Pastor Detweiler’s sermon for Christ the King Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008:

“God loves Appleton, and he is calling us through Christ to be his ambassadors, to respond to the despised and outcasts - to be his presence now in Appleton and the world.”

Matthew 25:31-46

One of my mentors in ministry, John Cochran, tells new pastors “Your job is to convince them that Jesus is coming back, and that when he does, he’s going to come right here, to this place, this church.”

He meant that God loves this place - Appleton - and that what we do as an expression of our belief matters. It makes a difference that may not be obvious to us, but will be to others and to God. And, on the other hand, if we do not act on our beliefs, then they do not matter.

Our actions are to express our belief that Jesus will return and that we will be held accountable for our actions. The kingdom will not be separate from this world when it comes in its fullness with Christ’s return. Instead it will be a transformation of this world into the world as God intended it from the beginning.

There will be a division, an accounting for the focus of our lives. Even now, God’s kingdom stands in contrast to our world. Through us, its standards, shape and promise are brought to bear on this world, to prepare it for God’s coming kingdom.

I am not sure we take this seriously enough.

What we know now is not eternal - we and it will come to an end. We are to think about what difference that makes, or at least ask the question of what difference, if any, it makes that the future will be quite different from the present. That can take the form of a reflection on our own death and occasionally it takes the form of reflections on the end of nations and the end of the world. The end of one church year and the beginning of the next always turns our attention to the end of all things.

Jesus gets us thinking about the end in today’s gospel. For those who believe in God, it means accountability. What we do now makes a difference in this world and beyond it. Jesus tells a parable about separating the sheep from the goats to make that point: It is the process of dividing the nations - grouping people according to their response to Jesus’ concern for the needy and weak - that Jesus uses to describe our eternal accountability.

From watching people’s behavior, I would say that most of us do not believe today’s gospel that there is an eternal accounting for our lives. Even those of us who say we believe act much of the time as if we don’t. We are more likely to judge other people than to hold ourselves accountable for our own behavior.

A group of pastors was studying this text. One in particular began to expound on the apparent basis for the Lord’s judgment: works. “This is what really matters”, he said, “what we do.” He had a point - Jesus does say that is how we thank him - but as he spoke some shifted uncomfortably, others looked at the floor or exchanged knowing looks. His life was out of sync with his words: his wife had left him because of verbal and physical abuse; his children were refusing to see him because of his constant verbal abuse (abuse that was mostly in the form of what they should do and how their mother was wrong); and he was refusing to provide child support.

The biggest error of his life, as another member of the group pointed out later, was judging others instead of himself. We have to start with and focus on our actions, our beliefs, our relationship to God in Christ, not on other people and their actions.

Notice that this process of division is not about doing the right thing. It is about caring for the despised - responding to those who have no one to turn to. The blessed were not obeying rules of right and wrong, but they were filled with God’s righteousness - God’s grace - and responded instinctively. They were doing what they did, not to be righteous, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the Lord and those in need. They responded to the needs of the weak.

A few years ago there was a story about a man, Dr. William Perl, who helped 40,000 Jews escape Nazi Europe by chartering sailing vessels to Palestine, but whose story had gone untold for 50 years because he wasn’t interested in recognition. It only came to light when Jews he had helped escape nominated him for a prize 10 years ago.

Emigration to Palestine before and during WW II was illegal, so the boats had to evade the British blockade, but 62 times over 5 years Dr. Perl organized voyages that took Jews out of danger in Europe. He eventually escaped from Europe to the United States and enlisted in the Army, participating in the Normandy invasion on D-Day. After the war, he joined the war crimes department, later worked as a psychologist with GIs in Munich, and still later for the Washington, D.C. welfare department. His whole life was given to helping people in trouble - the despised outcasts.

He has been compared to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish Lutheran diplomat who was in Hungary at the beginning of WW II and helped 100,000 Jews escape Hungary by giving them exit visas to Sweden before he disappeared in Soviet custody. Of such comparisons, Dr. Perl said: “Wallenberg was a hero. I’m not. He wasn’t a Jew like me. He didn’t have to do it. I had to do it.” Of course, we know no one has to do anything.

Christ the King Sunday is about the promised coming of the Kingdom of God from the future into the present. It brings judgment and grace, fear and hope. Because it awaits us it has the power to shape the present, to change us - to transform us into the image God has in mind for us. We see a glimpse of it in Jesus, and we have a whole season of longing for the coming Kingdom of God (Advent) beginning next Sunday.

The kingdom will not be separate from this world when it comes in its fullness with Christ’s return. Instead it will be a transformation of this world into the world as God intended it from the beginning. There will be a division, an accounting for the focus of our lives. Even now, God’s Kingdom stands in contrast to our world and through us, its standards, shape, and promise are brought to bear on this world, to prepare it for God’s coming Kingdom.

Jesus is coming back, and when he does, he’s going to come right here, to this place, this church. God loves Appleton, and he is calling us through Christ to be his ambassadors, to respond to the despised and outcasts - to be his presence now in Appleton and the world.