The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Right Reverend Grant Lynn Ford at the
Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, November 23, 2008.
These two shepherds were with their sheep in the field when they came
across a big hole. One said to the other, “Better find out how deep that hole
is. What if a sheep fell down there?”
So they tossed a stone, listened, but heard nothing. The other shepherd
said, “Let me try a bigger rock.” They listened again, and still heard
nothing.
The first shepherd, feeling frustrated, looked around and found a great,
big stump. He hauled it over and tipped it into the hole. A minute later the
second shepherd yelled, “Watch out! There’s a goat charging us.” They jumped
aside just in time so the goat missed them and leaped into the hole.
About that time a farmer came up and said, “Have you seen my goat?”
One of the shepherds said, “Yeah, I think he just ran into that deep hole.”
The farmer replied, “Couldn’t have been him. I had him tied up to a great
big stump.”
Our Gospel lesson this morning actually starts with a story about sheep and
goats, though it didn’t make it into our reading. It sounds like this:
“All the nations will be gathered before the [Son of Humanity], and he will
separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from
the goats: sheep on the right, goats on the left.” Matthew 25:32
Who are these sheep and goats? Most scholars agree that the author of
Matthew was doing his or her best to bear witness to the Jews, so the author
uses code phrases such as “favored by the Almighty.” This way they would know
that the chosen people were being addressed… the people on God’s right
hand, at least in their thinking.
We call this “Christ the King” Sunday, because of Jesus’ use of the word
“king” in this story about sheep and the goats. This is one of the stories
that got him in trouble with the people of his day. They understood him to be
declaring himself to be “King of the Jews”, the ones “on the right”.
You probably remember the accounts of Jesus’ interrogation by Pilate, where
we hear the question: “Are you the King of the Jews?”
Jesus’ answer in every gospel something like this: “Yes, just as you say.”
Matthew 27:11
I remember a conversation I had with our guide on one of my trips to China.
He said to me, “You have two political parties; we have one. But what’s the
real difference?”
I had to admit that there’s not a huge difference between political parties
in the U.S.
That’s when he said, “We can do pretty much anything we want to, as long as
we don’t criticize the party.”
At that point I could see the difference between our system and theirs: we
can criticize our political parties without being thrown in prison. That’s a
substantial difference!
In Jesus’ time the people had quite a bit of freedom in their every-day
lives, as long as they paid their taxes and did not criticize Rome or start
any trouble for her representatives.
That didn’t stop people from trying to organize resistance against Rome.
Many a martyr was crucified or otherwise tortured and killed for sedition and
insurrection, or for even calling for rebellion against the occupational
government. So when Jesus used the words king and kingdom, he
was playing with fire.
The whole concept of kingdom or realm is rife throughout the
New Testament record. Realm is often substituted for kingdom
when employing inclusive language, but it comes from the accusative form of
the Latin regimen, meaning “system of rule”. So its power meaning is
pretty much the same.
The fact is, people did not understand what Jesus meant when he talked
about the kingdom or the realm of God. In John’s gospel, the writers inserted
a bit more dialog into the interrogation scene. In response to Pilate’s
question, Jesus says: “Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about
me?”
Pilate blames the question on things that the religious leaders had told
him, but Jesus explains, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Pilate jumps right
in: “Aha! So you are a king!”
Jesus replied, “You’re right in saying I’m a king. That’s why I was born; I
came to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
John 18:33-38
Exasperated, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” and then he turns to go and try
to talk the religious leaders out of being forced to punish Jesus. Of course,
we know the rest of the story. His argument against punishment failed, and
Jesus was crucified.
The early church was eager to crown Jesus as king, though it’s a hard task
to get Jesus to describe himself that way. About all he would admit is: “My
kingdom is not of this world.”
One time Jesus was being questioned by some Pharisees about when the
kingdom of God would come. Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God doesn’t come
because you look hard for it, or because people say, ‘Look over here’ or ‘See,
it’s over there’, because the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21
People today still don’t get it! There’s a whole church headquartered in
Rome that thinks it is the kingdom of God on earth. For that matter, there’s
another one in Salt Lake City that thinks the same thing. And the list of
religious institutions around the world grows exponentially, while the truth
is, the kingdom of God is right here in Fort Lauderdale!
Well, that’s where we are right now… “the kingdom of God is within YOU!”
When we try to separate the sheep from the goats, or the believers from the
non-believers, or us from them, we miss the whole point. Nobody
owns the kingdom of God. The kingdom within can is ruled by the one in whom
that inner kingdom is alive.
Now we begin to understand what Mary Butterworth means in her essay “The
Awakening Power of Christ” when she says: “Christ, the Divine Sonship, is
our
true divinity, and it is only when the Divinity is seen permeating our
humanity that we are conscious of Wholeness.”
Now Matthew’s writing has meaning for us today. When we manifest our true
divinity — our inner kingdom — by feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless,
clothing the needy, caring for the sick, we are living out the inner kingdom.
And we hear the words of Jesus: “when you do it for them, you do it for me.”
We are confident — as Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus — that the
“glorious living, part of the overall purpose of God is working out” in all we
say and do. No sheep, no goats, no division, no opposition, only Oneness.
We are the kingdom of God expressing through each of us — sons and
daughters of God — as we are conscious of Wholeness within, without,
throughout!
We are no longer goats, on the left hand of the King. Not — as some
religious conservatives believe — goats tied to a stump, living in fear of
ending up in the bottomless pit.
Rather, Paul tells us: “…in Christ… we, having heard and believed the
truth, find ourselves home free — signed, sealed, and delivered in Spirit.”
And you know what? That’s the truth!