Year A / Reign of Christ / Christ the King

I’ve written another reflection on this particular reading here: Alternative reflection for Year A / Reign of Christ / Christ the King

Reflection:

When did I see you naked, alone, hungry, poor, in prison, dis empowered, in detention, suffering with AIDS, malnourished, ostracized, thirsty, in a war torn country, poor or as a stranger?

This is an intriguing question, and one that, if i were to be honest would prefer not having to answer for at any time of my life, think about it, how many times have you walked past a Jesus, how many times have you clothed and fed and welcomed?

Sure, one might be able to say that I’ve been earning money that has then been donated to organisations that have fed hungry people, provided homes to the homeless, gave water to the thirsty… but is that what we’re being asked? How many times have you done this, opened your house, your pocket, your life to another? Sometimes the corporatising of welfare has meant that for many of us we would be able to say that we’ve never seen the poor or the hungry, simply because we’ve never opened our eyes, we’ve let others do it for us, in how many ways have we distanced ourselves from those who could be (are) Jesus?

In Australia, as in America we’ve even created spaces where those who are a stranger and in prison so that we will never have to see them, unless of course we go out of our way to see them. Detention centres for those who fit so many categories are placed in far rural Australia, so far away that for a large percentage of us we’d have to travel many days in order to see the centres…

Out of sight out of mind…

But today’s readings had me thinking a lot about the Lord’s table…

We often speak of the Lord’s table as full, open, welcoming, as a place of a feast, of hospitality, we paint the table as a place of absolute hospitality of celebration, of friends eating together and of abundance. This paints us a picture of a Jesus who is welcoming, loving, open, rich, abundant, loving…

When we take on the Lord’s table as our own in celebrating the Eucharist these are some of the characteristics that we’d like to project, in the Eucharist we show the best of our community, it’s the time when we are welcoming (if there is anyone new there) when we are celebratory (if we can do it quietly and in reverence) when we feast (if by feast you mean small cubes of bread and cups of wine) when we are with friends (sometimes)…

But…

Jesus’ story makes us ask these questions… What if the poor man on the street is Jesus? What if the refugee is Jesus? What if the stranger is Jesus? What if the naked woman is Jesus?

Our usual response might be to invite them to the table of our Lord, but if we think more about this story perhaps we’re being asked to eat at their table, for if they are indeed Jesus then their table is the table of the lord’s…

This isn’t that new, for if we think more about Jesus ministry we find that he ate with the poor and the unclean, with tax collectors, and in many of these stories he invites himself to the table of the other…

Perhaps we’re being called to eat at Jesus’ table, perhaps we’re being challenged to revision the table of our Lord, perhaps we’re being called to do more than (just) feed the hungry, clothe the naked, but to then eat at their table. Perhaps we’re being challenged about the notion of conversion that has us bring “the other” to our table and being shown a picture of the Kingdom of God as a place where one eats at “the other’s” table, in their own shoes…

How does one become a servant to the poor and oppressed?

So, two weeks ago the reading from Matthew asked us how we would prepare for the Kingdom of God, last week’s reading spoke about some of the consequences of choosing to live a Kingdom life and this week we’re being given a vision of how we are to prepare for the Kingdom, who we’ll need to eat with, who our neighbor is and where to find the Son of God in the world… in the faces of those we are called to serve.

They aren’t easy images, but as I said last week being Christian wasn’t meant to be easy….