A sermon at First
Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN on November 26, 2017 - the New Year's eve.
This is Christ the King
Sunday, the 33rd Sunday after Easter, or of “ordinary time.” It marks the end of the church year. However, the question occurs to me, “Why do we
celebrate the Kingdom of Jesus on only one Sunday of the church year?”…I guess
it is the same question we raise about Christmas. “Why do we wait until Dec. 25
to celebrate the birth and life of Jesus?” Shouldn’t celebrate the birth and
life of Jesus every day of the year? Shouldn’t we celebrate the Lordship of
Jesus and the great gift of eternal life that he gives us likewise?
So, when I started
thinking about these two holidays, I recalled the comments of a pastor who I
respect. He observed (in so many words) that the power of the Old Testament
does not rest on the kind of fire and brimstone that a lot of preachers like to
dwell on - all the threats of judgment and punishment for failing to live
according to the Law we read here in Ezekiel; but rather, the power of the Old
Testament rests on where and how it points to Jesus and the gospel.
This passage in Ezekiel
is a good example. On its face, Ezekiel speaks of the promise of the day of the
Lord when we will all be brought together with the Lord, our God with his
prince, David; but he places on equal footing the judgment and punishment of
the Hebrews who failing to live according to the Law.
Ezekiel wrote during the
Babylonian captivity. The Babylonian captivity was a time when few Jews continued
to hold onto faith in the Lordship of God and believed that good future awaited
them after captivity which Ezekiel described. Ezekiel said, “For thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for
my sheep, and will seek them out... As shepherds seek out their flocks when
they are among their scattered sheep...I will rescue them from all the places
to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness,…from
the peoples and gather them from the countries, and bring them into their own
land. I will feed them on the mountains, by the rivers, and in all the
inhabited parts of the land…I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the
strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but
the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice...my
servant Davis shall be prince among them.” Doesn’t that sound Ezekiel is
talking about Jesus and good news…seek the lost, the injured, the weak?
Ezekiel has
so many important messages but let us concentrate on the most important thing
in this passage. You read how similar Ezekiel sounds to the Mathew passage is
how it similar it is to the
passage from Matthew. Ezekiel helps us to understand it.
Ezekiel
describes a loving, loyal, ever vigilant, and compassionate God who is like a
shepherd is to his sheep. I hope you recall Debbie’s sermon on Psalm 23 in which she described all the implications of
the shepherd imagery. You know its beginning, “The Lord is my shepherd…”
God speaks powerful
words through Ezekiel, “I will search for and gather the lost sheep…,I will
rescue them…(and) feed them with good pasture by good water they may drink and
bind up the injured.” He is describing the ideal shepherd, the person who goes
to the very extreme to ensure the safety and wellbeing of his charge.
It is a
promise of coming home. That promise of God of coming home goes far beyond a
simple promise to the Judeans. It runs right up to the present. It is a promise
to all by the compassionate God who created them. Ezekiel tells us they will
return to the promised land. The good news is those words say to everyone,
“There is a home.”…No matter what happens, there is a home.
It is a
wonderful blessing. But Ezekiel offers threatening words for those who are glad
to enjoy this blessing as the grasshopper enjoys summer flowers. Ezekiel
describes them as “the fat and the strong.” They are the ones who stand in the
clean stream with dirty feet.
The fat and
the strong want to coast, to freeload, to be greedy, or to ignore how their
behavior negatively impacts others that they meet. They are self-focused
totally, and nothing else.
Remember, there
was no indoor plumbing and water purification companies in biblical Palestine.
Water was precious and safe to drink only when it was clean and pure. To walk
up and into a stream with your dirty feet that your friends are kneeling to
drink was a grave insult to the others. It symbolized the most egotistical attitude
of not seeing others as persons to be treated with equality, or even see them
at all.
Have you
ever observed on the farm how cows stand in the old pond and do their business?
That pond is filthy, no one steps in it. That is the image Ezekiel conjures up
for me with standing in the stream with dirty feet.
These are harsh
words for these fat and strong people. He accuses them with his questions, “Is it not enough for you
to feed on the good pasture... must tread down with your feet the rest of your
pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your
feet?
Must my
sheep eat and drink what you have fouled with your feet?”
Purifying
water is a powerful biblical image. Do
you remember Jesus and the woman at the well (John 4:1-15)? She asked Jesus
where she could get some of that “living water” so she would never be thirsty
again?”
I ask again, doesn’t Ezekiel
sound a lot like the verses from Matthew that I read? Some translations call it
“the judgment of the nations” passage.” Jesus speaks of the very same attitude
as Ezekiel addressing the fat and the strong. Those who disregard others, whose
disdain blinds them to the fact the weak and lean too are God’s children. It
blinds them to the compassion that Jesus had for the sick and disabled, for the
weak and oppressed, for the prisoner. It blinds them to the very reality of the
life of Jesus that he lived to nurture the faith of others, and expects us to
live that way also. They spoil the
living water?
Perhaps Jesus does invoke
Ezekiel’s judgment of the fat and the strong here, but I think really Jesus is transforming
Ezekiel’s judgment into an an invitation to look at our self, to examine our
actions and see if our faith is truly in the Lordship of Jesus, or to set it
right if it is focused on the Lordship of the world.
Let’s return to my first question, “Why
do we celebrate the Lordship of Jesus on only one Sunday of the church year?”
Think about the answer this way. Next
Sunday we begin the new church year with a four-week advent vigil. We usually
think of the advent vigil as the period of waiting for Christmas to get here.
But perhaps Christmas is only the crowning point. This month-long celebration is
the the inauguration of the other period of waiting? The wait for
the return of Jesus that Matthew describes. If we look at it that way, then
this Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, is the capstone of the whole message and
promise of Jesus that we hear at every Lord’s Supper: “Every time you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the victory over death of the risen
Lord, until he comes again. It is what we call a rehearsal of the good
news and the teaching of Jesus of how to live a life according to the good
news.
Let’s not hear Ezekiel and the
“Judgement of the Nations” in Matthew as a condemnation of evil people, of the
fat and strong, but rather as a reminder, a cautionary tale.
Each scripture passage we read and hear
preached throughout the whole church year from advent to Christ the King Sunday
is about the promise of His return to bring us home at last. Every Sunday
scripture is a lesson on living as Christ’s representative, keeping that
promise clearly in front of us in our minds so that we are ready for home. They
are not passages of judgment.
If your faith is in the
Lordship of Jesus or not, people and God will know truly where you stand – with
them, or with dirty feet in the water they drink.
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