Luminous Darkness

Eucharist for the Feast of Christ the King
Sermon Preached in the Chapel of the Venerable Bede, Durham University, UK
20 November 2005

Ezekiel 34.11-16, 20-24
Ephesians 1.15-23
Matthew 25.31-46

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.

Aly was a woman with a secret, but the streets are a good place to keep a secret, and that was where she was living. Her story comes from the Providence Journal, a newspaper in the United States, and I would like to tell you a little bit about her this morning. Aly arrived on a Sunday afternoon in January 2003 at Travelers Aid, a centre for the homeless when they have run out of work, money, and friends, and have nowhere else to go for a bed or a meal. She wore baggy tweed trousers, a green parka, a jumper, hiking boots, and a red fleece hat over her gray curls. She squinted through oversized glasses, and on her face was a smear of ruby lipstick, drawn on larger than her lips.

Even though she had prepared herself, Aly was finding that being homeless was pretty difficult. Although there were shelters and handouts, the system as it was did not make it easy for people to move beyond where they found themselves. Some of the people she met worked full times jobs but still could not afford to rent a place to live. Cheap food was often easy to find, but cheap food is not healthy food, and Aly craved fresh fruit and vegetables. If she arrived too late at the shelter and all the beds were taken, she had to huddle up with the other late-comers over the steam grates outside for warmth through the night.

Aly liked to talk to people and spent a lot of time reading her Bible. A few times she went to church on Sunday mornings, and sometimes there might be a kind person who would say hello or give her some food, but she was mostly ignored and one time she was asked to sit up in the balcony since people in the congregation had complained that she smelled. During the service, as she heard them pray for her, Aly wondered what the people below would think if they knew who she really was.

In our gospel reading for today, Jesus says: “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” I have to admit, when I hear this passage, I am pretty worried that Jesus is talking about me. I feel a lot like one of the fat sheep described in the reading from Ezekiel. Although I have certainly not tried to be selfish or use more than my fair share of our planet’s resources, I am certainly in a far better position than many people in the rest of the world. I have a safe place to live, food to eat every day, warm clothes to wear when it gets cold in the winter, and loving family and friends to support me if I need help.

And, if I am honest, I can not really say that I do much about all of those things that Jesus required. Oh, sure, I may give a beggar a few coins every once in a while, but I don’t really have time for all of those other things. I have six colleges to look after in my job, and trust me, the students up on the other hill keep me pretty busy! In truth, I feel a bit like those confused people whom Jesus curses. What about about grace, or justification, or forgiveness of sins, or much less simply having faith in Christ! I have a strong faith in Jesus as my personal saviour, but that seems to count for nothing in this passage. This is particularly worrying when I remember that this story is not really a parable or an allegory but seemingly a pretty clear description of what will happen at the Last Judgment.

Now many of you probably are far more involved than I am with these things; you may volunteer in the prison once a month or buy a copy of the Big Issue every week. But I know that even when I drop those coins into those hands what I am often thinking is: “How quickly can I get away from this person?” or “What if they try and talk to me?”

What if someone told you that it was possible to go and meet Jesus today? Would you rush out to see him, try to touch him, or talk to him, or to try and understand how it is possible that he loves you as much as he does? I certainly would. In our gospel, Jesus gives us a way to do this that seems inexplicably simple. He does not tell us to find him in church, but to meet him and to know him by meeting and knowing the representatives that he left behind on earth. People who are hungry and thirsty, or strangers, or naked, or sick, or in prison. If we look into these people’s faces, into their eyes, Jesus promises that we will see him looking back at us.

This is of course not a new idea in the Church, although the growth of liberation theology in the 20th century sparked a rebirth of energy about it. St. Ambrose of Milan relates a story about St. Lawrence, one of the most revered saints of the third century, that took place during the persecution of the Church by the Emperor Valerian. The emperor ordered in 258 that all Christian bishops, priests, and deacons should be executed, and that all other Christians found were to be severely punished. Valerian learned that Lawrence, as chief deacon of Rome, had been given the responsibility for the treasures of the Church. The emperor ordered Lawrence to bring those treasures to him and Lawrence agreed and asked for three days to collect them. Here we can pick up the story with Ambrose:

“Such gold the holy martyr Lawrence preserved for the Lord. For when the treasures of the Church were demanded from him, he promised that he would show them. On the following day he brought the poor together. When asked where the treasures were which he had promised, he pointed to the poor, saying: “These are the treasures of the Church.” And truly they were treasures, in whom Christ lives, in whom there is faith in him … what greater treasures has Christ than those in whom he says he himself lives? For thus it is written: “I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you took me in.” And again: “What you did to one of these, you did it to me.” What better treasures has Jesus than those in which he loves to be seen?”

Valerian was of course incensed at this act of Christian witness and had Lawrence executed immediately.

So how do we respond to this profound understanding of St. Lawrence that Jesus is to be found in those people he gathered before the emperor? And how do we fit this revelation in with something practical that we can do to help the poor and those who are in need whom we encounter in our daily lives? We could simply say that the problem is too big for us to handle, and that there is no way that we can make a difference. It can certainly feel that way if we read the newspapers or watch reports on television about the staggering amount of suffering in our world today. Or we can choose to take action, and perhaps make a difference in the life of one person. Or two people. Or ten people. It is true that as individuals we can not solve all of the problems in the world. But on this Sunday in particular, we are reminded that Christ is the King, not only of us as individuals, but of the whole Church. We heard in Ephesians that God “put all things under [Christ’s] feet and … made him the head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” We are the body of the Church of which Christ is the King.

In many early texts of the Near East, the role of the king towards his people was often equated with the role of a shepherd towards his sheep, just as we heard in Ezekiel: “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak … I will feed them with justice.” This shepherd, this Christ – he is our King, who is the head of the Church, which is his body, which is us. And through our work together as that body, we may accomplish more than we can possibly imagine. But it must start with us as individuals, being brave enough to taking the time to look into the eyes of someone who is hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and see the eyes of Jesus looking back at us. The 16th century mystic St. Teresa of Avila illuminates this idea beautifully in her famous prayer:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the world;
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless people now.

Some of you may have guessed Aly’s secret, or you might at least have an inkling of the truth about her. She was not really a homeless woman at all, but was actually the Right Reverend Geralyn Wolf, the Bishop of Rhode Island, a small diocese in the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. As part of a recent sabbatical, she spent one month living with the homeless in order to try and connect with these people of Jesus. Now you may say that she could never really understand their experience, but as she says: “I say that right up front in the book I’m writing, and I also said that to the group on the day that I was to leave them: that I could never pretend to be homeless, because I have a house with heat and electricity and a bedroom. So I’m not trying to duplicate their experience, but to enter into it the best way that I can. The other thing is that, at some level, we are all homeless, and I was tapping into my own homelessness. To touch those places is always to open the door to be fed and nurtured.”

So I charge us all to take up this call today. In preparing this sermon I have rediscovered my own wish to do this kind of work, because I have an intense need and desire to know Jesus better. Having encountered Jesus in prayer, I want to encounter him in flesh, incarnate, and he offers us all a way to do that today. If you are not already involved in Student Community Action, or in some other volunteer organization, I urge you to go down to the students’ union and take a look at the enormous range of opportunities there to get involved. None of us can do everything but we can all do something, and Christ our King will take up all the little somethings that we do and mould them into his body, the Church, until all in all, all of creation, is filled by that love.

“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Amen.