The King Who Goes Looking

The church year ends with Christ the King. Next Sunday we light one candle and start waiting all over again. Before we get there, we have a question to sit with: what kind of king are we celebrating?

The feast itself is young. Pope Pius XI established it in 1925, insisting that Christ’s authority extended into public life as well as private faith. Europe was living with the wreckage of war and the rise of authoritarian movements. That history gives the feast an edge, even if Christians have not always agreed about what Christ’s rule should mean for governments.

For us, it is a reminder that no nation or political movement gets to claim Jesus as its own. Plenty of people still want him on their flag and their side. So it matters what kind of king the readings actually show us.

A shepherd with dirt on his hands

Ezekiel is preaching to people in exile. Their kings failed them. The shepherds of Israel fed themselves and let the flock scatter. So God takes the job personally: “I myself will search for my sheep” (34:11).

Then God gets specific. Seek the lost. Bring back the strays. Bind up the injured. Strengthen the weak. We can picture a shepherd on his knees in the mud, wrapping a broken leg.

But tending the flock also means confronting what is hurting it. God will judge “between the fat sheep and the lean sheep” (34:20). The fat ones shove with flank and shoulder. They butt the weak with their horns until the weak are driven off. The lectionary skips verses 17–19, where the strong sheep drink the clear water and then muddy the rest with their feet. Read them anyway. It is a painfully recognizable picture: taking what we need and spoiling what someone else needs to live.

The shepherd gathers the scattered and stops the shoving. His judgment is part of his care for the sheep who have been getting hurt.

The sheep of his hand

If you pray Morning Prayer, you know Psalm 95 as the Venite, an invitation to worship. It calls God a great King above all gods, then brings that vastness close: “We are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (95:7).

We belong to the One who tends us. When the psalm calls us to kneel before our Maker, it also reminds us that no earthly power can claim our ultimate allegiance.

His body in the world

Ephesians describes the risen Christ as “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (1:21). Then it names the church as his body. The One above every power has called an imperfect collection of people to make his love visible.

That includes our bilingual, multiracial, Sunday-morning congregation, still arguing about the thermostat. We have been given work to do together. Matthew helps us see where that work takes us.

The King we did not recognize

Matthew gives us the final scene: the Son of Man on his throne, all the nations gathered, sheep on the right and goats on the left.

We can hear this as a way to earn our place: feed enough people, make enough visits, and perhaps we will pass. But both groups are surprised. They know whether they fed someone who was hungry or cared for someone who was sick. What they did not know was that they were encountering him.

“Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry?” the righteous ask (25:37). The King tells them that what they did for “the least of these who are members of my family,” they did for him (25:40). Their surprise suggests a compassion that was not keeping score. Someone needed food, and they handed over a plate.

That sends us looking again at the stranger at the border, the man in the county jail nobody visits, the teenager whose family put her out when she came out. I have sat at a lot of bedsides in my life. I can tell you the sick are not waiting for us to bring Christ into the room. He got there first.

Knowing the right words about Jesus does not excuse us from feeding someone who is hungry. Matthew will not let us separate our devotion to Christ from the way we treat people who need our help. And the judgment in this passage is severe. The suffering we walk past matters to him.

Following him this week

The King who goes looking for scattered sheep calls us to join him. That can begin with a plate, a coat, a visit, or a seat at the table for someone who expected to be turned away.

At Sts. Mary Magdalene & St. Martin, we try to be a place where the scattered get gathered. Some Sundays we manage it. Some Sundays we are the ones with sharp elbows. The Shepherd comes looking for us, too, and calls us to stop pushing.

Next Sunday is Advent. Our self-study, Who Will Not Be Left Out?, begins November 29, in English and Spanish. We will keep asking what it means that God comes among us, and whom we are learning to see. Contact us for a booklet in either language. The Shepherd is already looking for you.