Christ the King 2023: Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24, Ephesians 1:15-23 and Matthew 25:31-46
Homeless Jesus: image from BBC
When was it that we saw you? Hungry? Sick? A stranger?
Timothy Schmalz is a Canadian sculptor, whose work is shaped by his Catholic faith, describes one of his pieces as a “visual translation" of Matthew 25, the gospel we heard today. It’s called Homeless Jesus.
Jesus is depicted curled up, huddling under a blanket. His hands and face hidden from view. Only his feet are visible. Marked by the wounds of the nails.
Over the decade since the original was installed at the University of Toronto, Homeless Jesus can be found across the world from Milan to Singapore, New York to Dublin, Rome to Melbourne.
Schmalz once said that he would be happy if his work was “used by people as a tool to think”. It has certainly provoked strong responses and reactions as well as thoughts.
Some called it offensive, demeaning and insulting.
Pope Francis blessed it.
Passers by have called the emergency services on a cold night.
Others have sat next to it, and prayed.
Westminster City Council rejected it.
Why?
Because it was felt it would neither maintain nor improve the character or appearance of Parliament Square.
Homeless Jesus finally found a place to lay his head in our city in the church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street.
He finds his rest alongside volunteers distributing food, clothes and other items to those in need; alongside those who staff or use the night shelter in winter months.
Schmalz said: “The same streets that were closed to him are open to statues of politicians, abstract art and visual puns continually planted in the urban setting of your city, but this work that challenges us to see the holy in the least in our community was not allowed outside. You brought him inside. You welcomed him, giving him a beautiful permanent spot in the centre of the city. May this sculpture become a symbol of how we all should let the stranger and the least in our community inside our hearts.”
How many of us have responded to the needs of a stranger - offering food or company, support, prayer or a kind word?
Are we then sheep?
How many of us have failed to respond to the needs of another - not having the time, feeling uncomfortable, being preoccupied, not noticing?
Are we then goats?
The truth is, we’re both.
As the title of one book puts it: we’re ‘Good Goats’.
That isn’t to duck the challenge of today’s gospel, but to navigate judgement and salvation: to see ourselves and the world as it is - and to trust in a loving, merciful and healing God.
Having taught his disciples about watching, preparing, waiting, being faithful to his commands, he turns their hearts and minds to the last things.
Then, at a moment of universal judgment, the Son of Man will ask the peoples of the whole earth will be asked: did you show compassion?
Did they seek justice by showing acts of mercy to those in need? Do we?
Responding to the least of these is to find him there already: amongst the fearful, the vulnerable, the lonely, and the dispossessed; amongst those hungering for food and yearning for equity, for what is just; amongst those who’re imprisoned, those who wait for them, who seek restoration; those needing to be clothed, and those making clothing for a pittance.
He’s there already on those margins between being ok, and not; getting by, and not; being well, and not. He’s there in the place of seeing a common humanity; and the choices and circumstances which separate us, or bind us together.
To stand in this place as ‘good goats’ isn’t about being judgmental; it is about facing judgment which moves us towards redemption. The relationship between these too are not simply individual, but social.
The theological Miroslav Volf - himself a prisoner of war who lived under the threat of interrogation said: “the final justification will have to be accompanied by the final social reconciliation.”
It is God who judges and God who redeems, makes whole. All things will be renewed in Christ. Now we see too much that causes pain and tears; too much that is broken and scattered.
The one who rules over us in the unity of the Spirit that we might know the bond of peace is the one who fulfils the words of Ezekiel: a shepherd searching out the scattered sheep, rescuing the lost; one who is gathering up those who have strayed; binding up the injured and strengthening the weak.
They will be fed by justice; and so will those who’ve pushed, exploited, and scattered. But that is where God chooses to meet us. In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God has already revealed judgement and mercy, grace and hope.
To bend our knee to Jesus is to worship one who is our servant king: who gave his life that we might live; who chose to bear our heavy loads; whose hands and feet carry the scars that speak of sacrifice; the one whose risen life changes and renews us in love.
The biblical scholar Rosemary Radford Ruether wrote that ‘the gospels are written from the perspective of converted betrayers, disciples who knew that they had been unable to hear the radical character of his message of abnegation of power in his own life time, and only in the light of the resurrection were able to re-evaluate this mistake’.
As we gather to celebrate this Eucharist, this feast of Christ the King, we do so not ignorer to use his memory ‘as a means of power and domination’ as Radford Ruether puts it. Instead to follow the one that was poor, outcast and crucified, is to learn how to serve.
We enthrone our risen Lord in our lives. He is the one who beings life and love out of death - who brings mercy and grace out of judgement. He teaches us to prefer each other’s needs, to serve him in them.
Each Eucharist is in a sense a “visual translation” of today’s gospel: reminding us of Christ’s sacrifice of love; the wounds his risen body bears. A wafer of bread and wine outpoured, his body given for our bodies.
As we welcome him - in this building, onto our hands and into our hearts - may it be in Schmalz’s words a “symbol of how we all should let the stranger and the least in our community inside our hearts.”
As Paul gives thanks for the Ephesians it is because of their faith in the Lord but also their love towards others. He prays that they might be given a Spirit of wisdom and revelation - and I pray that for us too. That the eyes of our heart might be enlighten - given a glimpse of our heavenly hope but also strengthened for our earthly service.
When was it that we saw you? Hungry? Sick? A stranger?
Jesus is the name above all others: ascended about all things, head of his body, the church. May we see him and love him at this altar, in each other, and in the world.
May the Spirit animate this body - ours and his - with fullness of him who fills all in all; may we follow in his service for the sake of a kingdom that has now end.
© Julie Gittoes 2023
