Today is one of those days where there are so many different possibilities to preach about. First of all it is the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I wish all of you the gift of gratitude as you celebrate. For those of you who do not have any family to share the day with, I pray that you will find a special way to show your thankfulness and be blessed. Tonight I will be participating in the ecumenical Thanksgiving at Hillsboro Methodist Church and I hope many of you will be there with me—so I’m eliminating a sermon with a Thanksgiving theme. Originally, we were supposed to have a special guest speaker talk to us about homelessness, especially in this area. She was unable to come because of family illness. At first I thought I would go on and preach on the homeless. Although I have spent much of the last 13 years working with the homeless in places such as Skid Row in LA and the streets and parks of our nation’s capitol, I don’t have experience with the rural poor, so I have chosen to let that topic go for today. For those of us that like to follow the lectionary, today’s topic is Christ the King. The lectionary Gospel lesson that I did not have read is about Jesus’ crucifixion where his persecutors raised a sign over him saying “King of the Jews”, and the soldiers and leaders tormented him with statements such as, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” (Lk. 23:38) One of the criminals hanging on a cross beside him also says, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us! (v. 39b). The other important part of this scripture are the often quoted words of Jesus as he hung from the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they do.”

Where is Christ the King? Can you see him? To help you with this task I’m going to tell you two very different stories. The first story is taken from Flannery O’Connor’s short story entitled Revelation.* The second is an anonymous folk tale about a guru meditating in his mountain cave.

The scene is a doctor’s office where Mrs. Turpin and her husband, Claud, described as a “lean stringy old fellow” is waiting along with a few other people. As is Mrs. Turpin’s practice, she has made judgments about her waiting room companions. There is a “white trash” woman with a sick child, a pleasant plain woman with her very unattractive daughter whom Mrs. Turpin judges to be about 18 or 19. The girl is reading a book. In Mrs. Turpin’s mind she compares each of these folks with herself and as is usual, she comes out quite favorable. She may not be the most educated or privileged person in the room, but she judges herself to be one of the best. She tries to make conversation. She’s bothered by that ‘fat girl’ with the big scowl that’s sitting across from her, but she chatters on. The white trash woman comments, “One thang I don’t want. Hogs, Nasty stinking things, a-gruntin and a-rootin all over the place.” Mrs. Turpin replies, “Our hogs are not dirty and they don’t stink…They’re cleaner than some children I’ve seen … We have a pig-parlor.” As you can see even Mrs. Turpin’s hogs are superior to the swine of others’—certainly cleaner than the child of the poor woman sitting across from her. She stops her chattering for a moment to listen to the saccharine lyrics of a song playing on the radio, thinking to herself that she is a good person who always tries “to help anybody out that needed it…whether they were white or black, trash or decent.”

By this time she notes that the girl’s eyes were fixed like two drills” upon her. Noting that the girl has a book, Mrs. Turpin says, “You must be in college.” She is determined to draw her out, determined to teach her polite manners. The girl says nothing. Her mother answers for her. Mrs. Turpin says loud enough for the girl to hear her, “It never hurt anyone to smile. It just makes you feel better all over.” She continues, “If it’s one thing I am, it’s grateful. When I think of all I could have been besides myself …I just feel like shouting, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is!”

At that moment, the book hits Mrs. Turpin just over her left eye. She sprawls on the floor as others scream. The girl is restrained and taken away but not before whispering in Mrs. Turpin’s ear, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.”

Now “Mrs. Turpin felt entirely hollow except for her heart, which swung from side to side as if it were agitated by a great empty drum of flesh.”

Mrs. Turpin, the once-large, self-assured, confident woman is reduced to a ‘hollow, empty drum”. She was treated and sent home, still feeling horrible. As she lay on her bed that night, a damp washcloth over her eye, she repeats to herself tearfully, “I am not a wart hog from hell.” But Flannery writes, “The denial had no force…. She had been singled out for the message, though there was trash in the room to whom it might justly have been applied…. The message had been given to Ruby Turpin, a respectable, hard-working, church-going woman.”

The next day Mrs. Turpin staggers down toward the ‘pig parlor’. She stares at the hogs and speaks words of fury, “How am I a hog and me both? How am I saved and from hell too? Mrs. Turpin has received a ‘revelation’, delivered in the sneering words of the disturbed, ugly girl in the waiting room. She has had her day of judgment. For one stunning, terrible moment she has been made to gaze in the mirror of truth and seen her life as it is—a poorly constructed sham built over her put downs of everyone else. She is worse than the ‘white-trash’ she abhors. She is a ‘wart hog from hell,’ a person whose constant need to reassure herself of her own worthiness is testimony of how she knows herself to be terribly unworthy. Sound familiar to anyone?

Still at the pigpen, Mrs. Turpin receives a second revelation. She sees a ‘visionary light’ amid the grunting and rutting of the pigs. She sees a vast bridge, swung from earth up to heaven. Upon it are vast hordes of souls rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of Negroes in white robes and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything, good orderly people, yet she could see by their shocked faces that even their virtues were being burned away. They have nothing, even those who thought they had something, EXCEPT FOR THE GRACIOUS EMBRACE OF A GOD WHO CALLS THEM UP TO HIS KINGDOM. This is the forgiveness that Jesus promised even to those who hung him on a cross. It is the forgiveness that belongs to each of us today.

The second story I want to share goes like this: A Guru was meditating in his mountain cave when he was approached by the abbot of a well-known monastery.

"What is it you seek", asked the Guru?

The abbot recounted a tale of woe. At one time his monastery had been famous throughout the western world. Their small cells were filled with young aspirants, those who desired to become monks, and its church had resounded to the chant of its monks. But hard times had come on the monastery. People no longer flocked there to nourish their spirits, the aspirants had dried up, and the church was almost silent. There were only a handful of monks left and these went about their duties with heavy hearts.

Now this is what the abbot wanted to know - "Is it because of some sin of ours that the monastery has been reduced to this state?"

"Yes", replied the Guru, "a sin of ignorance."

"And what might that sin be?"

"One of your number is the Messiah in disguise and you are ignorant of this", replied the Guru - and having said so he closed his eyes and returned to his meditation.

Throughout the long journey back to his monastery the abbot's heart beat fast as he thought that the Messiah –Christ the King- had returned to earth and was right there in his monastery. How was it that he had failed to recognize him? And who could it be? Brother Cook? Brother Sacristan? Brother Treasurer? Brother Prior? No, not he; he had too many defects, alas. But then, the Guru had said he was in disguise. Could those defects be part of his disguise? Come to think of it, everyone in the monastery had defects. And one of them had to be Messiah.

Back in the monastery the abbot called together all the monks and told them what he had discovered. They looked at one another in disbelief. The Messiah? Here? Incredible. But he was supposed to be here in disguise. So, maybe. What if it were so and so? Or the other one over there? Or...

One thing was certain. If the Messiah were there in disguise, it was not likely that they would recognize him. So they took to treating everyone with special respect and consideration. "You never know", they said to themselves when they dealt with one another, "maybe this is the one."

The result was that the atmosphere of the monastery became vibrant with joy. Soon dozens of aspirants were seeking admission to the order. - And once again the church echoed with the holy and joyful chant of monks who were aglow with the spirit of love.

Now back to the first story: Mrs. Turpin saw herself being brought to the judgment that Jesus talks about in Matthew 25. Whoever ministers, serves, honors one of the least of these—the hungry, the thirsty, the poor, the sick, the ugly, they minister, they do it unto me. In the second story the monks were privileged to learn that indeed the Christ was living among them; therefore, they transformed their relationships with each other bringing about an atmosphere of great joy, compassion, and love.

Jesus, our Messiah, our Lord and king, is here today somewhere in this church, somewhere in this community. My Thanksgiving prayer is that we will treat each other and the stranger as if that person is Christ the King. Amen.