Christ Our God

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

"And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’"

-- Matthew 25:40

Today is the end of the church year. In our worship we have followed the life and work of Christ Sunday by Sunday throughout the year and have arrived at this great climax when we stand before Christ the King. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left  (25:31-33).” Thus we are told that the whole process life leads to the final judgment and that eternal life or death is at stake every day. Life in this world is about the highest stakes possible and we can win or we can lose.

This could be a very unwelcome message for many, who in their anger might point out the catastrophic historical effects of religions separating people into sheep and goats and thus licensing themselves to enforce the final judgment before its time and treat the out group as goats to be slaughtered. I believe that this separation of sheep from goats is the essential characteristic of all religions and the reason why they are the source of so much bloodshed and bad feeling. I have no interest in exonerating or even defending religions today. Rather I wish to expound this passage from the Gospel of Matthew and let you draw your own conclusions about our religion in regard to the essential plague of religiosity, namely rivalry, cruelty, and mendacity.

The first thing to notice is that the King come to judgment is called “Son of Man.” That is a title Jesus uses of himself in the Gospels and it is an Aramaic idiom meaning in our idiom, “the human being,” “the son of Adam.” Whenever in the gospels they asked Jesus who he is to claim the authority he claims, he would answer, “I am the human being.”  Now the human being comes as the King of all to judge the world.

The second thing to notice is that the judge does not ask people what they believed, what sect they belonged to, what prophet they followed. Indeed, he does not ask anything at all but merely congratulates the sheep for good things they have done, things of which they seem to be only vaguely aware.

The third thing to notice is that the King identifies himself with the people in need whom the sheep had helped. “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters you did it to me.” It stands to reason, does it not, that the one who said he was the human being should be there in every human being. So the worship of Christ is not primarily the saying of good and right things about him but the living in a good and righteous way so that our lives are a blessing to Christ who is the universal essence of every human being, including, of course, myself.  

The corollaries of this teaching it seems to me are far reaching; here are some that occur to me now, in a somewhat random order.

The Christian faith is a radical humanity-centered view of things. The animal rights people are correct about us, we do think that there is an absolute, qualitative distinction between humans and other animals, and that, for instance, it is mildly obscene to lavish resources on the SPCA while children starve, or die for lack of healthcare. We are the only faith whose central conviction is that God became human and entered every crevice of human pain to heal and transform, and every moment of human joy to enhance and enrich, thereby bestowing on each one of us an absolute dignity and value. When our world begins again with the first Sunday of Advent next week it begins looking forward to that greatest event in human history, the absolutely unparalleled fact that God incarnated himself in Mary, in our flesh and blood irrevocably. That is the rock on which our faith is founded, the incarnation of God in my flesh.

The Christian faith does not care about the in-group/out-group distinction. History does not bear out that claim, but I insist that it is there in the Gospel. Jesus was murdered because he contravened the distinction, crossed back and forth over the borders the Jews had drawn around their group, ate with outcasts and disobeyed the religious law for the sake of compassion to human beings. Paul the Apostle did likewise, including all kinds of bizarre “Gentiles” – the Jewish term for those beyond the pale- in the true faith of God simply by confession of Christ, which confession could be lived out in many ways, as long as they were ways that are just, true and compassionate, and which Paul called freedom. Ethics not culture is what matters, and above all the commitment to Christ the King.

So have we made faith in Christ the mark of the in-group? At one level yes, and that because of our human infirmity. We cannot live universal lives, we can only live particularly and so there must be a particular focus for our love of all people, and he is the incarnate God. To love him is to love all, to love the truth. At another level therefore, the very content of that faith makes it unserviceable for the religious purposes of dividing the human world into sheep and goats. To be sure the King divides us that way, but not in this world – remember the parable of the wheat and the weeds growing together and Jesus’ commanding that they not be separated before the harvest. And emphatically it is not given to us to be the dividers; that is the sole prerogative of Christ our God.

Almost parenthetically let me also say that we should not take the list of good deeds from this passage and make it a law of life. Do not run off to visit a prison, for instance. This is Gospel not Law, a revelation in the indicative mood of what a Christian life might look like, rather than a set of instructions in the imperative mood demanding what a good life must be like. How many times have I felt guilty about my own pitiful attempts to do good when I have mistakenly read this passage as Law rather than Gospel! As Gospel it says, “Rejoice, you might already be doing great good to Christ’s little ones, and you just don’t know it.” The important thing is not to draw up a program of self - improvement but to present ourselves to Christ in prayer and worship and be willing to follow him. He will lead us and we might not even know when he is doing it. Put Christ not your own project first and all good things shall be added to your spiritual life, and you will be enabled to be a blessing to many and on that day you will say, “When did I do all this good?”

In conclusion let us turn our gaze upon Christ the King. He is the one, true, Lord of our lives, and of the whole world. He is Christ our King because He is Christ our God. Whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not, Jesus Christ lived, died and rose again for every human being who has ever lived or will ever live. Because of God’s work in Christ we are all potentially sheep, there are no inevitable goats, but we must accept that and act on it. How do we accept? Well it seems we can accept without even knowing his name. “When did we see you hungry and feed you, etc?” they ask. “When you fed one of my little one you fed me,” the King replies 

Those are the anonymous Christians, and they are blessed, but how much more blessed are we who know the name of this eternal King, who have been given the privilege of calling upon Jesus, and hearing him call us by name, of responding consciously and knowingly to his call of compassion, of being deliberate and intentional in our participation in what I have called God’s great project in this world, the project of peace and love for every human being.

There is a Yiddish term for a deeply good person; they call him or her a “Mensch.” Christ our God is the Son of Man, the great Mensch, whom today we worship as King of our lives, and King of the whole human and natural world. The season of giving and thanksgiving is upon us. What shall I say to you? Humble yourself beneath the majesty of Christ our God, and be a Mensch to the poor and oppressed.

“Truly I say to you as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me.”

Amen.