Homily: He Smells of Them

 

Year A / Ordinary Time / Week 34 / Sunday: Solemnity of Christ the King

Readings: Ezekiel 34.11-12, 15-17 / Psalm 23.2-2, 2-3, 5-6 (R/v 1) / 1 Corinthians 15.20-26, 28 / Mathew 25.31-46

“When the Son of Man comes in glory….” This is how Jesus speaks of his second coming in today’s gospel. Perhaps, this is how we associate Jesus as King – the one who comes in glory, with power and might, majesty and authority. 

Is this how we are to understand Jesus’ kingship?  

Our readings offer us a different image of Jesus as king. As shepherd-king. I would suggest that this is a good image of who a king is and what a king does – one who leads not by power and authority but with care. Genuine care for his people. In fact, genuine care for others must distinguish good leadership by Christians and non-Christians alike.  Empathy, understanding and uplifting the other must characterize such leadership, even for kings.

Today we hear again of the kind of shepherd-king Jesus is. He tends to the flock. He leads all to the safe, restful pastures. He guides all onto the right paths. He rescues the lost and scattered. He feeds all who hunger. He tends to the injured. He brings all home safely. Each of us knows this truth about Jesus as the Good Shepherd in our prayer, the homilies we hear, and the spiritual writings we read.  We especially know this through the goodness of many people who look out, care and support us, and so remind us of the kind of shepherding Jesus does for all peoples. 

But why and how is Jesus the shepherd-king we ought to celebrate? For several reasons that remind us of the kingly nature of his care.

The shepherd-king leads and cares by going to the people and attending to them in the everydayness of their daily lives. He leaves the safety of the sheepfold and shepherds his sheep in the wilderness and the unsafe, in the messy and the soiled, stained and sinful world of their lives. 

The shepherd-king does the work of caring for his people himself. Notice how he repeatedly says in the Frist Reading, “I myself” will pasture, rescue, look for the stray, bandage the wounded, and watch over everyone. Here is the king shepherding his people in the pastures and the trenches where they live and work, pray and play. He does all this himself. This is how he leads his people: he shows them the way to care for others.

Indeed, the shepherd-king leads his people not by power that enforces people into obedience, nor by authority that insists his might and right. The good king cares for his people not by majesty that scares his people to follow him in fear, nor by dictates, pronouncements or laws that confine, bind and restrict their freedom to do good. 

The shepherd-king cares not for himself and his wellbeing but for those entrusted to him to steward. One way he cares best is to model the way to live well and happily. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus’s life and ministry show his disciples how to live life better – for others, in God’s love and for God’s life. 

Hasn’t Jesus accompanied us through this pandemic to live in this way? Caring for our wellbeing – spiritual and material – every day so that we can do likewise for all around us? Caring for our salvation by helping us to still live in God’s ways even when we’ve had fewer opportunities to be in Church for Eucharist and faced more challenges to pray daily and live the Sacraments fully as we battled the coronavirus? Most of all, caring for us to become his shepherds in our charity and almsgiving to many in need at this time?

The message of today’s gospel is that Jesus will judge us on the quality of our own shepherding, of how we care for one another when our earthy life ends. "I have been with you and for you, shepherding you as your king; have you done likewise too?" Yes, how are we caring for others? Take heart if we haven’t: there is still time to be kind and to care for each other.

Pope Francis demands that priests should smell of the people they serve if we are truly shepherding as Jesus shepherds. I want to suggest that this same test – “Do we smell of the sheep in our care?”  – must be for all Christians. If we are seriously Jesus’ disciples, we must all smell of the people God entrusts into our lives to care, to forgive, to reconcile, to uplift, and to love. This is how Christ the King would want his people to be – like him in caring for everyone and smelling of them.

Do we smell of each other? Will Christ the King also smell this of you and me?

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

photo: egyptindependent.com (internet)