November 24, 2002 - Christ the King Sunday
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
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Matthew 25:31-46
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“Shepherdingthe Future”
This is the last Sunday of the ‘churchyear.’ On this day the lectionary – the readings from Scriptureappropriate to the day – points us toward the future, which is the end oftime. This is the day we think about Christ as the king who will come injudgment and bring final justice and peace to all of creation. It’s aconcept both frightening and comforting. It’s also more than a tadconfusing, especially when the Scriptures tend to frame this event in incrediblypoetic terms that equate kings with shepherds and people with sheep and goats. While it may be difficult for our post-industrial, even post-technological, ageto understand such basic agrarian metaphors, they still carry power within them. The notion that God will personally seek God’s sheep and “as a shepherd” “rescues them from all the places to which they have been scattered”gives one hope. Regardless of our advances, or declines, God is still Godand is shepherding the future – our future and the future of all creation.
For me one of the sure signs of theDivine imprint on humanity is this desire to seek out a future, to see beyondwhere we are to what we are to become. No other animal contemplates itsfuture, plans for it, dreams of it, or fears it; only humans think in thoseterms. What is true of individuals is true of societies and the church isa society and so dreams, or speculates, about its future. Not long ago Iwas given a book commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of FirstCongregational Church, which was held in 1917. Reading through it hasabsolutely delighted and fascinated me, because there I see an early snapshot ofour present community. As part of the anniversary celebration thecongregation listened to a lecture by the Reverend Doctor Theodore M. Shipherd,the minister of Plymouth Congregational Church in Milwaukee. Dr.Shipherd’s topic was “The Church of Tomorrow.”
I want you to hear what Dr. Shipherd hadto say and see if some of what he talked about still holds true for useighty-five years later as we celebrate one hundred and sixty years of ourchurch’s growth toward the future. It was reported that Dr. Shipherdsaid of the church of the future:
The church must be willing to limber up. In its very nature religious conviction runs deep and must of necessity be sensitive and conservative. People outside are not quick to see or know what transformations are taking place inside. We must make our labors more aggressive and more generous. We must serve and not be always seeking to gather pennies and half dollars from our neighbors. We must be willing to be handsomely generous and beneficent and unload very considerably our Yankee delight in acquisitiveness.
Again, the church looks a little forbidding to the passerby because the moral standards which it teaches are more exacting than those of other institutions. The church of the future must learn to give a bright and happy demonstration of the high faith it teaches. In every church may be found sly sinners who greatly retard the demonstration which is the chief source of any church’s worth in its community. A penitent sinner is a benediction, a sly hypocrite is a constant stumbling block. The church of the future must carry its message with joy by means of its entire membership.
It is obvious from what has been said that the church of the future must move from health to strength, rather than from forced depression to extravagant reaction. This is why evangelism in its professional and traditional methods is demoralizing to all wholesome and honest people.
To be fishers of men, as all earnest Christian people are, we must first be friends, and then understanding friends. We should go into the Father’s house and into His company as comrades, and learning from each other, we shall be best introduced to the grace and integrity of Christian discipleship. The day of the saint who waters the vinegar and sands the sugar before going up to prayers is gone forever.
And, finally, every Congregational church must be a “Priesthood of Believers.” In such a church the minister is not a lugger of sleepy and reluctant saints. In each person there must be the impulse and the desire to move on and up from strength to strength. The traditional superstitions that make religious slaves move only as they are driven or teased forward by a laborious and pompous Priest must vanish from the Protestant consciousness if we are to know any part in the great splendid life of this great country of ours where democracy is growing day and night at so rapid a pace. The Protestant minister should be a helmsman rather than the gasoline engine in a real Christian craft.
No church is healthy or what it must be in the future until the urge of its members is always greater than the speed of him whom they have chosen leader and servant.
What I hear is remarkably contemporary,even though it may be said in the accents of almost a hundred years ago. Shipherd is reminding us that the essence of what it means to be church – atleast in the Congregational conception of the church – is to be a‘gathered’ people. We’re drawn here by our individual faiths, butwhat keeps us here is the melding into a community. The goal of thechurch, then, is not simply self-preservation, because that’s what becomesimportant only when the church is reduced to being an institution. Thegoal of the church is shared life and that’s why Shipherd tells us the church“needs to limber up.” In every age we stand very close to the edge ofthe church simply becoming yet another institution whose sole purpose isself-perpetuation. If we lose the core understanding that the church is acommunity of faithful persons, that this is a living breathing organism, thenwe’re lost.
At the core of that community is an evenmore profound truth: the living presence of Christ. Long ago God, throughthe prophet Ezekiel, said that “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, andI will make them lie down . . . I will seek the lost and bring back the strayed,and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak.” ForChristians that prophecy came true in the person and the work of Jesus theChrist, the anointed one. Jesus took the prophecy a step farther, asEmeril would say, he “kicked it up a notch.” Jesus not only identifieshimself as the shepherd, but he also identifies himself with the sheep. Hetells us in Matthew, “If you have done it to the least of these my brethren,you have done it to me.” There, dear ones, is the too often missed, toooften misunderstood essence of our faith as Christians and it’s all wrapped upin what we will soon celebrate in Advent and Christmas – Emmanuel,God-with-us.
I read the Gospel of Matthew and trembleat the beauty of what is being told us. What I believe we hear there iswhat Irenaeus summed up in two profound statements back in the second century,“God became man, so that man might become God” and “God’s glory, humanbeings fully alive.” In Christ, God walked among us, identified with us,became one with us, in order to raise us up and fan the divine spark within usinto white-hot flame. Our task is, then, to realize who we are. I agree with Ivor Bailey that that it’s not so much the mystery of theIncarnation, the enfleshment of God in Jesus Christ, that causes peopleproblems, it’s the humanity. Jesus looked so unlike a god that no onecould see that the Wholly Other was actually present.
Bailey tells a story about TrinityCollege, Cambridge that illustrates this beautifully. Trinity requires itsstudents to go off and do charity work in one of the poorest parts of London. About thirty years ago one of those students was doing some home repairs for abed-ridden elderly woman. At one point she said to the student, “Hasanyone ever told you that look a lot like Prince Charles? Since no one hadever, indeed, said that to him, the student quietly responded, “No.” “Well,” she said, “I am surprised. You are the spitting image ofhim. Even to my poor eyes you look like him.” To this day, sheprobably doesn’t know that her home was repaired by the heir to the throne ofEngland. As Bailey points out, “It wasn’t that royalty wasunrecognized; it was just that in that ordinary, down to earth situation in anold woman’s kitchen, it was inconceivable she would be visited by a king.” And there’s the point, the key to our faith. It is precisely in ourdown-to-earth, homely situations that God comes to us and becomes one with us. Remarkably, it’s often the poorest, most marginalized people who recognize whoJesus is. It was that way when he walked among us, and it’s that waystill today.
When we hear the question, “Lord, whendid we see you…?” we must immediately think, as J.D. Salinger’s ZooeyGlass did and answer as she did. “And don’t you know – listen to me now– don’t you know who that fat lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah,buddy. It’s Christ himself. Christ himself, buddy.” Whenwe realize that, when we’re absolutely giddy with the knowledge of who we are,of who the other person really is, and the potential that we have, individuallyand collectively, we fulfill what Shipherd said, “The church of the futuremust carry its message with joy by means of its entire membership.”
The church, as a living organism,reaches out into the world around it. There’s a reason that Paul woulduse the image of the body – “you are the body of Christ.” We liveand move within our environment. As Shipherd said, “The church of thefuture must learn to give a bright and happy demonstration of the high faith itteaches.” It’s simply not enough to think the thoughts or even toprofess to believe what we think, we must demonstrate our faith. Faithisn’t talked about, isn’t thought, it’s lived. That’s what Jesuswas trying to tell his hearers, “As you have done this to the least of these,you have done it to me.” Jesus “went about doing good,” can those ofus who own a covenant declaring ourselves “followers of Jesus Christ” do anyless?
Shepherding the future for this“gathered people” means looking at our strengths, and our weaknesses, as acommunity of faith. There is a great deal of potential in this church,much talent, many good hearts, but there are areas where we need to do someserious self-examination and then re-direct and grow. Shepherding thefuture will involve our working together, realizing who we are as the“Lord’s free people” and what responsibilities that realization placesupon us. Shipherd was right eighty-five years ago, “every Congregationalchurch must be a Priesthood of Believers.” Those of us who are ordained,and our numbers are dwindling, are here to teach, to encourage, to help, but notto dominate. The Shepherd is in our midst, we’re simply the sheepdogs. Look at the person next to you, and the person behind you, in front of you. All around this meeting house there is “the least one.” Right here,right now, Jesus Christ is present in his gathered people. It is not forus to ask the question, “Lord, when did we see you?” It’s to say,“Lord we saw you” and to have acted accordingly. Shepherding thefuture is simply becoming who we already are – the people of God.