Of Kings and Monsters

Matthew 25, selected verses

November 29, 2017

This is the final Sunday of the liturgical year. Next week, with the first Sunday of Advent, we begin anew. The last Sunday of the year on the liturgical calendar is traditionally marked as Christ the King Sunday, and we celebrate the lordship of Jesus.

When Lisa let me know that the young people were going to be doing what amounts to a Biblical study of sea monsters and we started looking for a date when they could share some of that study with the rest of the community in worship I was initially hesitant to do so today.

The text we just read from Matthew 25 is, for me, the heart of the gospel. The parable of the nations is the passage the takes me to the depth and power of the incarnation. It confronts me with an inescapable truth: if I want to come face to face with God then I need to go to the places Jesus says I will find the divine.

And that not those places most of us so blithely name when asked, “where do you see God?” For most of the time we respond, “at the top of a mountain on a clear day,” or “when I stand at the edge of the ocean.” But, as beautiful and peaceful as such places may be, if the only God we know is the one we meet there, then we are more acquainted with the God of bourgeois poets and Bob Ross painting than we are with the One who said, “when I was naked you clothed me.” The parable of the nations merits being the heart of worship for the God who confronts us there is worthy of our praise, our awe, our lives. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed right to me to pair sea monsters with the peculiar kingship of Jesus.

After all, sea monsters in scripture represent much the same thing that wilderness does: chaos out beyond the rule of law where monsters, wild animals, and lawless men roam. In the gospel, though, the most interesting characters transgress the boundary. John the Baptist is out there at the edge. Jesus goes to the wilderness to pray. Surely, an apostle who travels as widely as Paul did also regularly crossed the border.

The monsters, like the wilderness, represent that which is beyond our control and beyond our understanding. Often, the monsters are simply the unknown.

In the parable of the nations that concludes Matthew 25, the only difference between those who enter the reward prepared for them since the foundation of the world and those who are cast into darkness is a willingness to confront the unknown, to minister to the monsters. The king who ushers them into paradise is not one who ascends to the throne by slaying the monsters, by conquering the unknown by the sword, but rather, the king is the one who so deeply identifies with those out beyond the borders of civilized society that he is ministered to by the ones who cross the borders to serve the monsters.

As I pondered the sea monsters that the kids were studying and creating, I also pondered the monsters we create.

My friend and colleague, Aric Clark, posted a reflection on the anniversary of the police killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. In it, Aric wrote:

“For me, Tamir Rice is the victim that made it clear just how deadly white fear is. Someone called 911 on a kid playing in a park. Someone was living in such a state of continual terror that they saw danger in that beautiful little boy. Someone set those armed officers on alert and by the time they arrived they were so strung out on fear they fired immediately. There was no monster but the fear born of racism. No danger at all in this scenario except for the terrified white people.This is what I want my white friends and family to understand most of all. Our fear makes us dangerous. Our fear makes us kill. We think of racism as hatred. We think of violence as being based on anger, and some of it is, but because we don't think of ourselves as angry or hateful we don't see the violence in our behavior. We just want to feel safe.So we deny refugees.We ban Muslims.We deport immigrants of color.We call 911 on little black and brown children playing in parks.We trust in badges and uniforms and weapons, but it's badges and uniforms and weapons that are doing the killing, on our behalf, because we're scared. Like most fears it's wildly misplaced. The statistics don't bear it out. Violent crime is way down. Immigrants are less likely to be criminals than citizens. Refugees are essentially never terrorists.”

Our fear turns us into monsters. That fear is grounded in racism, which is the ultimate monster in the story of America.

It’s not the only one, of course. Patriarchy is its monstrous cousin, or, perhaps, its twin. Consumerism is part of its monstrous family, and is particularly -- though not uniquely -- American. Militarism is the monster that gives these others their global reach and power.

I like to think that I’m not part of that. I like to think that racism, sexism, xenophobia, militarism, consumerism, and the rest exist out there in the wilderness. I like to think that those monsters don’t dwell in my heart, but are, instead, confined to hearts that beat out there in the monsters of the deep.

But I cannot write those words without thinking, also, of the words that cartoonist John Kelly first articulated in the McCarthy era: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The path beyond the monsters, it turns out, is a wilderness way. Only as we walk it will we come face to face with Jesus, out there already, loving the monsters -- including the monsters who are us -- and loving them into his strange and holy kingdom.

Enter, then, the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for when I was hungry you fed me; when I was an immigrant you welcomed me; when I was a young black man you came alongside me as my companion; when I was a woman you respected me completely; when I was a child you cared for me; and when I behaved monstrously you redeemed me with love.