Friends
Peace be with you.
When I do wedding prep, one of the questions I ask couples when we start talking about having kids is who is going to be the disciplinarian and who is going to be the nice parent. It generally elicits a chuckle from both parents but sometimes more of an awkward silence as both man and woman decide if they want to be honest about their parental expectations. Sometimes the pushover parent knows that the other person is more stern but he or she doesn’t know if he or she wants to be honest for fear of saying that the other person is mean and sometimes the stern person wants to say the other person is a pushover who will likely get walked over by their children.
We look upon God as a parent and Jesus as his human face. How we picture Jesus can have similar significant disciplinary differences as to how we view God. When I look at Jesus from the 1950s, for instance, Jesus tends to be pictured with a very stern look on his face, almost as though he’s looking at us like he’s looking at those goats right before he tells them how they haven’t fed him or given him water or taken care of him when he was sick. On the other hand, from the 1960s onward, images of Jesus became more like he had spent the day at the beach or at the gym, as in what is typically called TEC Jesus. If you walk into a church, you can sometimes tell what kind of theology you’re going to get from whether Jesus is imaged as friendly or judgmental, whether the emphasis is on the blood and torture of the crucifixion or if Jesus is pictured ascending into heaven directly from the cross in what younger priests call the resurrectofix.
In some ways, this tension between imaging a mean, judgmental God or a kindly shepherd is at the heart of today’s readings and today’s celebration. We call this last Sunday of Ordinary Time, this transition Sunday between Ordinary Time and Advent really, the Solemnity of Christ the King. Yet, the readings never even mention or describe Jesus as a king but, instead, focus on him as a shepherd. This is mostly because Jesus avoided talking about himself as “king of the Jews” because of the confusion that tended to create. He wasn’t coming to replace a current political leader, he was coming to save humankind from sin. He wasn’t coming to create yet another political party that people could either be a part of or choose to be in opposition to, he was coming to invite people into a relationship with him that would lead to eternal life. Notice in the gospel that, when talking to the sheep, he says to those destined for eternal life “Come, you who are blessed by my Father…” but he doesn’t say “Come, you who are accursed” to the others. Instead, he says, “Depart from me, you accursed…” Being with Jesus, knowing and being known by him leads to eternal life. Those who are in eternal punishment choose not to know Jesus and not to be known by him.
I think it’s much more wise to reflect on the attributes of these hardscrabble shepherds on this solemnity of Christ the King rather than try and focus on the attributes of a king, not just because we don’t have a king here in the United States but because it’s too easy for a king to lose focus on power and become, in the process, politically corrupt. A shepherd has his sheep and he has to take care of them. He has to give them water, food, rest, direction, and care when they are lost or sick. God does all of that for us too. However, a shepherd also is going to take some of his animals to have them butchered, especially the strongest and the healthiest, so he can get more money or meat for them. This is where the analogy kind of flips because, in the first reading, it appears that the sleek and the strong are being punished when they are destroyed by the shepherd who is shepherding them rightly. If we combine that with the gospel, we may assume that the reason they are being punished is because the strong and the sleek had the opportunity to take care of the hungry and thirsty and sick and homeless and naked and they failed to do so, which is, I think, partly the message Jesus is getting across. However, don’t forget that we are also his little ones. I think another part of the message Jesus is getting across to us is to remember that, whatever we are given, whether it is food or drink or clothing or care, it doesn’t just come from the sweat of our own brow, but from God himself and we need to, therefore be willing to share that with others, especially the stranger. God is both the giver and the one to whom it is given, whatever we do for the least of his, we do for him.
One of the things I encourage with those couples during marriage prep is to not allow one to be the disciplinarian and one to be the pushover, one to be the nice parent and one to be the mean one. I do that because, if they are going to be the first and best teachers of the faith to their children, the first and best images of God as a father or mother, you can’t be one or the other. We have to be both, always admitting our weaknesses but striving to be the good shepherd caring for his sheep. We must be willing to say and hear “come you who are blessed by my father” and, when we are not caring for them or recognizing how much God is caring for us “Depart from me…” Let’s strive to be like the Good Shepherd caring for his sheep and recognizing that the true Good Shepherd and King is caring for us.
