When I needed a neighbour...

From Helen
As you probably know by now I like to do things in aslightly unusual way sometimes. With this in mind I would like to wish you Happy New Years Eve! This seems a bit odd, but actually today is the last Sunday before Advent. This means that next Sunday will mark the beginning of the Churches year. So, as next Sunday is the church equivalent of New Years Day then today is a bit like New Years Eve for the Church.

Well, perhaps unlike a normal New Years Eve celebration whilst we will have wine and some food we will not be singing Auld Lands Syne or partying until midnight, although saying that I am usually in bed before midnight on New Years Eve, anyway you get the drift.

Today does have a special name which is Christ the King. Today we remember Jesus the King. The word, Christ means anointed one. Today we think of Jesus, the anointed one. On this day we remember that God the King became as nothing for us.

  

On this day then, we think of our King, the ultimate King - Christ Himself, who turned all conventions of kingship upside down by being born in poverty, by being crucified and then by rising from the dead. Forget who's the king of the castle think of the King enthroned in splendour who will judge us all. Certainly this is what the gospel reading (Matt 25:31-46) this morning encourages us to do. 

The problem is that we are so used to the God who loves us that judgement doesn't sit comfortably. The thing is though that we have been prepared for judgement and the end of times in our gospel and epistle readings over the last few weeks. We have been looking at 1 Thessalonians which warns of the imminent arrival of Jesus and the need to be ready ! In our gospel readings we have been working through Matthew 25 which is known as the judgment chapter of Matthew. We have been encouraged to get ourselves ready to greet Jesus, not to be like the foolish bridesmaids who ran out of oil and not to be like the tenant who hid his talent in the hope that doing this would please his master. Then in our gospel reading today we heard of the call to reach out to all those in need because in so doing we are welcoming Christ Himself.

Judgement is one of those words that we don’t like to think about. In the news this week we have seen the resignation of Robert Mugabe as President of Zimbabwe. We saw the rejoicing of the people as they were set free from what they had seen and experienced as tyranny. Then we heard of the life long imprisonment of former Bosnian Serb general Radko Mladic. Both of these man have been seen as being behind a way of life that encouraged others to have less freedom. They are both men who we would feel comfortable in seeing as worthy of judgment.

This makes the idea of judgement that we heard in the gospel reading for this morning even more difficult. We wouldn’t want to see ourselves as needing judgement or as in being turned away in heaven. To follow Christ the King means to be like Him. It means to recognize him in the lives of others around us, it means accepting that we have responsibility to help all those in need. Not just to accept them but to love as Christ the King loves, which is unconditionally. We don’t love a little just because we should, we love completely. 

This may seem like quite a big ask, it’s not always easy to welcome those who make us feel a little uncomfortable. We don’t always really want to help those who we think may have got themselves into a mess of all their own making. The point is that we aren’t to judge, only God can judge and all we can do is reach out with love to accept people, to want to help 

This is because in this reading we hear of what it means to follow Christ the King by recognising Him in the lives of all those who are in need.

I remember as a child the songs we sang in school. There was one I never really liked which was,‘When I needed a neighbour were you there ?’ The reason I didn’t like the song was that I always got a little scared that God was going to judge me and also that I needed in life to make sure that I had ticked off my list helping the poor, the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the prisoner...... The bit I missed was that the gospel reading is about those things yes, but it is also about the kind of behaviour our King expects of us. 

Jesus our King expects us to follow Him to do things as He would do them. This means doing everything that Jesus would do, this means reaching out to those in need, the poor, the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the prisoner. It isn't a checklist it is a way of life. As we imitate Jesus we become more like Him.

There is a story about the President of the United States Calvin Coolidge who invited some people from his home town for a meal at the White House. Understandably these people were keen to get everything right and so they copied everything that the president did. When coffee came the president tipped some coffee into his saucer, they all did this, then he added some milk and sugar they did this as well and then they watched as he took his saucer and put it on the floor for his cat !

Imitating someone else with no idea of what we are doing can be very dangerous and make us look very stupid

To imitate someone means to become like them, it changes our whole way of being. The more like someone we act the more like them we become and so as we follow and imitate Jesus, Christ the King the more we become like Him and both enjoy life in knowing Him and also in helping others.

This is what it means to be part of the kingdom of Christ the King who gave His everything for us. We are called to give our everything for Him. When someone is in need we reach out with love, when someone asks us to help we help them. At the judgement we want to be welcomed in as followers of Christ the King knowing that His kingdom is the best and it is for ever. 

We worship the king who is both meekness and majesty, we worship a King who loves everyone and whose only command is that we will love one another as He has loved us. AMEN