Sermon: Christ the King

Sorry for posting this a week late, but I was a bit busy with Thanksgiving last week.

Christ the King

Sunday, November 23 2008

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Psalm 95
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

MP3 of Sermon.  Bulletin.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is the last Sunday of the church year; next week is the first Sunday of Advent, when we begin preparations for the coming of our Lord.  Today, we celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ is our King, ruler of heaven and earth.  We are citizens of two worlds, of this world we live in now and of the world to come, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead.  Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  Jesus Christ is the king of both heaven and earth.  It’s easy to imagine Christ as King of heaven, where he reigns in glory with angels and pearly gates and all that.  It’s a lot harder to imagine Christ as king of this world we live in today.

What does it mean that Christ is King?  What kind of a King is he?  When I think of kings in this world, I think of grand castles and historic wars and riches and crown jewels locked safely behind glass.  Most kings in the world today are ceremonial figureheads, like Queen Elizabeth of England.  She comes out, she waves at crowds, she makes speeches, she travels the world, but in the end the country she rules is actually governed by elected officials in Parliament.  Then there are all the kings in history, who actually did rule their people.  Some were good, some were bad, but all had flaws when you take a close look at them.  They favored the rights of the rich and powerful and ignored the needs of the poor, they played favorites, they started stupid and tragic wars, they lived in lavish palaces while the majority of their people lived in squalor and filth, they had so much power and wealth and used it to get more power and wealth.  Even David and Solomon, the two greatest kings in the Bible, had significant problems.  David’s adultery and poor parenting skills caused a vicious civil war, and his son Solomon the Wise raised taxes and forced labor levies so high to pay for his building projects that on his death the kingdom of Israel-God’s chosen people-were permanently split in two.  That split never healed because a few centuries of rule by bad kings later, the Northern Kingdom was conquered by Assyria and taken off as captives and was never heard from again.  If that’s the legacy of a good king, well, I can see why our forefathers rebelled and threw out the English king in favor of a democratic government.  It’s hard to imagine a king being a good thing, hard to think of Christ as a king, when you think of all the bad things kings have done.

Except our democratically-elected political leaders don’t have that great a track record, either.  Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the founding fathers owned slaves and left in place a system of slavery that was horribly unjust and cruel and caused a massive civil war for their children and grandchildren to fight.  Lincoln had no plans for the future besides winning the Civil War, and his lack of planning led to problems with Reconstruction after his death.  Our presidents have a better track run over the long term than the kings and queens of many other nations, but that’s not saying much.  All leaders of nations, whatever they call themselves and however they came to power, have fallen short of their promises and caused problems for their people.  Yet they keep making new promises about what they’re going to accomplish as leaders, each promise more lavish than the rest.  And we follow them, hoping they’ll fix all the things that are wrong with the world, all the mistakes their predecessors made.  We hope they’ll make things better for us, make a better world, fix the wrongs and injustices that affect our daily lives and prevent new ones from occurring.

On November 5, the day after the recent election, I visited a few shut-ins, and the conversation naturally turned to politics.  The Obama supporters spoke as if Obama was a savior who would right all the wrongs in America and in the world.  The McCain supporters spoke as if America was doomed and would crumble and fall within the next four years.  Now, politics is a touchy and dangerous subject for any pastor to discuss with parishioners, and I’m not quite comfortable yet with where the boundaries are.  But one thing I know for sure is that no matter which political party won this or any election, no matter which candidate is installed in office, the world is in God’s hands and will always be in God’s hands, difficult as that can be to remember at times.  And so we come back to the question: what does it mean that Christ is King of this world as well as the next?

In the first lesson, the leaders of the world-particularly the kings of Israel and Judah-have failed at their task as leaders and shepherds of their people.  The people are scattered and divided, the rich have gotten greedy and the poor have gotten trampled.  There is no justice anywhere.  The ones with God-given gifts to take care of and protect others have used those gifts to make themselves even richer and stronger at the expense of the ones they’re supposed to be protecting.  It’s not their riches God objects to-it’s the way they’ve used those riches to do the exact opposite of what they should be doing.  The result?  Everyone has suffered.  The nation has been conquered by foreigners and everyone-rich and poor alike-has been carried off into exile.  God sent the prophet Ezekiel to bring comfort: exile is not permanent.  The injustices that plague Israel will be redressed, and a new shepherd, a new king, will be given to lead them.  This king, however, will not be like their old leaders who brought them to this low point.  This new David will be a true shepherd-he will take care of the people with justice, and both rich and poor will be fed and protected and cared for.  This new David is Christ, the Messiah, king of heaven and earth.  What does it mean that Christ is King?  Christ is not just a ceremonial king, there to be brought out for rituals and holidays and ignored the rest of the time.  He has true power of both judgment and protection.  Christ’s kingship means that the old way of doing things, the way of life in which value is calculated by riches and power, will come to an end.  In its place will come a world in which all people are valued, in which everyone gets a fair chance and all will be cared for.  Christ’s kingship means that justice isn’t about who’s got the biggest army or the most money, and it means that no matter how bad things seem to be now, this world is not the end.

But justice can’t happen without judgment, and that means that injustices can’t be swept away under the rug or excused as simply the way things are.  People need to be held accountable for the things they’ve done, good and bad.  God’s justice can’t be bribed, or swayed by politics, or biased in any way.  God knows what is in our hearts and minds, God knows what we’ve done even better than we do, and God will judge everyone with greater justice than any human court could ever hope to do.  Let me repeat that: God will judge.  Not us, God.

In the second lesson, Jesus talks about the judgment that will happen when he comes again.  The story is simple: everyone will be judged and sorted into two groups.  The ones who are righteous-the sheep-will go into the Kingdom of heaven, and those who are not righteous-the goats-will be sent away to eternal punishment.  This parable is pretty well known.  It’s a common subject of sermons and Bible study classes.  It’s an excellent way to show what God’s justice looks like: when we see someone in trouble, and we have the power to help, we should do it.  We see the face of God not in the kings and rulers and powerful and wealthy of this world, but in those who are the most vulnerable.  We see the face of God in people who are hungry, thirsty, alone, naked, sick, imprisoned.  We have been given many gifts, not just of money but of time and talents as well, and we should use them to take care of those who honestly cannot take care of themselves.  This is what Christ our King commands.  This is the standard against which he will judge us.

And again I point out: the standard against which Christ will judge us, not the standard we will use to judge others.  Here’s what most people miss when they read this parable: the sheep don’t think they’re sheep and the goats don’t think they’re goats.  The sheep are honestly surprised to hear that they’ve been serving Christ in their daily lives, and the goats honestly can’t think of a time when they haven’t served.  The problem is that the goats were serving the wrong things-and didn’t know it.  They got so caught up in what they thought needed to be done, they forgot to ask what God thought needed to be done, and how God wanted them to go about doing it.

It’s kind of like when I was a kid and I would take care of my younger brother on Saturdays while Mom and Dad were at work.  We had a list of chores to accomplish, and it was my responsibility to see to it the chores got done and that we both did our fair share.  Now, I was a fairly bossy girl, and my brother has always been laid back, and so normally he’d just go along with whatever I told him to do, and normally I tried to divide things relatively equally.  But sometimes I’d get so caught up in the fact that I was in charge that I would try to make my brother do a lot more than his fair share-and then try and micromanage how he did it.  Well, I never got away with it for very long-eventually, even my laid-back brother would call Mom and Dad to complain, and I would get in trouble.  Even if the chores got done like Mom and Dad wanted, they didn’t get done how Mom and Dad wanted when I made my brother do most of the work, and they got done in ways that harmed the relationship between myself and my brother.  Just as it was easy for me to think I was doing what my parents wanted by bossing my brother around and making him do most of the work, it’s easy for us to arrange things the way we want them and justify it by thinking we’re doing what God wants.  It’s easy to fall back into the habits of power-seeking, of seeing things through the eyes of this world instead of through the eyes of Christ, and not even realize we’re doing it.

That’s a scary thought.  If it’s that easy to forget about the true justice of Christ, if we can honestly think we’re serving God when we really aren’t, what’s to stop us from being goats?  How can we make sure we’re headed for eternal life rather than eternal punishment?  We do our best, but what if that isn’t enough?  Well, the bad news is, our best isn’t enough and there’s no way we can make sure we’re sheep and not goats.  We can’t judge anyone, not ourselves, not others.  The power of judgment belongs exclusively to Christ our King, who isn’t blinded by power and money and all the things we use to decide status.  But the good news is that Christ exercises that judgment along with mercy, in grace and love.  Christ uses his kingship for protection and care.  As sinners, we stand condemned before the throne.  But Christ loves us still.  And that is where we place our trust and our hope of salvation, not in our deeds that often go wrong, but in the grace of God.

Jesus Christ is our king both in this world and the next.  Doing good things isn’t just about salvation.  We do good works because our God and King desires justice in this world, and mercy, and he wants to work through us to accomplish it.  We do good works because our God cares just as much about the weak as he does the strong.  Christ can be seen in the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick, the dying.  The world may have forgotten them, but God hasn’t.  And neither should we.

Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  The rulers of this world have the power of laws and armies and bureaucracy in their control, but Christ is still the one in ultimate control.  Things may seem grim or depressing when we see all that’s wrong with the world, all the things that we as human beings have done wrong.  But Christ doesn’t exercise that power through a show of riches and might.  He rules by bringing justice and grace to the world, to those who need it the most.  He rules by gathering up the lost and forsaken, by being a good shepherd to his people.  Thanks be to God.

On righteousness

Reformation Sunday

Sunday, October 26

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today is Reformation Sunday. Four hundred and ninety-one years ago this Friday, Martin Luther nailed a list of ninety-five things he thought the church was doing wrong on the church door in Wittenburg, hoping initially only for a theological debate that might reform the church he served. The lessons for today are taken from those texts that were especially valuable to Luther in his realization that the theology of the medieval Roman Catholic church had serious problems in need of reformation. We celebrate this day as a festival of the church to remind ourselves that since the church is made up of humans who have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, it is in constant need of reformation and renewal.

There is a question in the readings today. It stands behind Jeremiah’s vision of the future, and behind Paul’s vision of what Christ has done and is doing in our midst, and behind Jesus’ rebuke of the Jews who had believed in him. The question is this: we are all sinners, so how do we get a right relationship with God?

Israel had been created and formed by God throughout its entire history, and yet by Jeremiah’s day they had strayed so far from the path God taught them that they were destroyed. God was with them in their suffering and promised to rebuild them, but Jeremiah wanted to know what was to keep them from going so far astray a second time? God’s answer was a new covenant, in which God’s commands, God’s words, weren’t just something heard during worship but were so deeply a part of the community of believers that they could never be forgotten or discarded again. Not just the rules and regulations, but knowledge of how to live a happy, healthy, whole life in community with God and with all believers. This new covenant would be given not because they earned it or deserved it, but because they needed it. This gift from God is what would save Israel from another destruction and exile.

Centuries later, the new covenant was created in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote a letter to the church in Rome explaining what that meant not just for Jews but for everyone, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No amount of external rules and regulations can keep us safe from sin. Even though we try our hardest to make up for it by following the laws as best we can, we can’t possibly do enough good works to earn our own salvation. The good news of Christ Jesus is that God loves us anyway, and created a new covenant with us to save us. Jesus took the punishment for our sins as his own, and suffered and died so that we would not have to. As baptized children of God, we are tied to his death and resurrection, and through his sacrifice we are given freedom and grace. Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit live within us and surround us, showing us how to life happy, healthy, whole lives in community with God and with all believers. We have nothing to boast about; it’s not our own actions or beliefs that save us but God’s actions and the faith he gives us.

It’s a wonderful thing, to be saved by God. Unfortunately, we often take that salvation for granted. We have been claimed and saved by God, but we aren’t perfect. The final destruction of sin and death won’t happen until Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. Until that time, we are caught in between sin and salvation, unable to free ourselves from bondage to sin and yet constantly claimed and forgiven by God, renewed in faith and life. We are, in Luther’s words, both saint and sinner at the same time. Being both saint and sinner is not a comfortable thing to be. We don’t like to think of ourselves as sinners; we prefer to focus on our good deeds, on God’s love for us, and forget the bad things we do. I was participating in a bible study two years ago, when a woman said she didn’t see why we had to start every service with the confession and forgiveness—after all, she wasn’t a sinner, she was a good woman who followed the ten commandments and took care of her family and worked hard, so why should she have to confess anything?

I didn’t quite know what to say. I mean, I know that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but at the same time I understood where she was coming from. I don’t worship other gods, I don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, I worship on Sundays, I honor my parents, I don’t kill, I don’t commit adultery, I don’t steal, I don’t lie, and I do my best never to covet anything. I’m not perfect, but it sure seems like I’ve got the major stuff covered, right? And there are a lot of people out there, many of them in this church right now, who could say the same thing. It’s so easy to start thinking like the Jews who believed in Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson. “I’m a child of God, who follows the commandments and isn’t a slave to sin. What do you mean ‘you will be made free’? What have I done that needs saving?” And yet, according to Paul, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, including me and everyone else who does their best to obey the commandments. What are we doing wrong?

Let’s start from the beginning. The first commandment says “You shall have no other gods but me.” It sounds easy enough. Who here has ever worshipped, say, Buddha? That’s easy enough to avoid. But considering that today is Reformation Sunday, let’s check out what Luther has to say. In the section on the first commandment in the Large Catechism, Luther asks this question: what does it mean to have a god? Think about it. What does it mean to have a god? Besides the obvious things like coming to church on Sundays, how does believing in God and being a Christian affect you and your daily life? According to Luther, a “god” is what we look to for all good and in which we find refuge in all need. To have a god is … to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart. And that’s the problem, the thing that makes the first commandment so very difficult to follow no matter how good we think we’re being. We may not consciously worship other gods, but it’s very easy to slip into trusting something in this world that we can see and hear and touch more than we trust God.

For me, I know I’m a smart, competent woman. The temptation for me is to put my trust in my own abilities and intelligence, instead of in God. I can think my way out of most problems: figure out what’s wrong, figure out how to fix it, and go out and do what needs to be done. I believe in God, but I also believe I can handle most things. When I need something, when I have a problem, my first instinct isn’t to turn to God for help and guidance, it’s to look for what I can do to fix it. And I never realized how little trust I had in God until I spent last summer working as a chaplain at a mental hospital. You see, the thing about mental illness severe enough to need hospitalization is that you can’t fix it. You can’t think your way through it. Even with the best medication and counseling available to them, the people in that hospital will have to struggle with their illness for the rest of their lives. There was nothing I could do to fix them, or help them fix themselves. Going there ever day, knowing I could do nothing, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. It forced me to realize just how much I relied on myself and how little I relied on God. As the summer went on, I had to learn to open myself to the possibility of God working in and through me and in the lives of the staff and patients at that hospital, and put my faith and trust in God instead of in myself. I could not help them. But God could.

Self-reliance is one form of idolatry that Americans are particularly prone to, but not the only one. Look at the political campaigns going on in our country right now. Both sides believe that if they are elected they can fix all the problems in America. Their ultimate trust and faith is in their ideology and political proposals. Or how about money? If there’s one thing that the marked fluctuations and economic problems of the past few weeks have proven, it’s that there are a lot of Americans who put their ultimate faith and trust in the economy instead of in God. To listen to people talk, in our community and in the national news, you would have thought the whole world was coming to an end. What will we do if our investments aren’t worth as much? What will we do if we don’t get a raise this year? What will we do if we don’t have the money to take the vacation we wanted? What will we do if we get laid off? How will we live? As a culture, our love of money and financial security has become the driving force in our lives. Let me be very clear here: being smart, or interested in politics, or having money are not the problem. The problem is when we put more trust in our abilities, politics, and money than we do in God.

The question in today’s lessons is the question for our age as well. I’ve only talked about one of the commandments today, but when you truly look at each of the commandments, at the spirit of the law and not just the letter of it, each one is just as difficult to follow. Paul was right. We are all sinners. We are all slaves to sin. If we can’t even keep the first commandment, how can we possibly make a right relationship with God and our fellow believers?

The answer is simple. We can’t. But God can. We are slaves to sin, but if the son of God makes us free then we are free indeed. God has made a new covenant with us, a new promise, to be our God and make us God’s people. Through Jesus Christ our sins have been forgiven and we have been made whole. Not because we’ve earned it—we haven’t—but because God loves us in spite of our sin and loves us no matter what we do. The God who created us and gave us every good thing in the world, the God we turn away from every day with each sin, loves us enough to die for our sake that we might be saved even though we are still sinners. This is a gift we could never earn, and we cannot pay back. The only thing we can do is rejoice, and open our hearts and minds to the presence of God in us and among us, and allow ourselves to be re-formed in God’s image and in God’s steadfast love.

Bearing fruit: good works, not works righteousness

Some people believe that if you do enough good deeds, if you follow God’s word perfectly enough, you can earn God’s forgiveness (and that if you don’t do enough good works, you’ll go to Hell). This is called “works righteousness” because it is based on a belief that our righteousness comes from the good works we do, instead of God’s grace. The problem with this belief is that “all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). The grace of God is that even though we are all sinners, God still loves us and sent God’s only son, Jesus, to pay the price for our sin so that we could be saved. There is nothing we can do that would make God love us less, and nothing we can do on our own to earn the love and forgiveness God has already given us; works righteousness doesn’t work. But just because good works can’t “earn” us salvation doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do good things.

God loves us no matter what we do. Our works cannot reconcile us with God or obtain grace. (See Ephesians 2:8-9.) Our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake through faith, and that faith is a gift of God that we call grace. When our sins are forgiven, our relationship with God is made right. The technical term for this is “justification.” That’s what Lutherans mean when we say we are justified by grace through faith. This is intended to be a comfort; we never have to worry that we have done enough good things to make God happy with us.  Good works have nothing to do with salvation. HOWEVER, you can’t just stop there.

We are saved by God’s grace when he justifies us, but there’s more to the Christian life than just coming into a right relationship with God. Once you are justified, then it becomes a question of living out your faith. We have been given a new life through Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit working in us and through us. There’s an old saying: “if being Christian were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Living as a Christian is called “sanctification.” And part of living as a Christian—being sanctified—is doing good works. We don’t do good works out of fear of going to Hell; we know that God will always love us and redeem us whether we do good works or not. We do good works because we love God and God loves us; he wants us to do good things, and we want to make him happy. Doing good works is a form of praise to God, just as surely as singing hymns or praise songs is.

I’m sure you can all remember Bible passages that talk about bearing good fruit or having the fruit of the Spirit. (For example, the parable of the sower in Mark 4, John 15:4-9, Ephesians 5:8-20, Colossians 1:9-14, Matthew 3:8, Romans 7:4, and many others.) As Christians, the Holy Spirit works within us, and inspires us to do things that are pleasing to God.  This is what it means to bear good fruit: to have the Spirit working within us, helping us to do good things. God loves us no matter what we do, but he wants us to live fruitful lives. God wants us to help others who need help. God wants us to do the right thing, not because we are afraid, but because we love God and we love our fellow human beings, and doing good works is a way of showing that love.

Christ died to forgive our sins and through that forgiveness the Holy Spirit comes to us. Forgiveness of sins is Justification, and giving the Holy Spirit is Sanctification. They’re not the same thing, though they are closely related.  When Christ saves us, he calls us to live as Christians, and to live out our faith in our daily lives. Each day we are renewed in faith and love by the Holy Spirit. Doing good works is our way of responding to that call. Good works are not necessary for salvation, period. But they are necessary for living according to God’s call. We do them not out of fear, but out of love and respect.

We should also remember that even though good works won’t save us, they do give us other rewards. Here on Earth they make others happy, and they do store up treasures for us in heaven. They don’t grant us salvation, but they do give bonuses once we have been saved.

If you have any questions about the Christian faith, Christian life, or theology, please leave a comment.