• Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17
• Psalm 23:1-6
• 1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28
• Matthew 25:31-46

Next Sunday is the feast of Christ the King, and the Church’s year comes to its sudden end. What kind of king do the readings offer us this week? Rather charmingly, it is a shepherd-king whom we are to celebrate, it seems.

The first reading is taken from a long polemic by Ezekiel on the leaders of Israel who have been behaving precisely as shepherds should not behave. And God’s reaction? “Look – I am going to look for my flock and tend them…and rescue them from all the places where they have been scattered on the day of darkness and thick cloud…I shall shepherd my flock, and I shall make them lie down.” This is a beautiful picture of God; this one will not let go of his people, whatever the appointed shepherds may do. However, it is not open to the sheep to bleat complacently about the inadequacy of their shepherds, for they too have a judgement to face, “Look – I am judging between one animal and another”. That is a theme that will recur in next Sunday’s gospel reading.

Not surprisingly, the psalm is the lovely song of God as shepherd, who “makes me lie down by waters of repose”. Here too we notice that the sheep must look out, for God carries his “rod and your staff”, which can be used against recalcitrant animals. Nevertheless, they are promised a “banquet, in the sight of my enemies; you have anointed my head with oil, my cup is overflowing”. So we rejoice at this charming picture.

The second reading is from Paul, who, as always, is talking about his beloved Jesus, and his Resurrection from the dead, which some of the Corinthians had been unwise enough to contest. The point here is the subordination of everything to Christ, God in Christ reversing the disaster that had happened in Adam, “when he hands over the Kingdom to his God and Father”. Christ is a king (and that is why we have this reading for next Sunday), “for he must be king until he places all the enemies under his feet; and death is the last enemy to be cancelled out”. However, this king knows his place and “will be subordinated to [God] who subordinated everything to him, so that God might be all in all.” Our king, unlike those known to Ezekiel, does not play power-games, but knows his place.

The gospel starts with this king looking rather grand. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all his angels with him, then he will sit down on his throne of glory”. The focus, however, is not on him, but on “all the Gentiles”, who are going to be divided, like sheep and goats at the end of the day in the desert. And they are going to be divided on the grounds of their treatment of him. This does not mean, however, that we are dealing with a paranoid Jesus, who demands proper respect. It turns out that the “sheep” are absolutely baffled to be told that they are “blessed of my Father”, because “I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you gathered me in, naked and you put clothes on me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me.” The “sheep” have absolutely no recollection of this, and ask when it could have happened. The answer is quite simple: “every time that you did it for any one of these utterly unimportant brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me”. Notice that he is not at all interested in the “goats”, who are not given many lines. The point is in the story’s final line, that “the just will go off to life everlasting”. The shepherd-king whom we celebrate next Sunday is one who is to be encountered with the poor and the marginalised, precisely the people with whom Jesus was always to be found. This is quite a challenge to end our liturgical year.