Nov. 26, 2023

My friends, I speak to you in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I wonder if anyone has ever read a book called The Quiltmaker’s Gift?  It’s a children’s story that – like every good children’s story – appeals to grown-ups, too.  The Quiltmaker’s Gift tells the story of a king who, despairing because his life is empty, uses his power as king to demand more and more presents from his subjects.  And his emptiness spills over into greed and selfishness and rage, until he meets a generous quiltmaker who agrees to make him a quilt, but only if he gives away his possessions.  And as he does so – he finds that he has a change of heart – and a change in his assumptions of what it means to be a king.

We’ll come back to this story later on.  But for now, I want us to be thinking about what our assumptions are about who King Jesus is, and what God’s expectations for us might be.

In Jesus’ day, kings were extremely powerful – so powerful that they didn’t just rule.  They were also judges – determining right from wrong.  Lawful from criminal.  They determined what the law ought to be based on their expectations of their subjects.  And so when you appeared before the king to be judged on what you’d done, more often than not the real question was: did you fulfill the king’s expectations?

Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t have anything positive to say about human kings.  Earlier in his ministry, Jesus declares that the “kings of the earth take toll and tribute” rather than administer justice, and that “the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them”.  Herod and Pilate are presented as object lessons – men of great power who, at their cores, are corrupt and cowardly.  They are kings who rely on violence, fear, and coercion to rule.  And their expectations – which can be boiled down to the idea that we human life has little value – reflect the reality of their world.

In contrast, Matthew gives us King Jesus.  This is a different sort of king altogether.  Now, God’s faithful people were expecting God to send them a king.  A messiah to rule and save them.  Matthew’s Gospel draws on imagery from the prophet Daniel to tell of a wonderful royal figure on whom God will bestow dominion and glory.  A king who will rule justly and well as the Kingdom of God appears in all its fullness.

But this just king – this good king – well, he comes with a different set of expectations altogether.  Matthew tells us that the king God sends comes with the expectations we read about in Deuteronomy, and Leviticus, and Ezekiel, about how we’re supposed to treat the poor and the widowed; the orphaned and the stranger. This king is a wounded king who sides with the wounded – and not the powerful.  In the Kingdom of God, human life is precious.

And I want us to notice what expectations the king in this parable isn’t judging us on.  This is where we’re going to be a little controversial this morning.  Because if this parable has any relation to the truth, we’re not judged on whether we show up for church.  Or whether we’re all prayed up.  Or even whether we’re living a holy life.  Don’t get me wrong – these are fundamentally important things.  But Jesus’ challenge to us here is whether all that work is pointing us in the right direction – to offer caring, loving dignity to others.  Because that is this king’s expectation.

We can get so wrapped up in the sheep and the goats – the righteous and the wicked – that we don’t notice that there are actually three groups of people in this parable.  The sheep.  The goats.  And the marginalized.  And – in case this escaped your notice – the king offers no judgment for those on the outside looking in.  In fact, they turn out to be brothers and sisters of the king.  In the upside-down world of God’s kingdom, they’re royalty.

In this parable, King Jesus doesn’t just give us radically different expectations about how we’re to act in the world.  He defies our assumptions of kingship entirely.  Kingship isn’t about hoarding power in some remote, distant part of the universe.  We come face to face with King Jesus every day, as we encounter his brothers and sisters.  King Jesus is here, in the messiness of human life.  King Jesus is here, in the neighbor who needs us.  King Jesus is here – wounded just like the rest of us – wearing rags instead of a crown.

In The Quiltmaker’s Gift, the king learns that his power doesn’t come through his ability to coerce.  It’s rooted in his ability to share – to share what he has with others, but more importantly, to share in their lives.  What today’s parable teaches us is that God is calling the 21st century church into ministries that are about sharing true, deep, authentic human life.  Our power as disciples of Jesus is rooted in sharing our selves with and for each other – just as God, in King Jesus, has shared God’s own self with us in the incarnation. 

So when we’re tempted to reduce the gospel to our own personal prayer, or worship, or holy living, we need to remember this parable.  We need to remember King Jesus’ expectation that we’ll see God’s face in the faces of the vulnerable, and the weak, and the children.  We need to remember King Jesus’ expectation that our lives of faith will compel us to share in the lives of the king’s brothers and sisters as we give overflowing love away.  We need to remember to follow the wounded king’s example and claim the royal rags of the marginalized instead of Herod and Pilate’s corrupt and cowardly crown of gold.  Amen.