The Feast of Christ The King
Ordinary Sunday 34: 24 November, 2002
Fr Neville Connell
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
The weeks since the Bali bombings, the various forms of celebration,
farewell, funerals for those killed in the tragedy, and the response of
Australians generally, have laid rather bare our present spiritual
state as a nation.
The Churches have not featured prominently over all. It is hard not to
conclude that we are spiritually a lost people. Having rejected the
faith of so many generations of Australians, we are aimless, rudderless,
sometimes looking to other religions, sometimes creating our own kinds of
ritual – the flowers on Parliament House steps or the roadside shrines
for road accident victims (often with a cross NB). The article on page l8
of the November Melbourne Anglican illustrates this.
It is not surprising then that for many people their attitude to life
is ambivalent. What is the point of life? To have a good time, to Party?
Bali questioned that.
Our beliefs, attitudes, feelings have been reduced to the individualism so
much part of western countries today. Have we any beliefs as a community
any more? Should we be surprised then if life is reduced to being important in
a personal sense only? Life in the womb is expendable for "more important reasons", and life for the elderly, the sick or troubled is again
expendable for "noble, wholesome" reasons, not to please oneself or others.
Can we go on trying to justify the destruction of some lives to save
others, or to make life easier for others, to do a bad thing for an allegedly good purpose? No wonder Pope John Paul coined the phrase "the
culture of death"! There is so much talk of killing and death today.
One can think of those who would wage holy war for instance, or take
Saddam Hussein to task.
And yet, that is what our life is, since Adam and Eve, as it were. They
disobeyed God, and so were cast out of Eden. They symbolise the disobedience
of every man and every woman, young and old; we read about
it, watch it, hear it in the media every day – not least on Sunday, after
Saturday night's mayhem. Adam and Eve lived, we live, in a disoriented society, a society without God – and isn't that true of so much, indeed most of
Australia today? And by the way in which we take part in, cling to the false, disoriented values of this society, we ratify, we reinforce it.
St Paul describes this disoriented life as death, which ends in physical
death. While on holiday recently this death was symbolised starkly for
me by the horrible state of the land in south-western NSW.
In our Second Reading for today, (1 Cor.15:20-26;28), "Christ has been
raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep.
Death came through one man and in the same way the resurrection of the
dead has come through one man. Just as all men die in Adam, so all men
will be brought to life in Christ." It is in and through Jesus who has
entered into this world of false, self-centred values, that we are
freed for authentic life: not terminated by death, but fulfilled with
eternal life.
What we think about death affects how we think about life. Both our
First Reading (Ezekiel 34:11-12,15-17), and our Gospel Reading (St Matt.
25:31-46) help us to reflect on this: "The Lord says this: I am going to
look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view. As a shepherd
keeps all his flocking view when he stands up in the middle of his
scattered sheep, so shall I keep my sheep in view. I shall rescue them
from wherever they have been scattered during the mist and darkness. I
myself will pasture my sheep, I myself will show them where to rest...")
The Lord will actively seek out, search for the strayed and scattered,
the lost. The Gospels give us many examples of how Jesus, the Good
Shepherd, sought out, cared for, healed, those on the edge of the society
of his day.
In today's Gospel Reading he tells us just how central this seeking out
and caring is: "Then the virtuous will say to him in reply, 'Lord, when
did we see you hungry and feed you; or thirsty and give you a drink...
sick or in prison and go to see you?' And the King will answer'... in so
far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you
did it to me.'"
To love and to serve our neighbour at any moment is to love Jesus
himself. Jesus calls us not to be people of death, but to be people who
give life. Through Holy Baptism we have life, eternal life – for now
and after we die – it is ours to share, to give.
We who have been baptised have been marked with the Cross of Jesus.
We must search for the face of Jesus in the other in need, and be the
face of Jesus to him or her.
We have been called out of the culture, the life we call death, to the
New Life, the hope which Jesus gives. Our Gospel Reading depicts the
contrast between the two ways of living, and the consequences.
There is a judgement! 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty....
sick or in prison, and did not come to your help?' Then he will answer,
"'...in so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these,
you neglected to do it to me.' And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life."
So let us be people of the New Life, the New Hope we have in Jesus. 'Can
I make a difference?' you might say. Think of what Jesus did with five
loaves and two fish! So he will feed us for our new life and multiply
our faithfulness. What seems hidden to us is not hidden to Jesus, and may be life-giving to another, even if we never know it; but that is our faith.
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Views is a
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St Peter's Eastern Hill, Melbourne Australia.
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