Rule in All Our Hearts Alone
Last Sunday after Pentecost - Christ the King, 2020
Ezekiel; 34:11-16, 20-24 • Ephesians1:15-23 • Matthew 25:31-46
Today is a special day in the life of the church. The liturgical calendar – the calendar of readings and prayers that this church follows throughout the year – ends today when we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, more commonly called the “Feast of Christ the King.” Today’s feast day was established in 1926 by Pope Pius XI. Before 1970, the feast was celebrated on the last Sunday of October, immediately before the Feast of All Saints. But then Pope Paul VI moved the feast day to the last Sunday of the liturgical year, adding to the way today’s feast points to God’s promised end. And we celebrate the feast right before we prepare anew for the Messiah’s birth. So, today’s feast, and its timing on the last day of the liturgical year, remind us that the end signals a new beginning.
When Pope Pius XI established today’s feast, he intended that the celebration of Christ’s Kingship would stand in marked contrast to emerging authoritarian regimes, nationalism, and secularism. Indeed, the Feast of Christ the King was established in the wake of devastation brought by the first world war – a world war in which my great-great uncle John Harold Hamilton, a sergeant in the Canadian Field Artillery, died of wounds in Belgium at the age of 23. When I was 23, I went on visits to seminaries in Rome and Belgium as I discerned a call to ordained priesthood in the Roman Church, and I managed to fit in a trip to Ieper, in Belgium, to find John’s gravestone in Duhollow Cemetery. It is a resting place so far from the home and family John left in Lethbridge, his small town on the Alberta plains. His headstone is one of many markers of lives cut short by that devastating war. His and other markers remind us of the costs that nationalism and warring worldly powers can exact – the costs that leaders of warring nations make others pay. The very frightening thing to me is that it is quite possible that a small seed of that destructive capacity – that capacity to divide and to injure – lies within me and in any of us. But, thankfully, today’s Gospel reminds us that we have other capacities that are fed and nourished by God.
Today’s Gospel is like an artichoke with layers that we can peel back one by one. Today’s Gospel shows Jesus distinguishing the faithful from the unfaithful, where faithfulness is defined by right response and action. The unfaithful are those who fail to notice and respond to the needs of those around them. The faithful are those who notice the needs of others and respond lovingly.
We could reflect on the Gospel on a social level, on a community level. But I wonder whether we can peel back a layer of this artichoke and consider the Gospel on a much more personal level. I wonder if, in a way, Jesus is inviting us to look deep within ourselves and recognize that each of us possesses different dueling capacities. Each of us has the capacity for self-centeredness, self-absorption, a desire for power, a desire to wield that power in ways that would settle scores, or show others that might makes right. On an individual level, the pursuit and exercise of self-centered power can cause each of us to ignore the needs of others, to overlook the desperation of those within our midst, and to turn a blind eye to suffering. On a larger scale, these capacities can fuel world wars.
But today’s Gospel also reminds us that each of us has other capacities: a capacity for faithfulness and commitment to God and to others. We also have the ability to notice – to notice the needs of the most vulnerable in our midst – the needs of the hungry and thirsty, the needs of the sick and dying, the needs of the outcast, stranger, and prisoner. And the Gospel also tells us that each of us has the capacity to accept God’s invitation to respond faithfully, as we are able, to help those in need.
I wonder also if there is another kind of noticing that is illustrated here – another layer of the artichoke. Maybe part of the invitation that God extends through today’s Gospel is for each of us to notice a little more clearly that we are all the same, with the same fundamental needs, even though we may experience those needs in very different physical, spiritual, and emotional ways, and to very different degrees. Perhaps the Gospel is inviting us to notice that, even if we are not without food, our hearts hunger for God’s love; that, even if we are not without clean water to drink, we thirst for justice; that we, too, are strangers who endure in a sometimes strange land; that, though we may not be incarcerated, we, too, seek liberation from our sins; that, though we may not be physically sick, we desperately need healing that only God can provide. Maybe that is the heart of the artichoke we’ve unpeeled. We are all the same and we are deeply dependent on God – a God who invites us to seek to “live in harmony with God, within ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation” as we await the perfection of God’s Reign.
And, as we anticipate the perfection of God’s Reign – the end we all journey toward – I invite you to meditate on the words of Charles Wesley – words that we so often hear in Advent as we anticipate a beginning:
Come, Thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.
Israel's strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.
Born Thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.
By Thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all sufficient merit,
Raise us to Thy glorious throne.
Come, thou long expected Jesus. Come, and come again.