Sunday, November 20, 2011

Christ the King - November 20, 2011

Note: I was asked to assist St. Michael Lutheran with their Stewardship Program. This is the sermon I have prepared for the conclusion of that process.

Christ the King - Year A
November 20, 2011
St. Michael, Greenville
Matthew 25:31-46

Consecration Sunday

A couple of “thank you’s” are in order. I wasn’t sure where they ought to be inserted into the service, so it seems this is as a good a time as any.

The first thank you is to all of you, who accepted the change in schedule, who responded favorably to the invitation to lunch. Change is never easy and seldom welcomed. Thank you for becoming a part of Consecration Sunday and for being here today. I pray that as the morning develops you will come to understand even more clearly why it was so important for all of us to be together, today.

The second thank you is to the Consecration Sunday Team. I began meeting with them on October 17. They had done much work prior to that meeting and they have worked tirelessly since. We all owe them our gratitude and we have all benefitted from their service.

A final thank you is a personal one. I want to thank you all, for allowing me this glimpse into your congregation, into your ministry, and into your lives together. It has been a blessing to me, far beyond the ability of words to express. Thank you. Thank all of you. While my glances from afar had indicated the health and vitality of this congregation, my six weeks working with you have confirmed the wondrous ways in which St. Michael is a community centered on the Gospel and committed to the ministry of Christ.

There is a certain amount of what is going to happen today which is the result of careful planning and meticulous attention to detail. That is why we needed to say “Thank you” to the Planning Team. They have done their tasks well. But their careful planning and their attention to detail could only accomplish so much. What comes after that, the deepest blessings of this day, come our way as a result of plans larger than our own. I asked the Team, at our meeting last Sunday evening, whether their planning had intended for Consecration Sunday to fall on Christ the King Sunday. The answer was “No, not really.” It was more a matter of trying to complete all this before the busyness of Thanksgiving and Advent. Plans larger than our own were at work in making these two coincide. And I want to take a few minutes to point out how appropriate it is that this has occurred.

By now you should have a reasonably good understanding of Consecration Sunday. Even if you missed the temple talks of the past three weeks, your presence here, at 10:00 am rather than 8:30 or 11:00 means you know something about what is going on. Consecration Sunday is an opportunity for us to come together as a community, for us all to come together, and consider what it is that God calling upon us to do. What we will be able to do, as a congregation, is to be built upon what it is that God is calling each of us, as individuals to do. Consecration Sunday shifts the locus of action. Rather than saying, “This is what St. Michael will be doing in the coming year – can you join the effort.” We ask, “What is God calling you to give?” and build the ministry of St. Michael around those offerings. This morning we encourage you to see yourself as one who has been consecrated, for service to God. This morning we will ask you to consecrate your financial resources, making them an instrument for the work of God’s Kingdom.

That is what Consecration Sunday is about.

But today is also Christ the King Sunday. And long before there was a Consecration Sunday, Christ the King Sunday as been on our liturgical calendar as a time to come together and do the same thing. We assemble on Christ the King in order to look back over the previous year, consider all that God has done for us, and then decide whether all of this is going to make any difference in the way we live our lives. The liturgy of Christ the King Sunday forms around the question of whether we will proclaim Christ as our King? Or will we go off looking for another?

Christ the King is a “consecration Sunday,” whether or not it happens to coincide with the Stewardship Committee’s planning.

Consecration Sunday provides us with the opportunity to make tangible our devotion to the one we affirm as our Lord and Master, our devotion to Christ the King.

Neither of these is a gimmick or trick. We are not setting up some sort of “show” for our giving, and we are clearly not in the business of setting up measuring sticks for faithfulness. No one is to feel pressured into doing more than they know they are capable of doing. The presence of any such emotions would mean that all of this is a colossal failure. And let me repeat what you have heard many times already - determining our response to God with regard to financial sacrifice is not to be taken as some sort of test of how deeply we love God. We will have done a disservice to Consecration Sunday and to Christ the King Sunday if any such thoughts are present among us.

That is the disclaimer. Let me return to the main message. Your devotion to Christ is shown through your participation in worship, your personal prayers, and your service to others. Using the image from today’s Gospel reading, we become the sheep of God’s fold, who go about these tasks without ever stepping back to consider them, or perhaps even to realize that they are indicators of our consecration. Today we want to pull ourselves back a bit from the activity and consider the match between what God has entrusted to us and what we are capable of giving back.

In the Gospel lesson, the Son of Man comes and he sits on his throne and he separates people, one from another. At first, those being separated don’t understand why they are being put into one group or another. Notice that both groups ask, “Lord when?” Those who have done the will of their father ask. Those who have failed to care for the least among us also ask. Neither group engaged in their actions with the intention of obtaining a particular reward. Both were living out their lives in accordance with what they considered to be important. When the Son of Man comes, he sits down among them and allows their actions to reveal what they truly value.

The reason for Consecration and for Christ the King is to make sure that we are aware of how our actions reveal what it is that we value in our lives. We need to be encouraged to consider what our behavior says about what we hold dear.

I have said my “Thank yous” and I would never take any of them back. But I hope I won’t offend anyone by saying that in these last four days a few of the well-laid plans were abandoned. As much energy and effort as had been put into Consecration Sunday, and as important as the events of this day are to all of us, everything shifted on Tuesday with the death of Lum Leonard. Nothing we had planned for this morning would be allowed to take precedence over celebrating the life of our brother in Christ and making sure that the news of his resurrection was proclaimed. All of this special stuff we had planned was set aside so we could go back to what it is that we do every day of every week of every year. The “sheep” gathered yesterday to acknowledge one of their own. Yesterday’s gathering is the true consecration, the powerful celebration of Christ as King. Today’s events affirm that we are committed to continuing to do what it is that we have done so well in the past four days.

God has done much. Exceedingly much. Embarrassingly too much. What are we able and prepared to do in return? On Consecration Sunday we have the opportunity to decide. On Christ the King Sunday we join our responses with those of God’s children in every time and every place.

Amen.

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