Dear Friends:

This Sunday we celebrate “Christ the King Sunday,” a feast day instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 in the midst of rising secularism, nationalism, and consumerism. In the face of all these “isms”, the Pope wanted the people of the church to remember the One who was ultimately in charge of it all. This Sunday also concludes the season of Pentecost, known as “Ordinary Time” and marks the end of our church year. Ironically, this season has been far from Ordinary and has caused many us of us to wonder who really is in charge of it all.

To assist us, our gospel for Sunday has Jesus telling a parable about a king who is also a shepherd. This image would have been familiar to Jesus’ followers, who would remember how their revered King David began his life as a humble shepherd who was anointed by God to reign with justice, peace, and dignity. One day, the people of Israel believed, this Shepherd King would come again to redeem them from years of exile and oppression, and restore their dignity.

In Jesus’ parable, the shepherd sits at his throne, sorting out the sheep from the goats, the ones who will ultimately sit on his right hand (a good place) and those on his left (a not so good place). What determines who lands where is pretty straightforward. It all hinges on how you treat the shepherd when he appears to you in disguise.

“When I was hungry, you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me... Whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me.”

In other words, where you land with the Shepherd King depends entirely on who you’ve chosen to embrace or reject, who or what you have failed to notice, how and when you decide to minister to someone who is suffering. The One who is in charge of it all assures us that our greatest shortcoming lies not in having the wrong theology or refusing to believe as others would have us believe, but in neglecting to recognize and respond to him where he already is.

Jesus gets awfully specific in telling us where we can find him. Each of the habitations he lists in our gospel from Matthew is marked by lack: lack of food, lack of water, lack of hospitality, lack of clothing, lack of health, lack of freedom. Jesus chooses these places, inhabits these spaces, waits for us to show up. Waits, too, for us to recognize those places in ourselves. He knows that if we haven’t recognized the poverty within our own souls, and how he dwells there, it’s incredibly hard to see him and serve him in others with true compassion.

As we prepare to cross the threshold out of “Ordinary Time” and into Advent, I wonder what Christ the King, the shepherd who came in such ragged, radical camouflage, has in store for the season to come. How will he show up in your life and in mine as we await his coming in the midst of pandemic, economic uncertainty, racial injustice, and political strife? Where will he be inviting us to see him? Where might his face be gazing upon us, catching us by surprise, a stranger in disguise?

In Christ,

Amelie