teachings in the Sundays following Pentecost. It’s a cycle we know well since we repeat it each year. But for today, our focus is on Christ the King as we celebrate the Reign of Christ, which is a fitting way to climax all that Christ means to us.
Today we celebrate His exalted role at the right hand of the Father, “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come,” as St. Paul writes in Ephesians 1:21. In other words, we have a “big brother,” or, if you will, a Friend in the highest regions of heaven. You and I have an Advocate in the highest place possible–at the very right hand of God. So today I want to focus for just a few moments on why Jesus is so important to us.
The famous evangelist Billy Sunday once noted that there are two hundred and fifty-six names given for Jesus in the Bible. Sunday imagined that this was because Christ is infinitely beyond all that any one name could express. I believe this is true and, of course, I could never, in one sermon, explore all the grandeur of Christ, but, for a few moments, let’s focus on the most critical reasons we celebrate the coming of Jesus into our world.
First we celebrate Christ as our King because He reveals to us the very nature of God the Father. He reveals the Father’s nature in His teaching, in His praying, and He reveals God’s nature in His own life. The Old Testament uses beautiful, poetic language to describe the majesty of God. But did you know that, according to scholars, Jesus was the first person to actually call God, Abba, Father? As you know, Abba can be translated as a term of intimacy, “Daddy.” Jesus would pray, “Abba, Father . . . everything is possible for you.” One New Testament scholar noted, “There is no instance of the use of ‘Abba’ as an address to God in all the extensive prayer-literature of Judaism . . .” There is no record of somebody doing that before Jesus did. The Old Testament tells us many wonderful things about God, but it never calls God Abba. Only Jesus was that bold.
Jesus taught us that God is like a loving Father who never turns His back on His children. Indeed, because of Jesus, we have come to know that God’s very nature is love. In his Daily Study Bible Series on the Gospel of John, Dr. William Barclay tells of a little girl who, when she was confronted with some of the more bloody and savage parts of the Old Testament, felt called upon to offer some explanation in defense of God. She said: “That all happened before God became a Christian.” I never thought about it like that.
If we could glean from the Old Testament a perfect representation of God’s character, there would have been no need for Christ. But the representation of God’s character in the Old Testament is difficult to understand. In some places, He’s a tender shepherd, but, in other places, He calls for entire tribes of people to be wiped out. Jesus’ life and teachings show us a yet another aspect of God. We see in Jesus’ life and death His agape, or sacrificial love, being lived out—a love that is unconditional and never-ending. And then He makes this audacious statement, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). That is, you don’t have to try to understand God’s nature from His teachings alone. All we have to do, is to look at Jesus.
Pastor Edward Markquart describes Jesus’ relationship with God when he likened it to a University of Minnesota study of identical twins. The twins in this study had been separated at birth. Though separated for thirty to forty years, they were still alike in many ways–for example in the way they reacted to smoke; the way they crossed their legs; the similarity in their choice of toothpaste. One set of these twins separated at birth even used the same rare cologne from England. The physiologist who directed this study drew his conclusions by taking readings of their galvanized skin responses as measured by electrodes in their bodies.
The director of the study found that their reactions to stimuli were identical. The twins listened to symphonies and the measurements of the galvanized skin responses were the same. They heard shocking noises, and their brains responded just the same. The twins had the same genes; the same chromosomes; even after being separated for thirty to forty years, they were still very much alike. Pastor Markquart concluded, “What the Bible is saying is, that Jesus is identical to the Father.
Jesus is the same substance of the Father, the very same nature. If you want to know what the Father is like, look at the genetic reproduction of the Son.” That is the first reason we celebrate Christ the King Sunday. Jesus revealed to us the nature of God the Father. The second reason today is important for us to celebrate, is that in His death on the cross Jesus made it possible for us to have new life in Him. He died that we may live.
One of the twentieth century’s Bible teacher, Harry Ironside’s, favorite stories was about Czar Nicholas I of Russia. The czar had a good friend who asked him to provide a job for his son. So the czar appointed the son as a paymaster in the Russian army. This was a position of responsibility. Unfortunately, the son was a gambler and lost nearly all the money entrusted to his care. Then word came that the auditors were coming to examine the young man’s records.
The young man realized that he owed a huge debt–far greater than he could ever repay. So he decided he had no choice but to end his life. However, before committing this act, he wrote out a full confession, listing all he had stolen. He ended his confession with these words: “A great debt. Who can pay?” Exhausted, he fell asleep. Late that night, the czar himself paid a surprise visit to the barracks and noticed a light on in the young man’s room. The czar found the young man asleep with the letter of confession next to him. He read the letter and instantly understood what the young man had done. Then the czar did something quite stunning. He bent over, wrote one word on the bottom of the letter, and left.
When the young man woke up, it was past midnight. He took up his gun in order to follow through with his plan to end his life, when he noticed that someone had written something on the suicide note beneath his final words, “A great debt. Who can pay?” The one word was actually a signature: “Nicholas.” Checking his records, he realized that the signature was genuine.
The czar knew what he had done and was willing to pay the huge debt himself. “A great debt. Who can pay?” “Nicholas.” “Resting on the words of his commander-in-chief, the young man fell asleep. In the morning a messenger came from the palace with the exact amount the young man owed. Only the czar could pay. And the czar did pay.” We only have the words of St. Paul and that of the Old Testament to help us understand just how Jesus’ death on the cross atones for our sins. St. Paul wrote, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23).
Various theologians have spilled much ink attempting to explain Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, but what you and I do know is this, that God’s grace and forgiveness are at the very heart of the Gospel. St. Paul put it this way in 1 Corinthians 15: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, [that is Adam], the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man [Jesus the Christ]. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death . . . When he has done this, then the Son himself will subject himself to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (vs. 20-28).
Christ our King not only revealed to us the very nature of God, but in His life, passion, death on the cross, and resurrection, Jesus made it possible for us to have new life in Him. Jesus, by being obedient even to death on a cross, paid the price for sin that we could not pay and reconciled us to the Father. When we stand at the foot of the cross and look at His beaten and bruised body, at His hands, feet and side which were pierced in our behalf, we know just how much God loves us and we’re moved to live for Him.
Knowing we don’t have enough time today to fully explore all Jesus as our King means to us, let me conclude by saying this: it’s through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is our constant companion, each and every day, as we seek to live as God’s faithful children. Years ago, author Bruce Larson wrote a very helpful book titled, Believe and Belong. In that book he talked about one exercise he has used over the years to help people commit themselves to living for Jesus. Bruce said that for many years he worked in New York City.
During his time in New York, he used his office to counsel people who were struggling with their faith. Often, he would suggest they walk with him from his office down to the RCA Building on Fifth Avenue. In the entrance of that building is a gigantic statue of Atlas. He describes this portrayal of Atlas as a beautifully proportioned man who, with all his muscles straining, is holding the world upon his shoulders. “There he is,” Larson would say to a friend who was struggling, “the most powerfully built man in the world, and he can barely stand up under this burden.
“Now that’s one way to live,” he would point out to his companion, “trying to
carry the world on your shoulders. But now come across the street with me.” Larson would then walk them across Fifth Avenue to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. There behind the high altar of that great cathedral is a little shrine of the boy Jesus, perhaps eight or nine years old, and with no effort he is holding the world in one hand. In Larson’s mind his point was illustrated graphically.
“We have a choice,” he would say. “We can try to carry the world on our shoulders, or we can say, ‘I give up, Lord; here’s my life. I give you my world, the whole world.’” It’s a simple but beautiful reminder of a choice we make every day–to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders, or we can yield that burden to our Friend in high places, the One who sits at the right hand of God.
Some of you may recognize the name Phil Rizzuto; he was the record-setting shortstop for the New York Yankees from 1941-1956. We’re told that in one game Rizzuto trotted out to his position in the top of the ninth inning, with his Yankees behind 9-0. Before the opposing team came to bat, Rizzuto turned away momentarily from the batter’s box, too dejected to look. It was at that moment that he caught sight of the great Joe DiMaggio in center field. Immediately Rizzuto said, “We’re going to win this game.” All it took was knowing that Joe DiMaggio was on his team that gave Rizzuto the confidence to play on.
It’s in the same way that us knowing that Jesus is on our side, that Jesus is our Advocate to the Father, is enough to make us confident as we live for God each day. We have a Champion, a big Brother, a Friend in high places who will accompany us into any challenge, help us carry any burden, even give His life for us. In the strength of God, we have no need to give in or give up. After all, we do indeed have a Friend in the highest of all places. And we can, at any time, call on His name, Jesus the Christ—our King of kings and Lord of lords.
Amen