A Question on the Last Sunday of the Christian Year, November 23, 2008

By Peter L. DeGroote

1. The last Sunday of the Christian year is traditionally called "Christ the King" Sunday. Shucking the traditional language, we might say it is the day that we proclaim Jesus as our leader, the one whose values and teachings serve as the primary foundation of our way of life. I turned to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 through 7.

2. Matthew's authors understood that our faith is defined by our behavior. Specifically, that Jesus’ followers demonstrate their belief by living what many in the early church called The Way.

3. Critical to Jesus’ method was the creation of new communities living out a new way of life. Accordingly, some of the teachings in the Sermon are clearly addressed to the community as a whole. When the word “you” appears it is helpful to think “y’all” or “all of you.”

4. Two of those “all of you” teachings were the center of my Christ the King meditation. “You are the salt of the earth" and "You are the light of the world." Not addressed to individuals, it speaks to the church (gathering) as a community of believers (doers). The salt and the lightto which Jesus refers is not intrinsic to just any group. The salt is mined and the light is ignited by those relationships that grow out of following Jesus’ Way.

5. Another teaching: "A city built on a hill cannot be hid." Often used to claim that the Church is a special group that God has put in a prominent place for others to honor, something gets lost in the translation. Scholars tell us the statement is best understood in the following manner: "You should live so that you are like a city on a hill, providing an example to the world that cannot be ignored." Note again the emphasis on behavior, on the salt and the llight. 

6. Some call the Sermon Jesus’ inaugural address because it contains most of the themes of Jesus’ mission. By summarizing many of his teachings, and incorporating subsequent community learning, the Sermon presents a set of guidelines for The Way, what we might call The Christian life. That was the goal of those 2nd and 3rd generation Christian writers as they were working out how to be followers of Jesus in their time and place, a goal for all followers in any time and place.  

7. The sermon ends with a well-known parable that begins, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock."
   An old question came to mind: "Why do you call me Lord, Lord if you do not do as I say?" That seems to be addressed to the individual “you” as well as the communal “y’all.”