Christ the King Sermon, Last Sunday of Pentecost

Last Sunday of Pentecost

Proper 29 - Christ the King

Transcribed from a sermon given on

November 25, 2012

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Today is the last Sunday of Pentecost. We begin the church year again next Sunday on the first Sunday of Advent. The last Sunday of Pentecost is also called Christ the King Sunday, where we celebrate the reign of Christ. 

As I was thinking about this and trying to wrap my mind around what it means for Christ to be king, I realized that king is not a word that we really identify with. Our image of kings, like the king or queen of England, is of people who don’t have very much power. It is not like kings in ancient times. But I had a thought and came up with a story. One of the people at the first service called it a parable. 

I’d like you imagine a high school that has just gotten out of hand. What has happened is that the normal cliques and groups in a high school have coalesced into what they call teams, and each team has a captain. This captain rules it over every one of his team members. He tells them what to do and collects money from them. There are drugs being sold, there’s violence and there are fights between the members of the different teams. Those who are not part of a team get harassed. It has become a very ugly place. 

Some of the police in the area were discussing this and the young captain from another town said, “My heart is really breaking for these kids because I know there have got to be kids in there who are good kids and want to have a different kind of experience in High School.” This young captain was one of those people who looked very young, the sort of person who when he wasn’t wearing his uniform got carded every time he wanted to buy anything. So he volunteered to go into the high school and try and talk to some of the kids. Those of us who are old enough to remember 21 Jump Street, it is that sort of thing. For those of you who don’t remember the show, don’t worry about it. 

The officer makes arrangements. He gets his hair cut in a strange way and he finds whatever kind of clothes the high school is wearing at that time and makes arrangements for him to be a transfer student. Of course he is a transfer student with a poor grade point average so he is not put in the AP classes but in those other classes. You know. And he hangs out with the kids. At lunch he sits alone at one of the tables. Usually there are the teams that are all in different parts of the cafeteria. He sits in the middle. At first there are just a couple of kids who talk to him. Gradually each day more and more of the students sit at his table and want to listen to what he has to say because he is so gentle and loving and caring and smart. He tells them that they don’t have to live like that. That it is much better to work together. They need to take care of each other. And that nobody has a right to take away your lunch or your lunch money. You don’t need to do that and you don’t need to be part of one of these teams. You don’t have to be violent. 

Slowly but surely more and more of the kids start to hang out with this new person. Not just the kids that weren’t in a team, but some of the ones who were part of a team, were leaving their teams and saying I don’t like what’s happening and also began to hang out with him.

Well you can imagine how the captains of the teams felt about that. The teams were like, “You can’t do that. He’s messing up the whole system.” So one of the team captains has his thugs go in and confront him and say you better stop doing that. “If we see you doing that any more you are going to be in real trouble.” Well of course this guy is a police officer. He’s not the least bit scared by that. So, that didn’t work. 

Finally the strongest captain has his thugs grab him after school, bring him around behind the school in the alleyway and beat him terribly. And then the captain comes in and says, “Well, now what do you think?” And of course this police officer is not intimidated the least bit. A little beat up, yes, because he chose not to fight back, knowing that he probably could have done a good deal of damage to the kids. Then the captain says, “You don’t look afraid, what’s with you.” He responds “You have no power over me.” “Oh yes I do.” Then he asks, “Are you trying to be the captain here?” The officer responds, “I’m not a captain in this high school. I have no interest in being a captain in this high school.” The high school bully asks, “Oh, you are a captain then?” The officer responds, “Yes, but not in this high school. I have no interest in that.” 

So it was decided that it was time for him to leave, and he wasn’t seen again at school. There were a couple of the people who had been listening to him who saw him in his police uniform and suspected it was him, but nobody was quite sure. But the ones he talked to began to change the school because they began to work together and not be afraid of these powerful team captains. Slowly the culture of the school began to change. 

Then when graduation came, guess who was there to shake the hand of every one of the students as they graduated. The ones he had gotten to know well, he helped them in the next step in their lives with scholarships or jobs.

This little parable to me is kind of what Jesus was. He came into our world, but never was totally of our world. He always was more than that as well. That beautiful but confusing concept “Who is and was and is to be.” He is outside of time, outside of space - beyond. Something quite different.

We all have memories of our own high school experience. When we were in high school, didn’t we take it seriously? Didn’t it really matter whether you made it into the cheer leading squad or not. And it really mattered whether you got invited to the prom. And when you were called one of the dorks or geeks or whatever the word was that they used, you felt terrible and humiliated, awkward and strange. We all have our own particular experiences of high school. 

When we were in high school it seemed really, really important. And when we raised our kids and they were in high school, and they were all bent out of shape, we did our best not to say, “Oh don’t worry, it’s just high school” because we tried to remember that for them that is real. Perhaps that is how Jesus sees us. We are so concerned about power, or money, or how many things we are going to have. Does it really matter? Is it really important? Yeah it’s important to have food, clothing, health, all of those are important but how much do we need? Does power on earth really matter? What does matter? What remains from high school? What was really important when you were in High School that has remained? Maybe there are some friendships. Maybe there are some things you learned. But they are all those positive things. Those things you didn’t worry about at the time. Christ came among us, became human, was born and lived as a human being to tell us that there is something more to life than just accumulating things. There is something more to life than power. There is something more to life than security. That it is about love - loving each other, loving God, loving ourselves.

And every one of you who is here today is here because there is some part of you, maybe it is a large part, maybe it is just a tiny little voice inside, that knows that there is something more than just this reality, this world, this cosmos. That knows that there is something more than this. That this is not everything. And Christ came to assure us that that is true and invite us to help bring a new kind of reality into the world.

When we say, “Thy kingdom come” it means helping to make this world be the way it was intended to be, the way God would like to see it - whole, loving, kind and good. And here we are. Each day we have a choice - who is our captain, who is our king. Do we follow the leaders of this world or do we follow the leader of that which is beyond this world? Do we bring in peace and love and hope or are we stuck here. Each day we have that choice. 

Christ the King invites us to help bring his kingdom here on earth.

Christ the King - Proper 29 C

What kind of a king offers his life? The thief on the cross knew. Now it is up to us to remember him.

Christ the King

Proper 29 C

Transcribed from a sermon given in 2013

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Luke 23:33-43

Today we celebrate Christ the King. As I said at the beginning of the service, it is the last day of our year. It is the completion of the whole story of Christ from his anticipation of Advent, his incarnation in Christmas, his work on earth during Epiphany, his journey to Jerusalem during Lent, his death and resurrection with Easter, his sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, to his follower’s ministry in the world which is celebrated during this long green season we have just completed when Pentecost is past people of Christ are on earth. On this last Sunday we celebrate Christ the King, the promise of the coming Kingdom of God. Today is the conclusion the finale.

But what kind of a king, what kind of a king are we celebrating. Throughout history a king has been the person with the most power, the strongest with the most followers. As kids you may have played king of the hill. You know, when one strong kid gets up on top of the hill and the other kids try to get up there and push him down. The king is the one who is the strongest. And throughout history the king of any country was the one who had the most armies and was strong enough and rich enough to be able to manipulate people well enough to have power. If somebody else came along and had more power, he would push him out and become king.

But what kind of a king is Jesus? On Christ the King Sunday the image that we read about of Jesus is him hanging on a cross and dying. It is when people are saying that if you are a king, if you are so great, if you are the messiah, get yourself down yet he chooses not to. What kind of a king gives up his power? What kind of a king does not use his power at the time when it is most needed? What kind of a king lets himself be crucified? That is the question for all of us. The answer is that he is different kind of king, a servant king, a king who didn’t come for himself, a who didn’t come to rule, but came for all the people. It is a very different sense of what a king is.

We read today about this poignant experience of Christ on the cross being mocked and humiliated and no one recognizing who he really is. Pilate put up the sign King of the Jews to mock him. The religious leaders don’t recognize who he is, and thy make fun of him. But there is one person there, the person who we are least likely to think would have a deep theological understand, one of the others who are being crucified with him, who recognizes who he is and what it means. Realizing that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, but is something more he is able to say to him, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.” A powerful, powerful line. “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He didn’t ask for anything in particular, just don’t forget me. And what is really amazing is that if you look carefully through scripture there is only one person in the New Testament, in all the Gospels, who is promised to be in heaven with Christ. It is that criminal dying on the cross. And it wasn’t because he said some particular statement of faith. It wasn’t because he had been baptized. It wasn’t because he had gone to church. It wasn’t because he was a particularly good person. He just recognized Jesus and asked him to remember him. And Jesus promises that he will be in paradise with him that day. What a promise. Jesus remember me.

So what does this have to do with us who have been told of who Jesus is, who have been promised of what Christ’s kingdom is, who know the creeds and all of that stuff? What does this have to do with us? We don’t need to ask Jesus to remember us, he can’t forget us. Those of us who have been baptized are told that we are marked as Christ’s own forever. Baptism establishes a relationship with Christ that does not end. Christ is not capable of forgetting us. On the other hand, we are quite capable of forgetting Christ. So for us it is not to ask Jesus remember me, it might well be Jesus asking us, “Friend, will you remember me when you go about your daily business?” Will we remember him? Do we remember Christ when we wake up in the morning and take a breath and realize that we are alive for another day, when we see the sun rise and the earth alive? Do we remember Christ when we have that cup of coffee or tea that has that unique drug called caffeine in it that was a gift from God that comes from plants? Do we remember Christ when we eat or breakfast or brunch or lunch? Do we remember Christ when we drive to work or wherever it is that we go during the day? And when we are cut off by somebody on the road do we remember Christ or do we just say “Oh, God!” Do we really remember Christ when we are hurt by someone we love, by a child or a parent or a sibling or a spouse? Do we remember Christ forgiving the soldiers at the cross when we are feeling hurt and angry and resentful? Do we remember Christ when we sit down and we are paying our bills? Do we remember Christ when we think about our finances? Do we remember him when we thinking about how we are going to spend our day? Do we remember him? That is the question for us today.

This past week has been the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of JFK. I’m sure if you turned the TV on once during the week you have realized that because there have been so many specials remembering him. When I think about JFK and the wonderful quotes from him, the one that I can’t forget is when he said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” It is a profound statement of what is important. In many ways since JFK we’ve gotten even more of a consumer society. We have gotten even more into a society that asks what is in it for me. Whether it be the tax code or a new law or health care or a new store we might go to. Is that store going to be the best for me? Does it have the best parking, the best prices? What is in it for me?

One of the conversations that church leaders have been having for the last ten or fifteen year, is: How are we as churches to be in a consumer society? Less and less people chose a particular church because that is how were raised so that is their denomination. More and more they pick a church that satisfies their needs. Is it a church that has good parking? Is it a church that is near my home? Do I like the people there? Does it have the kind of classes I want to take? Is the service short enough, or long enough? Is the preaching what I like to hear? Is the music my kind of music? Does it satisfy me? And that is the consumer mentality. The danger is that we start saying that about Christ or the Church.

You do sometimes get that sense that people are going to church and being in relationship with Christ because of what Christ can do for them. Obviously being in relationship with Christ is the best thing that we can possible do for ourselves. It brings us peace and joy and meaning and purpose and it helps us at the tough times. We go to him for healing. That is all absolutely right, but that is not all of it. There are times when we desperately need Christ’s help. But there are times when Christ needs us. It is a relationship. It is a friendship. And any friendship where you just go to the other person and ask for help is not a friendship anymore. We also need to ask what can we do for Christ. Not just what Christ can do for us. And what can we do for Christ’s church, not just what the church can do for us.

 On those days when we are feeling lost and alone, and we come to church, and we so need to feel God’s love, we feel God’s love not just through the service but by the other people around us, by the welcome at peace, by the sense of a community gathered together. If the only people who came to church on a Sunday morning were the ones who were hurting there would be nobody there to help them. So we need to ask not just what Christ and the Church can do for us, but what we can do for the church and for Christ? We need to ask what we can do to help to bring in Christ’s kingdom.

The other thing that I remember from JFK is his challenge to the country to have a person on the moon within a decade. Looking back, it might not seem as dramatic as it was, but at the time it wasn’t even known if it would be possible. It was a big audacious goal. It was a challenge It was a challenge that took money, time, effort, and everybody coming together and working on it. Out of it not only did we get a person standing on the moon but more importantly we got the miniaturization of computers and we have satellites that we can use for our GPS. If we hadn’t had the work to get to the moon do you think we would have a cell phone whose computer is larger, has more computing ability, than the great big room sized computers did fifty years ago? Teflon and a whole bunch of other things that inform our lives were secondary effects of this great audacious goal.

It has been a long time since a leader in our country has had a goal like that, that has challenged the country to come together for that. But those kind of goals can be important to a community. St Barnabas is right at the edge of a change. I’m only going to be your rector for two more months and then there will be a person, an interim, a priest who will be here to help as the community comes together to figure out where do you go from here. Who do you want to hire as your rector? What direction do you want to go? St. Barnabas is in a really good place to have a big audacious goal. This is a community that is healthy. It is not broken apart. It is working together. We have wonderful, generous, loving, caring people. We have brilliant people giving talks on philosophy. We have people with hearts that give to the homeless. We have singers that share their gifts. St. Barnabas, with God’s help can do just about anything. I would like to encourage and challenge this community to as you think about the future think big. Think about what this community can do to help bring in the reign of God. Think of how you can share Christ’s love with the thousands of people who live in this are. Think of what kind of a difference this church can make. Have a goal like having a person on the moon that is worthy of the people who are here. And through it all each and every day remember Christ. Remember Christ’s kingdom, and remember that now that you know of Christ’s love your responsibility is to share it with others.

Sermon Proper 29B - Last Sunday of Pentecost

I offer here a parable about high school to shed some light on Christ the King.

Last Sunday of Pentecost

Proper 29 - Christ the King

Transcribed from a sermon given on

November 25, 2012

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Today is the last Sunday of Pentecost. We begin the church year again next Sunday on the first Sunday of Advent The last Sunday of Pentecost is also called Christ the King Sunday, where we celebrate the reign of Christ.

As I was thinking about this and trying to wrap my mind around what it means for Christ to be king, I realized that king is not a word that we really identify with. Our image of kings, like the king or queen of England, is people who don’t have very much power. It is not like kings in ancient times. But I had a thought and came up with a story. One of the people at the first service called it a parable.

I’d like you imagine a high school that has just gotten out of hand. What has happened is that the normal cliques and groups in a high school have coalesced into what they call teams, and each team has a captain. This captain rules it over every one of his team members. He tells them what to do and collects money from them. There are drugs being sold, there’s violence and there are fights between the members of the different teams. Those who are not part of the team get harassed. It has become a very ugly place.

Some of the police in the area were discussing this and the young captain from another town said, “My heart is really breaking for these kids because I know there have got to be kids in there who are good kids and want to have a different kind of experience in High School.” This young captain was one of those people who looked very young, the sort of person who when he wasn’t wearing his uniform got carded every time he wanted to buy anything. So he volunteered to go into the high school and try and talk to some of the kids. Those of us who are old enough to remember 21 Jump Street, it is that sort of thing. For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, don’t worry about it.

So he makes arrangements. He gets his hair cut in a strange way and he finds whatever kind of clothes the high school is wearing at that time and makes arrangements for him to be a transfer student. Of course he is a transfer student with a poor grade point average so he not put in the AP classes but in those other classes. You know. And he hangs out with the kids. At lunch he sits alone at one of the tables. Usually there are the teams that are all in different parts of the cafeteria. He sits in the middle. At first there are just a couple of kids who talk to him. Gradually each day more and more of the students sit at his table and want to listen to what he has to say because he is so gentle and loving and caring and smart. He tells them that they don’t have to live like that. That it is much better to work together. They need to take care of each other. And that nobody has a right to take away your lunch or your lunch money. You don’t need to do that and you don’t need to be part of one of these teams. You don’t have to be violent.

Slowly but surely more and more of the kids start to hang out with this new person. Not just the kids that weren’t in a team, but some of the ones who were part of a team, were leaving their teams and saying I don’t like what’s happening and also began to hang out with him.

Well you can imagine how the captains of the teams felt about that. The teams were like, “You can’t do that. He’s messing up the whole system.” So one of the team captains has his thugs go in and confront him and say you better stop doing that. “If we see you doing that any more you are going to be in real trouble.” Well of course this guy is a police officer. He’s not the least bit scared by that. So, that didn’t work.

Finally the strongest captain has his thugs grab him after school, bring him around behind the school in the alleyway and beat him terribly. And then the captain comes in and says, “Well, now what do you think?” And of course this police officer is not intimidated the least bit. A little beat up, yes, because he chose not to fight back, knowing that he probably could have done a good deal of damage to the kids. Then the captain says, “You don’t look afraid, what’s with you.” He responds “You have no power over me.” “Oh yes I do.” Then he asks, “Are you trying to be the captain here?” The officer responds, “I’m not a captain in this high school. I have no interest in being a captain in this high school.” The high school bully asks, “Oh, you are a captain then?” The officer responds, “Yes, but not in this high school. I have no interest in that.”

So it was decided that it was time for him to leave, and he wasn’t seen again at school. There were a couple of the people who had been listening to him who saw him in his police uniform and suspected it was him, but nobody was quite sure. But the ones he talked to began to change the school because they began to work together and not be afraid of these powerful team captains. Slowly the culture of the school began to change.

Then when graduation came, guess who was there to shake the hand of every one of the students as they graduated. The ones he had gotten to know well he helped them in the next step in their lives with scholarships or jobs.

This little parable to me is kind of what Jesus was. He came into our world, but never was totally of our world. He always was more than that as well. That beautiful but confusing concept “Who is and was and is to be.” He is outside of time, outside of space - beyond. Something quite different.

We all have memories of our own high school experience. When we were in high school, didn’t we take it seriously? Didn’t it really matter whether you made it into the cheer leading squad or not. And it really mattered whether you got invited to the prom. And when you were called one of the dorks or geeks or whatever the word was that they called it, you felt terrible and humiliated, awkward and strange. We all have our own particular experiences of high school.

When we were in high school it seemed really, really important. And when we raised our kids and they were in high school, and they were all bent out of shape, we did our best not to say, “Oh don’t worry, it’s just high school” because we tried to remember that for them that is real. Perhaps that is how Jesus sees us. We are so concerned about power, or money, or how many things we are going to have. Does it really matter? Is it really important? Yeah it’s important to have food, clothing, health, all of those are important but how much do we need? Does power on earth really matter? What does matter? What remains from high school? What was really important when you were in High School that has remained? Maybe there are some friendships. Maybe there are some things you learned. But they are all those positive things. Those things you didn’t worry about at the time. Christ came among us, became human, was born and lived as a human being to tell us that there is something more to life than just accumulating things. There is something more to life than power. There is something more to life than security. That it is about love - loving each other, loving God, loving ourselves.

And every one of you who is here today is here because there is some part of you, maybe it is a large part, maybe it is just a tiny little voice inside, that knows that there is something more than just this reality, this world, this cosmos. That knows that there is something more than this. That this is not everything. And Christ came to assure us that that is true and invite us to help bring a new kind of reality into the world.

When we say, “Thy kingdom come” it means helping to make this world be the way it was intended to be, the way God would like to see it - whole, loving, kind and good. And here we are. Each day we have a choice - who is our captain, who is our king. Do we follow the leaders of this world or do we follow the leader of that which is beyond this world? Do we bring in peace and love and hope or are we stuck here. Each day we have that choice.

Christ the King invites us to help bring his kingdom here on earth.

4 Easter B

Transcribed from a sermon given on

April 29, 2012

By Rev. Valerie Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

The 23^rd psalm is very meaningful for me. as I know it is for many people. It is very meaningful for me especially because I remember when I was going through a very difficult time in my life it was so reassuring to hear that the shepherd walks with me. There was one point when I was in the hospital and I was on so many different medications that I couldn’t read. I was just totally out of it, but every time anyone would come and visit I would say, “Read me the 23^rd Psalm.” I wanted to hear it, to be reminded that the shepherd walks with me through that deep dark valley that I was in at that time and would lead me through it and to a better life - to green pastures, still waters, that are such wonderful images of care and love. And I know many of the rest of you have that sort of feeling about the 23^rd psalm.

So today is “Good Shepherd Sunday.” We read from John’s Gospel Jesus describing himself as the Good Shepherd. He is the shepherd that doesn’t run away but is willing to die for the sheep. It is that same love and caring about the sheep that we get in the 23^rd Psalm.

One of the things about the 23^rd Psalm is that it feels very personal. The Lord is my shepherd. I will not be in want. When you are really in a time of struggle you need to know that the shepherd is there for you as an individual. But I have never seen a shepherd have only one sheep. There is always a flock; there is always a group of sheep that the shepherd is taking care of. And the shepherd loves each and every one of those sheep the way it is expressed in the 23^rd psalm.

Also in this reading from John is one of the most inclusive scriptures, because Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”

Now there has been debate about whom he was referring to. Many people say that he was refereeing to the gentiles. That he didn’t come just for the Jewish people but also to the gentiles who would become Christians. But was it more inclusive than that? Who are those sheep that he wants to include in that one great flock. He doesn’t set any limits to it. He doesn’t say who is in and who is out. It sounds like everybody; he wants everybody in this flock.

Lets think a little about how a flock of sheep functions. The shepherd’s concern is for the welfare of all of the sheep. And like Jesus said, if one got lost he’d leave the others to take care of that one because he cares about each one of them, but normally, in a flock of sheep, they are either all healthy or they are all in trouble. But sometimes, sometimes there will be a couple of sheep who are a little bigger than all the rest so when they get to that still water they push the others out of the way and get that nice green grass that is growing near the edge of the water. And want to keep it all for themselves. They don’t let any of the other sheep there. And if that goes on for too long, those overly assertive sheep can get nice and fat. Maybe even too fat, because they are just eating up all the good grass while the other sheep get thin and mal nourished. You have to know that is not what the shepherd had in mind. The shepherd would not stand by and watch a few sheep thrive at the cost of the rest of the flock. A good shepherd would be in there and move those fat ones out a little bit. Make sure everyone got a chance. Make sure that all the sheep had a chance for the green grass. And that’s what Jesus is trying to represent.

He talks about himself as the good shepherd, but another for Christ that we work with a lot during the Easter season is the idea of Christ the King - that the resurrection of Christ was the breaking forth into the world of the kingdom of God. Christ’s resurrection is the beginning of the coming of the Kingdom of God with the promise that death is overcome and God’s reign is on the way. That reign of God that we pray for every day, whenever we say the Lord’s Prayer. “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That sense that the reign of God, of what God really wants, will come on earth. If you’ve read through Revelations the last book of the Bible you find that at the end we have the heavenly Jerusalem coming and merging with the earthly Jerusalem. Where the kingdom of God in heaven becomes one with the kingdom of God on earth.

So what does the kingdom of God look like? What does the reign of God look like? It doesn’t look like a kingdom where you have a rich king with lots of fancy jewels and a lot of poor peasants trying to pay for that. The kingdom of God looks like a shepherd with the king caring for the people, caring for the sheep. And so with Christ bringing forth that kingdom of God what does that look like and what’s our role in it?

Well this wonderful passage from the first letter of John has a very powerful sentence in it. That says, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” We who define ourselves as Christians we who take upon ourselves the responsibilities to be a disciple of Christ have taken on the role of being assistant shepherds. We are here to help the shepherd. We are here to help the shepherd care for all the sheep - for that one flock. And it is our responsibility to follow the command of Christ to love one another, to care for one another, not just in speech but in action because each one of us through our baptism is called to help to bring in the reign of God, to help with this wonderful way of being that Christ initiated with his resurrection that is coming. And we are part of making it manifest. So we are all called to love one another as Christ, as the Good Shepherd, loves us.

Christ the King - sermon

This week I am only able to post the first half of a sermon I gave on Christ the King Sunday in 2011. The recording of the sermon cut off about half way through. But you may still find the discussion of how is going to go to heaven interesting.

Christ the King

Last Pentecost

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

On November 20, 2011

By Rev. Valerie Hart

I’d like you to imagine that it is 200 years from now and you are a graduate student studying cultural anthropology. You have decided for your dissertation that you are going to look at the attitudes of Christians at the turn of the 21^st century, which is the beginning of the 21^st century, about heaven and hell. You wanted to know who they believed was going to heaven and who they believed was going to hell. Now you have all of the newspaper articles, you have copies of different TV shows and news shows; you even have access to some of the web sites. You use all these different resources to try and understand what were Christians thinking at the turn of the century.

What would you find? You’d find that there were a lot of people out there who thought they know who is going to heaven. Right? And you’d find different things. If you studied people who were into sacramental theology you would read that you had to be baptized to go to heaven. Or perhaps you had to get last rights from the Church to go to heaven. If you looked at the more fundamentalist side you would find they have all kinds of ideas of why you might go to heaven. Usually it would have to do with some kind of right belief. For example, that you have taken Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior. Or in order to get to haven you had to believe the way that that particular denomination believed. Of course then it depends upon how large the particular group is to determine how large heaven is. And then of course you would have the progressives who would say everybody is going to heaven, there’s going to be no judgment.

So that’s what the 21^st century says about heaven, but what about hell? I need to ask you for help on this one, or maybe we don’t need to say it out loud. Who’s going to hell? Who’s going to hell?

The people who aren’t baptized are going to hell? People who aren’t Christians? People who don’t take Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior? Or is it more about people who break one of the rules. We have quite a set of rules. There are so many rules and laws in scripture. Much more than just the Ten Commandments there are thousands of other rules and laws if you look through Leviticus.

How often have you heard people saying that X person is going to hell because they have broken one of the rules? If you look historically you’ll find that the rules that lead to hell change with the culture. In Europe a few centuries ago one of the things that would lead to going to hell was charging usury. That means charging interest on a loan. This was part of the reason that the banks became so associated with the Jewish people. Because,  “A good Christian didn’t charge interest.” Then of course in the twentieth century it was a lot about different kinds of sexual sin. In the early twentieth century adultery was it, but adultery has become so common now that if everyone who commits adultery is going to hell… A lot of people don’t want to bring that up anymore. Especially with the issue of Jesus saying that if you get divorced and remarried that’s adultery. So divorce is no longer a sure ticket to hell.

But there is always something. And we know what some of them are that you hear about today. Shortly after I started at St. Barnabas there was a guy who came in between the services and told me I was going to hell because a woman shouldn’t be preaching. So we all know this. You have seen the signs. We used to go to hockey games and there was a guy who would stand outside saying you are going to hell if, and you fill in the blank. And then it would have some scripture reading. He would stand in front of the hockey game. All I could think of was wondering if that somebody who is trying to turn people away from Christianity, because it certainly isn’t going to bring anybody in.

Yes, there are a lot of people that you’ll hear who say they know who is going to hell and that they know who is going to heaven.

Well here we have this gospel passage of Jesus, called the small apocalypse. It is one of the few times where Jesus talks about the end time and the coming of the king in glory. He describes the kind as dividing the sheep from the goats, reflecting back to that Ezekiel passage and other prophets that talk about the shepherd of Israel coming to gather the sheep together. Here the king has come at the end time and the sheep and the goats, all the animals that have been feeding together, are brought together and they are sorted out. And how are they sorted out? Well the sheep are the ones about which he said, “When I was hungry you fed me. When I was thirsty you gave me something to drink. When I was sick you visited me. When I was in prison you visited me.” In other words, you cared about me. Little small acts of kindness. Small acts of kindness that they didn’t even realize they were doing.

And what of the ones who go into the eternal damnation? Yes there is judgment her. (So those of us who would say there is no judgment have to deal with a passage like this as well). There is judgment, and the ones who are turned away from God are the ones about which the king says,  “I was hungry and you didn’t feed me, I was thirsty and you didn’t give me anything to drink. I was homeless and you didn’t give me a place to stay, I had no clothes and you didn’t clothe me.” In other words, you didn’t take care of me.

Both groups say, “When did we do that? I never saw you hungry or thirsty.” And then there is that very telling comment, “When you did it to the least of my family you did it to me.” On the other hand,  “if you didn’t do it to the least of my family you didn’t do it for me.” So Jesus is saying that this judgment is not based on correct belief, at least in this passage. It is not based on whether you are baptized or not, he never talked about that particularly. It’s not based on being part of a specific community. It is based on a loving heart. And it actually is based on one of the laws, at least one the ones that Jesus talks about. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Or in John’s Gospel love one another as I have loved you. It’s about relationship.

(This was the end of the recording and the second half of the sermon was not available.)