The abolitionist speaker and former slave, Frederick Douglass, looking back from freedom, recalled a friend who helped him in his first days out of captivity, Mr. Nathan Johnson, “of whom I can say with a grateful heart, ‘I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in” - literal application of today’s gospel.
I’ve been wondering. What did Jesus really look like? Did he look like a king? When we think of Christ the king do we think of him on his throne, the nations prostrate before him at the end of time? Or do we think of him hungry, homeless, naked, thirsty, sick, a prisoner, in need of our help?
Some years ago on a Saturday I was getting into my crummy old car in downtown San Francisco when a man came striding up and asked me the way to Taylor St. I pointed the way: straight up Nob Hill. And off he went at a steady pace. Then I thought to myself, where on Taylor Street was he headed? So I got into my car and drove up to where I could talk to him. Glide Memorial Church, he said, near Eddy St. Oh! The bottom of the hill. He would have had a long sweaty walk for nearly nothing.
So I gave him a ride. (I had to apologize for the condition of my car: it had been stolen, driven into the ground, and then recovered by the Oakland Police.) It turned out he and I were much alike except for one small thing. He had just done fifteen years for armed robbery, mostly in Leavenworth, most recently at Lompoc, and had just been released. They gave him fifty bucks and a suit. So he spent the fifty in a bar and promptly got rolled. He went back and they gave him bus fare and the address of a re-entry program: at Glide Memorial.
Here he was. Not so different from me except that one mistake, is how it felt at the time. Now you know and I know that armed robbery came at the end of a long string of bad choices. But does that make him so different from me - or you? In any case Jesus does not seem to care. He just says, I was in prison and you visited me; I was recently released and you gave me a ride. You could have done more, but I’ll take it. Both of you, come on in.
***
In the 1920s in the era of Mussolini and Hitler, of Weimar and upheaval, the roaring 20s, the pope became concerned that the government was taking on itself almost divine pretensions. And so he decreed a new festival: Christ the King, that we now celebrate on the last Sunday before Advent. It foreshadows the theme of that season, indeed, as we anticipate the arrival of our true emperor but in the form of a baby. Nativity of our Lord we anticipate; in the meantime we have this reminder and summary of where the story ends: in a scene beyond dreams.
In fact the season of Advent, which we anticipate on the Sunday next before Advent, heralds the once and future king: the arrival of the infant and again the One who comes on clouds of glory at the consummation of time.
This of course reminds us in salutary fashion of what it means to appear before the king: what have you been doing in my absence? We hear over the course of the church year numerous examples of a landlord who returns: the one, for example, who sets up tenants with a vineyard, winepress, and tower, and then sets off for a far country, only to return and summon his tenants to a reckoning; or the one who invests three servants with sums of money - talents - and then leaves for awhile, returning to ask how they have done with the wealth entrusted to them.
There is hell to pay, or heaven to be enjoyed, depending on the stewardship of the ones holding trust.
Of course this does not just mean talents, as in large sums of money, or in the English-language pun, gifts and capabilities of said servants. It means all we are invested with, all we are given, as creatures of God and caretakers of God's creation. Genesis 1: dominion, meaning oversight, meaning care, with the obvious expectation, Don't wreck it! Take care of it!
Have we done so? Shall we do so? We are invited into this kingdom of harmony not discord, of wealth or at least not want, of freedom of joy not fear, of worship not obeisance, of a freedom not dependent on men or women, but on the ultimate service, the one that no other allegiance stands beside, our perfect freedom as ones who serve him and him only - all other allegiances are subject, contingent, on this first loyalty.
That does not mean of course that we exercise that allegiance by following our personal feelings at the expense of the legitimate duties of a citizen, a husband or father, a mother, wife, or daughter; it does mean that we know that these roles and services are in loyalty to something greater than themselves. All those laws, commandments, and prophecies that Israel collected in ancient days were indeed part of their covenant relationship with the Holy.
How we treat each other is how that relationship plays out. It is not just prayer; not just alms giving or charitable contributions, not even a pledge drive response, but our whole selves that God calls us to put into right relationship: with God and therefore with others and our selves.
***
A friend of mine had a funny job: he called it "talking to murderers." To make it even funnier, that is what he did. He got in his car, said good-bye to his wife, drove over the hill, and went behind bars, into a maximum-security state prison. And there he would listen to someone say, when I get out of this place, I'm going to find the guy who put me here, and I'm going to kill him. And then, they would ask my friend, are you going to tell them I said that? And my friend would say, yes.
Because that was his job: he was evaluating their psychological fitness for parole. Over the years it got kind of wearing. Talking to murderers. Being alone with them locked up in a little room while they told you what they did, what they had done, what they were planning to do.
When Emma Lazarus wrote that poem "the new Colossus" that is on the base of the statue of Liberty, she left out a few things. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore" - but she didn't say, give me your murderers, give me your rapists, give me your armed robbers, give me even the worst of your self. But that is what Jesus got, when he said, I was in prison and you visited me. That is who he meant.
Before my friend told me about his job, I found out about someone else, a combat veteran who would, after Sunday mass, get in his car, said good-bye to his wife, and head to that same prison, where he would talk to murderers. He did it, I discovered, because of something in the gospel that was read today. I was in prison and you visited me. Jesus didn't say, I won't look very nice. You won't recognize me. I stink and I will scare you. You will be afraid of me. No, he did not say that.
We don't expect to see the face of Christ in someone reprehensible. But I don't think Jesus left anyone out. His kingdom takes all kinds. Even us. Even the wretched refuse of our lives.
And somehow in those wretched awful people and the wretched awful parts of our own lives, still he is king.
Still when we get to the end of time and stand before the throne of God, we will find ourselves looking at - ourselves... and the worst of us, the worst of human nature, redeemed in what can only be divine strength.
For he embraces us, as we are. He does not crown us or condone us. No when he is talking to murderers, rapists, and armed robbers, he does not say, never mind, forget it, it does not matter, you do not matter: he says I love you nevertheless.
And so I love your friend too, this one over here, who has seen more firearms than most felons ever have, the one who came to visit me, the old veteran of a forgotten army, who heard what I had to say in the gospel: I was in prison and you came to see me.
Not very nice people. But somehow redeemed. Only one king can do that, the one we celebrate today.
JRL+
Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King AProper29 Track Two (OT reading complementary to Gospel). https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp29_RCL.html. Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 , Psalm 95:1-7a , Ephesians 1:15-23 , Matthew 25:31-46 .
http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_quas-primas.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5TfrUAqh8w The Call, Scene Beyond Dreams (1984)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself. Boston: Published at the Anti-Slavery Office, 1845. Library of America, Slave Narratives, 2000, 360.
Libby Howe, Living by the Word, The Christian Century, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/november-22-roc-matthew-2531-46
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