Does God really care how we treat each other?  I know we’ve got this story this morning—this Gospel story—but set that aside for a second and ask yourself this question.  “Does God really care about how we treat each other?”  It’s an honest question.  And by “honest” I mean that plenty of people answer, “no”, believing that God really doesn’t care.  And really, it’s not so hard to imagine a god completely careless about the petty interactions between humans.  Today we celebrate the Feast of “Christ the King”, and we all know the stories or have heard tell of stories of kings who are totally insulated from the lives of their people.  

You have heard the phrase, “Let them eat cake”?  Those are the words of a royal who was told during a time of famine that the people were going to starve because they had no bread to eat, to which the royal innocently replied, “Then let them eat cake”, having no understanding of the people’s lives, their poverty or their plight.  Here was a royal who obviously cared little for the people, as evidenced by her ignorance.  What did it matter as long as the cake endured.

This image of a god unconcerned about the lives of people was very commonly the image of gods that people had in ancient times.  The gods wanted tribute.  They wanted honor and sacrifices.  If the tribute failed terrible things would occur.  But the gods’ concern, as people understood it, was always for themselves.  

 

In such a world, the laws given to the Hebrews by Yahweh--the ten commandments that the Hebrew God gave from on high--were revolutionary, giving rise to a complete paradigm shift in religious understanding.

First of all, Yahweh gave four commandments that established him as the one and only God.  He said, “You shall have no other gods before me.  You shall not make or worship any graven images.  You shall not take God’s name in vain, and You shall keep one day holy, reserved only for worship.”

These laws precluded belief or worship in any other God, which was a revolution in itself, since all of the other tribes and people’s of the time worshipped many gods:  The local god of the city, the god of the sky or of the rains, even family gods who were believed to watch over a family from the heavens.  This monotheism was a new development, but the great shift in consciousness came in the shape of the last six commandments given by God to the people:

“Honor your parents; Do not commit murder; Do not steal; Honor your marriage; Do not lie; Do not covet.”

 

That a God would give such commandments was unprecedented.  No idol of wood or stone cared about people’s interactions.  They cared (or so people believed) in their own well-being.  But here was something new!  A God whose concern went beyond himself to the creation he made.  And why?  For the well-being of that creation, and nothing more; an act we human beings know fondly as “love”.  Here was a God of Love.

 

Unfortunately, in the development of their relationship with Yahweh, the Israelites, as a people, never seemed to fully grasp the ramifications of God’s love.  We read that time and time again the widows (who had no way of bringing in income) and the poor were neglected, while great festivals were offered in God’s name.

Those ancient gods, if they ever existed, would not have cared at such a time, as long as their worship was offered, their tribute given, but amazingly, God lashed out in such circumstances against the uncaring people.  

“Though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them,” says the Lord through the Prophet Amos. “Though you bring choice offerings, I will have no regard for them.  Away with the noise of your songs!  I will not listen to the music of your harps.  But let justice roll down like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream!,”

A generation later, the prophet Micah wrote, “What does the Lord require but that you do justice and love kindness...”  

A generation later, the prophet Isaiah excoriated the Israelites for their self-centered fasts saying, “do not fast with your heads hung low like a reed.  The fast the Lord requires is that you break unjust fetters, undo the thong of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, and share your bread with the hungry and shelter the homeless poor” (Isa. 58:6 ff.).

Although people were ostensibly worshipping as much as they ever had, God was made furious at these times in history, because people were neglecting the needs and dignity of one another.  God said, in effect, “You honor me truly, when that heart of love leads you out into the street.”

 

What kind of God would he be if he were not willing to do himself, what he asked others to also do.  So, when the time was right God did go out into the street.  His love for his people took him from his perfect heavenly abode into the turbid, swirling uncertainty of human history.  He could have come and spent all his time in the temple, showing the priests exactly how to hold their hands and pronunciate to worship him best.  He could have come and established a comfortable kingdom, suitable for the deity that he was.

God came and lived in the streets and on the rocky hillsides.  He went out into the faraway towns forgotten by the masses, he journeyed through gentile lands almost universally despised among his people.  Why?  To love them.  To heal them.  To cast out demons, and show the compassion of the Father.  To raise up children, to stop the widow from bleeding, to feed the five thousand and all by the power given him from beyond this world.  He lived love in action.  All of this—it was not incidental to the mission.  It was essential.  The God of love loved and taught love by loving the least of his people and calling them a part of his family, making them important subjects in the kingdom of heaven.

 

Given all this, this great history of God’s compassion for his people, his rage against injustice, his own declaration that the greatest commandment was to Love the Lord your God, but that it was also inseparable from the second, to love your neighbor as yourself... given all this, what would you guess would be the final exam?  What would you assume would be the Lord’s criteria on the last day in judging a holy life?

 

The sole criteria, it seems, is our becoming like Christ—that our labor be for others as his was, inspired by our love for the Father.  In the end, such selflessness honors not only Christ in us, but also Christ in them among whom we minister.

“For I was hungry and you fed me.  I was hungry and you brought me food.  I was in prison, I was sick, and you visited me...”  

 

On this day we celebrate Christ the King.  Just what kind of King is it who sits on a throne of glory surrounded by heavenly hosts, who gathers all nations to stand before him, who is a law unto himself yet whose primary action on this day of power is to ask of each human being, “Did you care for the sick?  Did you welcome the stranger?  Did you feed the hungry?”

What kind of King?  Only the most wonderful.  The most glorious and holy.  The King of Kings.  The Lord of Lords.  Jesus the Christ who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns One God in glory everlasting whose name is known for all time in all ages and places as “Love”.  

Amen.