November 23, 2008

       If you only caught the last verse of the gospel reading, you would think it was evidence for one of the age-old arguments against Christianity. There have been a lot of people outside of Christian faith, and even some inside it, who think it’s all about reward and punishment. “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” That picture of religion turns it into just one more version of self-interest, where what we’re out to get isn’t money or happiness in this world, but the far more valuable guarantee of treasure in heaven. Kind of like the joke that went around my theological college about a new slogan for recruiting clergy: “The pay may be poor, but the pension plan is everlasting!”

But even in this story that Jesus tells about the last judgement, there’s far more to it than a message that says, basically, be good because it pays off in the end. The most obvious element that undermines that message is - that the people who get rewarded in the story are unaware that they’ve done anything to deserve it. “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food?” They did a good thing in feeding and clothing and visiting the people around them who needed help, but the one motive they didn’t have was that they wanted to get God on their good side.

There are lots of other reasons they might have done what they did. Maybe they just knew it was the right thing to do. Maybe they felt uncomfortable seeing other people suffer. Maybe they even felt a little guilty about having more when others had less. Maybe it was the way they were brought up, maybe they just happened to be in the right place at the right time, maybe they didn’t know what else to do. You’ve probably done good deeds at different times for all of those reasons, and a bunch of others. None of that matters. All that matters is that you do something that matters to someone else, because apparently that’s what matters to God.

That kind of turns on its head the old stereotype of Christian religion as a way to get into heaven or avoid hell. And for two different reasons.

First, none of the emphasis here is on harps and crowns of gold or demons with pointy spears. The emphasis is all on what happens in the world as we know it. And that’s part of the reason why we read this reading on a day when we celebrate the kingdom of Christ. I was going to say “when we look forward” to the kingdom of Christ, but that’s not exactly true. Obviously the kingdom is not here and now - look around you: fear and war and hunger and sickness and loneliness are still with us. But equally obviously, the kingdom is here and now. People are visiting the prisoners and giving the thirsty something to drink and providing clothes for those who need them. And that’s where we’re supposed to look when we want to know what the reign of Christ looks like.

This is the flip side of saying that good deeds aren’t about getting ourselves into God’s good books. You might say that doing good isn’t for our sake at all, but for God’s: when we try to change the world, even if it’s only for one person at a time, we are making an essential contribution to God’s plan for creation. No doubt God could just wave a magic wand and make the world a perfect place, but the story so far suggests that God works in more amazing ways than that: God is perfectly prepared to hold back until we see what needs to be done, and then do it. Not so that we can get a gold star, but so that the world can become what God - and we - want it to be.

But there’s a whole other side to this, quite apart from the way we work together with God (or not). The key to that whole scenario with the sheep and the goats was that both the people who did the right thing, and the people who missed the opportunity, didn’t even know that God was in the picture at the time. The question for them wasn’t, how can I work with God, but: How can I work with this person right in front of me? And yet that also turns out to be exactly what builds the kingdom of God.

As Jesus said on another occasion, the kingdom of God is “among you”. It’s not a piece of territory somewhere in earth or heaven; it’s not a time after human history is done; it’s not anything you can point to “out there”. Instead it’s something we have to look within ourselves to see - not within myself or yourself, because it’s not an individual thing, but within ourselves as we work with each other and the people around us. The kingdom of God is a completely new kind of organization - one built out of human beings relating to each other in a new way, allowing God to work in us and allowing ourselves to encounter God in the people we meet.

I think there’s a lot there that we can use as we enter into this time of year preparing for Christmas. It may help to keep us focused on what really matters if we think about building the kingdom of Christ. But it may also help us to see that what really matters might surprise us. By the standards Jesus was talking about, the measure of how much we put “Christ back into Christmas” won’t be any outwardly religious standard. It will be all about how much we connect with other people and touch their lives in meaningful ways.

So sending cards will be most about the reign of Christ when we can find a way to break through the cover of convention and jollity and say the words the other person really needs to hear. Buying presents really will be about how to communicate to someone else that they are loved. Christmas parties will be an opportunity to share joy. And the end-of-year giving to charities and other needs will be just as important if not more so - though not as a way of making up for all that we lavish on ourselves, and assuaging our guilt; but as a way of directing our attention to the people we don’t know personally, who still need food on the table, safe shelter over their heads, and someone to turn to when they are alone.

These are the ways that Christ is coming to reign right now, in the new relationships that are forged between people who help each other discover what genuine self-giving love actually means. And while they may not change the whole world into God’s kingdom, they will certainly change our worlds. For the rest, all we can do is learn to trust God, and to know that as we feel God’s power changing and re-shaping lives, that same power will, in the end, make the world the place it was always intended to be.

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