SERMON SNAPSHOT: Sunday, November 22, 2020

Dear Friends in Christ –

I know many if not most of us are ready to flip the calendar. 2020 has been a challenge I don’t need to articulate. Well, this Sunday is the last Sunday of the year – the ecclesial year at least! We are completing a long season known as "ordinary" (not!) and moving into a festival time. Moving from green to purple, from ordinary to extraordinary – to advent, the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event – celebrating the enfleshment of God. Sounds weird, huh? It’s not weird, its breathtaking, it's truly awesome (you know I hardly use that word). That God – yes, that God, the God, set aside divinity and came alongside God’s creatures and creation. Pandemics, elections, fires and floods beware! Jesus came and comes, enlisting us in the campaign to reclaim that which is his. Is it a "kingdom"? I prefer the archaic term, "realm" of God. Yet we finish the liturgical year on a high note – Christ the King Sunday, established by the Pope in 1925 to counter the rise of secularism in Europe. Well, I say thank you to Pope Pius XI. I’m grateful for any chance to point to Jesus and if the entire western Church is willing to come along, all the better.

This Sunday we say goodbye to our primary engagement with the gospel of Matthew for a couple of years, Matthew, whose gospel teems with the themes of judgment, righteousness, accountability. It’s been a good run. So, what a fitting text we get to engage: Matthew 25:31-46.

Jesus returns in the clouds with "blazing beauty, angels surrounding him and sits on the throne of judgment." Are we ready? Let’s talk.

In anticipation—