Nov 20 - Surprise Party

Christ The King Matt. 25:31-46 11/20/05

“Surprise Party”

You are cordially invited to a surprise party and you are the honored guest. Well, maybe that’s not much of a surprise if you already know the party is for you. But, believe me, there will be plenty of surprises.

This party is hosted by none other than our Lord, Jesus Christ. He’s been planning the party for eons and you’ve been on the guest list since before you were born. I can’t give you the date – that’s part of the surprise – but I can tell you that it will be the most spectacular party of all time. Jesus will come in all His glory with all His angels to accompany Him. The guest list includes people from every nation, so it should be quite an affair.

I can’t let you in on all the surprises, but we can get hints on some from today’s Gospel.

The first surprise for some relates to how we get to be part of the party. Some people (even some good Lutherans) believe that you can earn your way into heaven by doing good works and obeying the Law. These believers often use our Gospel text to support their belief.

But look closely at our text. It says in verse 34, “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;”

You don’t earn something you inherit. An inheritance is a gift and its giving is totally under the control of the giver. Oh, you might try with an earthly giver to impress him/her and thus get a larger share, but you don’t earn it - even less so with God. In fact, the people who are commended and invited in don’t realize that they’ve done anything all that great. They surely weren’t keeping score or publicizing their goodness. They weren’t even looking for the king to impress Him with their good deeds.

Notice that doing good things directly for the King is not what He expects. What He expects is that we see Him in the poor, the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned. Jesus will only come in all his beauty and majesty at the end of time. Until then, He is the person getting canned goods you brought to church for the food closet. He is the sick church member or neighbor you took to the doctor. He is the person welcomed at church even though talking to strangers makes you uncomfortable. He is inmate at CSI someone took time to speak to when she was cleaning the church.

Don’t look for Jesus in a Bahama tan and clothes from Givenchy. Don’t seek Him in a mansion or corporate boardroom. Jesus preferred good Palestinian road dirt and the rough weave of homespun. He slept in a stable and worked by the sea. His friends didn’t belong to the country club. They were beggars, and thieves and dirty sick kids and a band of disciples who no one would nominate for man of the year.

Just so, Jesus comes to us today. He comes in a dress bought at a second hand shop or a pair of pants threadbare from too much farm labor. He slept last night in a homeless shelter or maybe in a cardboard box. His work was anything that would earn him a quarter...and he may have used that to buy cheap wine to take the pain away. But don’t be fooled. Jesus comes to us, no matter how we see Him, as King.

Notice that neither group being judged knew they were ministering to Jesus. Those who are commended didn’t even think about what they were doing. They just did what the love of Christ in their hearts told them to do.

This brings us to another surprise...maybe even shock. We Lutheran who focus so strongly on salvation by grace alone tend to get uncomfortable with this Gospel lesson. It sounds sooo works righteous. It’s not, but it is about works.

Jesus never said believe in me and just sit back doing nothing. Jesus never condemned works; He only condemned the person who depended on works to be saved or to gain admiration from others. Works are the natural response of a grateful heart. The person who has experienced God’s grace, who truly appreciates what Jesus did for him/her, does good for others out of the same love God shows in saving us. Jesus is King, but not a cruel despot. He is the King of love who calls those who receive His love to give His love.

I think what is being said in this lesson is that if grace is alive in us, we will do good. We will bear fruit. We will care for those in need. If we don’t do those things as acts of love, then perhaps we’ve rejected or let die the gift of grace God’s gave us... or at least let it become cold in us.

And here is a third big surprise: The party has already begun. The Kingdom of God is now.

Unlike surprise parties we organize where the guests sit around laughing and trading stories about the guest of honor until he or she walks in, and everyone can yell, “SURPRISE!” – then the party really begins -, Jesus’ surprise party assembles all the honorees at the party site and they wait with great anticipation for the Host, our Lord to appear. His appearance won’t come at the beginning of the party, but will instead be its climax.

And when He comes we will finally realize that the party has been in progress all along. This is so because the party is about the coming of the Kingdom – the reign of Jesus in the world. The kingdom is not a place. The kingdom is a relationship where Jesus abides in a person’s heart and life. Since Jesus came to abide in our hearts when we were baptized, the party has been going on for some of us for a long time. We need only let ourselves see Him in those we minister to. We need only let Him rules our lives.