The gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday was from Mathew 25. It is a parable, a story Jesus' tells about the Kingdom of God. This is not a very Lutheran parable. I don’t like the consequences. Because It sounds as if Jesus is saying that in the end what really counts are your good works, your charity toward the least among you. It sounds like the end of the age will bring divine judgment that will separate the sheep from the goats; the ones on the right are the righteous who will enter heaven, the ones who-- unbeknownst to them-- had served their King by serving the least among them. And the unrighteous are sent to hell for having not realized that they had not served their king by ignoring the basic needs of the least. That’s what it sounds like. In the end God judges us by our charity toward the least. And Lutherans don’t believe this. We believe that we are all sinners before God, that the cross and resurrection of Jesus makes us righteous, not our works or deeds. We believe that we are justified by grace through faith, apart from works of the law. That means that reconciliation with God is not something we accomplish, but something that we receive. At best we might say that good works flow out of a right relationship with God. We might say that the righteous ones in Jesus’ parable are the ones who have come to know and trust the God made known through the ministry of Jesus and his church and have then come to live as Kingdom people.
