November 24, 2002 Christ the King

The Rev. Dayle Casey

The Chapel of Our Saviour

Colorado Springs, Colorado

November 24, 2002

Proper 29-A (Christ the King)

                               Ezekiel 34:11-17

1 Corinthians 15:20-28

                                       Matthew 25:31-46

Nothing about this sermon originated with me, except the errors that may inevitably have crept in through my retelling of it.  It is a sermon preached by John Claypool on today’s Gospel reading, a sermon I was privileged to hear six years ago on the Feast of Christ the King at St. Luke’s Church in Birmingham, Alabama.  So the good news you hear today is Father Claypool’s, which I offer with my apologies to him for my not being able to preach it the way he did.

            Father Claypool sees Jesus’ parable of the separation of the sheep from the goats on the Day of Judgment as our final exam, given to us in advance.

            The good news in this is like the good news Claypool experienced with his Greek teacher at Baylor University.  Claypool says that he spent twenty-three of his first twenty-nine years in school, and that while most of his teachers were hard-working and dedicated, of all the teachers he knew during that time, only three or four were truly exceptional.  And that should be no surprise, he says, because excellent, of course, is defined by its rarity.  The truth is that there are very few exceptional anythings in life.

            One of Claypool’s exceptional teachers was Dr. Trenham, his Greek teacher at Baylor.  What made Dr. Trenham exceptional was that his long lifetime of studying ancient languages had led him to fall in love with them, and more than anything else he genuinely wanted his students to come to know and love the Greek language the way he knew and loved it.

            Two particular memories remain in Claypool’s mind and heart about Dr. Trenham’s teaching methods.  One is that whenever he gave a test, he asked each student to bring his translation up to his desk as soon as he had completed it, where he corrected it on the spot.  Claypool says that he vividly remembers not only the way his old professor would mark his errors with his red pencil, but also, and more important, he remembers the gentle and loving way in which he would show him in each place where he had gone wrong and how he might have arrived at a correct translation.

            The second unusual thing about Dr. Trenham’s teaching was that he always gave out the final exam for his courses in advance.  On the very first day of class, he handed out a long passage that was, Claypool recalls, both figuratively and literally Greek to him.  Dr. Trenham told the class that he wanted them to know the essence of what he expected ahead of time, that this passage is what he would want each student to be able to translate by the end of the year.  There would be no tricks; the point was not to catch students up on their errors, but to help them experience and love the Greek language.

            So Claypool says that since that time he has never been able to hear Jesus’ parable of the Last Judgment without thinking of his old Greek teacher, because, he believes, Jesus gives us this parable as the Teacher’s way of letting us know ahead of time what it is we should expect to be asked when the final curtain comes down and we stand before the King on Judgment Day, and for the same positive motivation.  God wants us to know ahead of time what the final judgment will be about, because it is the Father’s desire that none of his children should perish, but have eternal life.  So Jesus, the Teacher, shares our final exam with us this morning, not to frighten us, but to inspire us.  He wants us to know that what we do with our lives makes a difference to God.  And he wants us to know that the gift God has given us, this wonderful experience of life, is something we must actively participate in if we are to experience it in its fullness.

            Most of the people in Jesus’ day earned their living by raising animals or food, or they knew people who did.  They all knew, therefore, that while sheep and goats eat the same grass and can naturally be grazed together during the day, they are very different animals.  And they all knew that the two kinds of animals were separated and treated differently at the end of the day.  The goat, with its relatively short wool, was much more vulnerable to the cold at night than the sheep.  If a goat wasn’t brought into a cave or a barn on a cold night, it could get sick.  And everyone knew that the meat and wool of a sheep was much more important to people than the milk of a goat.  Everyone had seen this separating process at some point in their lives, and they would have known why sheep and goats were treated differently.  So they would have immediately understood the point Jesus was making  --  that when, at the end of time, the curtain comes down and we all stand before the One who has given us our lives, there is going to be a separating of those who have gotten the point of life and have fulfilled their destiny and those who have missed the point and have tragically failed.

            And Jesus says it is very, very clear what divides them; the hinge concept that divides those on the left from those on the right is obvious.  To those on the right the King will say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a stranger and you invited me in, naked and you clothed me, sick and you looked after me, in prison and you visited me.”  And to those on the left he will say, “Those very acts of kindness you did not do.”  And that is the difference.

            It would be very east to misread this parable, Claypool cautions.  It would be easy to conclude that the hinge issue that divides the sheep from the goats is good deeds, easy to conclude that what makes the difference to the King is the number of humanitarian acts one does in his life, easy to conclude that we earn our place in the kingdom by the number of good works we do and forfeit our access to heaven by not doing enough good deeds.

            And Claypool surmises that most of the people walking the streets today would perhaps say just that  --  that the whole thing rests on me, that if I am to have access to the kingdom of God, it all depends on whether I have done enough good deeds in my life.

            And yet that contradicts the basic thrust of biblical religion, which is that it is a religion of grace, not of achievement.  Jesus says on one occasion, “It is the Father’s will to give you the kingdom.”  Not as a reward for your efforts, but as an expression of his generosity.  And Paul reminds us that “we are saved by grace, through faith, not by works, lest anyone should boast.”

            So how can we see this parable of Jesus as congruent with the Gospel of grace?

            The clue, Claypool says, is in the responses of the two groups, because, in truth, it is the motivation for what they have done, not the things themselves which they have done, that makes all the difference to the King.  It is crucial to note that those on the right are totally unselfconscious.  In fact, they are astonished by the King’s judgment.  “When, Lord, did we see you hungry or thirsty and give you something to eat and drink?”  they ask.  “We don’t remember our seeing you in need and our being kind to you.”  This group of people had simply become so accustomed to offering kindness and compassion when kindness and compassion were needed that it had become of way of life with them.  They were just acting in character, in accordance with the kind of persons they had become.

            But those on the left were indignant.  “When did we see anyone of great stature or importance in need and not do what was necessary to get on the right side of him?  Why, if we had known it was you, O King, we would have jumped at the first opportunity to help you.”

            It is here that Claypool suggests that a distinction made by C. S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves might help us understand the difference between the two groups in Jesus’ parable.  Lewis says that there are two basic kinds of love in life.  There is what Lewis calls “need love,” and there is “gift love.”

            “Need love,” he says, is born of emptiness and is attracted to fullness.  “Need love” senses a lack in itself.  “Need love” sees an object and senses value in it, and it sends out its love to the object in order to get something back for itself.  If “need love” were diagramed, it would be a circle, because “need love” always gives in order to get something back.  In “need love,” the transfer of value is always back to the self.  It is always selfish, always a way of getting, not of giving.  “Need love,” says Claypool, is like those celestial vacuums the astronomers call black holes, which suck everything around them into themselves. 

            “Gift love,” on the other hand, is born of fullness, not of emptiness.  It is aware of a fullness in itself and seeks to share that fullness with another, not in order to receive anything back, but because it seeks to enhance the beloved.  “Gift love” is best represented by an arc, not a circle.  It desires to give and to share.  It is like an artesian well which bubbles up out of fullness, and spills over.  “Gift love” sees another and desires to enhance the beloved by transferring value to the beloved for the sake of the beloved.  “Gift love” is extended to others, not to meet any need in the giver, but just because of who the other is, and because the giver wants to share with the beloved something of the fullness within himself.

            The point of all this is that God’s love is “gift love.”  God’s reason for creating the world was not because of an emptiness in the divine, but because of a fullness that could not be contained.  God creates the world in love, not to get something for himself, but because he wants us to share in the wonder of living and loving which God himself already knows and enjoys.  And the central point of Holy Scripture is that we are made in the image of “gift love.”

            All of us, of course, are “need lovers” at first, because we are born that way.  As infants, we love the persons and objects around us because we need them, and we reach out to them because of what they can do for us.  And even as we grow older, we are often attracted to other people, not because of who they are, but because of what we perceive they can do for us, and the love we send out toward them is sent with the expectation that it will be returned, with interest.

            But the truth is that every one of us comes from that wonderful fount of being who is Gift Love.  And, as we grow up, older gift-love creatures, who have recognized who they are, lead us into our own recognition of our own true selves, a recognition that we are not children of emptiness, but children of abundance.  Throughout our lives, other people who have themselves learned the fullness of “gift love” in their lives and who love us for who we are  --  parents, grandparents, teachers, friends  --  spend their lives showing us how to grow into gift lovers ourselves, how to grow into the likeness of the God in whose image we were created, how to grow into the life of “gift love” for which we were made.  They teach us, in other worlds, to grow into that “gift love” which is a way of our cooperating with God, a way of our co-creating with God, by our allowing ourselves to be grown by grace into the kind of lover God created us to become.

            But it is not automatic; it requires our participation.  Just as Claypool’s old Greek teacher could not insure that John Claypool experience the fullness of the pleasure and power of that ancient language without John’s active participation, so not even an omnipotent God can grow us into gift lovers unless we realize who we really are and allow grace to grow us into the fullness of that love.

            And the point of Jesus’ parable today is that those who have been placed on the King’s right hand are those who have discovered in themselves the joy of gift love, those who have discovered who they really are and have allowed themselves to be grown up by grace into the creatures God intends them to be.  And in their unselfconscious astonishment, they ask, “When, O King of the Universe, did we see you in need and come to help you?  We don’t remember that.”  And the King says, “That’s just the point.  Those little ones you loved and cared for, they had nothing to give you back, but you gave to them instinctively because you have become the gift lovers you were made to be.”  Having grown into the character of God the Gift Lover himself, those on the King’s right hand were chips off the old block.  And this is the point of Jesus’ parable  --  that when the final curtain comes down and we stand before the King, this is the question he will ask, “Have you recognized who you really are, creatures made in the image of God out of the abundance of his love, and have you allowed grace to grow you into the fullness of it?”

            And to those on the King’s left, still enslaved to “need love,” still stuck in infancy, still trying to get something from the other, always on the make, always exploiting, always intent on what they can get for what they give, the same questions is asked.  And in indignation they protest, “When, O King, did we see you in need and not help you?  Why, if we had seen anyone of importance or power in need, we would have done anything to ingratiate ourselves with him.”  And the King says, “That’s just the point.  You were always on the make, always grasping, always extracting, and that is the opposite of the image in which you were made.”  And the eternal punishment in which they find themselves is simply the anguish that always follows a life focused upon self, a life of selfishness.  It is always uncertain, always anxious, always miserable, always fearful.  That’s just what happens when we choose to live contrary to the image of the God who created us.

            So Father Claypool closes with an ancient fable that has long been told by the Franciscans.  It seems that there once was a baby tiger who was orphaned at his birth.  The poor, helpless little creature might have died, except that he somehow wandered into the path of a herd of goats.

            And the goats, sensing the little creature’s vulnerability, invited it to join them.  And he did.  And the goats taught the little tiger to eat what goats eat and to bleat the way goats bleat.  And, by the laws of conditioning, the little tiger quickly learned to act like a goat.  For the truth is that, in childhood, we always take on the characteristics of those around us.

            Then one day, several months later, a King Tiger happened to come by.  And when he saw this little tiger acting like a goat, he said to the little creature, “What is the meaning of this behavior?  Why are you behaving like this?”  And, of course, the little fellow knew nothing else to do except to start nibbling some grass, and to bleat nervously like a goat.

            But the King Tiger quickly perceived what the problem was.  And he took the little tiger down to the river, and in the reflection of the water he showed him what he looked like.  “See,” the King Tiger said, “you are not like one of them; you are like one of us.  You are not meant to eat grass like a goat and to bleat like a goat.”  And with that, the King Tiger threw back his great head and roared as a tiger is supposed to roar.  And, for the first time, the little tiger was able, in the reflection of the King Tiger beside him, to see the grand creature he had it in himself to become.

            And the King Tiger gave the little tiger his first tiger food.  And he said to him, “Come into the jungle with me, and I will teach you how to become the creature you are meant to be.”

            And Claypool says that he understands that it was on this ancient fable that T. S. Eliot based his well-known image of Christ:  Christ the Tiger.

            So Jesus, Christ the Tiger, tells us the parable of the Last Judgment in order that we might realize, now, that we are all sons and daughters of Gift Love.  He wants us to know that we have it in us to be gift lovers after the pattern of the One who created us in his own image.  And Jesus is giving us our final exam ahead of time so that each of us might have the opportunity to look honestly at his own life, and ask himself, “Where, in the continuum of love, am I?  Are my eyes open to who I really am?  Have I allowed grace to grow me into the fullness of the lover God made me to be?  I was born in love, and as an infant I was a need lover out of necessity, but am I still stuck in that same old place, always obsessed with my own need?  As a chip off the old block, I have the capacity to grow into the gift lover our Father made me for.  Am I where I want to be now?”

            Jesus came into the world to embody the Gift Love of God and to open our eyes, to show us that we are, all of us, sons and daughters of Gift Love, born to grow into the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ, chips off the old block.

            And the final exam, which he shares with us ahead of time today, is Jesus’ way of saying, “This is what life is all about.”  And he does it so that you and I might have the opportunity to ask ourselves, “Are our eyes still shut to our true identity?  Are we still living as children, as infants?  Or are we allowing ourselves to be grown into the fullness of the gift lovers God created us to be?”

            Notice, in the parable, that the King says to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed of my Father, and inherit the kingdom.”  We do not inherit something because of what we do.  We inherit because of who we are, and who we’re kin to.  And the truth is that we are all children of abundance.  Out of nothing, you were made by Generosity, because of what Generosity wants you to be.  It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you his kingdom out of the abundance of his love, and you, and everyone of us here today, have the power to experience and share the fullness of that abundant life which the kingdom is.

            In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen