sermon
preached at Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, MD
by
Josh Hosler, Seminarian
Last
Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King)/ Proper
29, Year C/ November 24, 2013
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| Most of this movie is flashbacks. (image from Wikipedia) |
A lot of movies contain a
flashback scene—an interruption of the expected flow of time in order to take us
back to something that happened earlier. Often a flashback is meant to fill us in
about things that we, the viewers, didn’t know before: the childhood trauma
that made the bad guy act this way, or the grand sacrifice that the
now-deceased husband made for his wife’s sake, or the fatal moment in which the
butler “dunnit.” Sometimes the flashback comes near the beginning of the movie,
to set the stage for the developing plot. Or right at the end, to provide that
one missing piece that unravels the mystery. There’s even the kind of movie in
which nearly everything that occurs is a flashback that points back to the end
moment, which we also saw at the beginning.
Today’s gospel reading is a
flashback. Or maybe it’s a flash-forward. At any rate, it doesn’t seem like it
belongs here. Jesus on the cross? In late November? But Good Friday was months
ago—it’s months away. Why on earth are we talking about this now? Just last
week, Jesus was talking about the impending doom of the temple in Jerusalem.
Why did we skip over the Last Supper, the arrest, Peter’s betrayal, the trial
before Pontius Pilate? We don’t even hear about Jesus’ death and
resurrection—just this isolated moment on the cross and his exchange with the
bandits hanging on either side of him.
What a strange time warp we find
ourselves in. But this flashback does have a purpose. And that purpose has
everything to do with the collect we prayed at the beginning of the service: “Almighty
and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your
well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that
the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought
together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”
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| Christus Rex from St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Medina, WA |
In my home church near Seattle, a
giant cross hangs over the altar. Hanging on that cross is Jesus—but not the
broken-bodied, nearly naked Jesus we typically see on a crucifix. This Jesus is
dressed in royal robes, with a crown on his head. It’s the kind of cross called
a Christus Rex—Christ the King. This is the week when we assert that
Christ is our king. And this is another example of the kind of churchy language
that we can all too easily become accustomed to. What does it mean to proclaim
Christ as our king, especially in a country that has bowed to no king for well
over 200 years?
For it is actually a very
political statement. If anyone out there gets twitchy when politics get
preached from the pulpit, you might want to cover your ears when I say this: all
of Christianity is political. That’s because it has everything to do with who
we follow as our true leader, even as we vote for, or suffer through, or
protest against lesser political leaders. It has everything to do with the way
those in power treat those without power. Just look at the Prophet Jeremiah,
who tells us today that God is sick of bad political leadership. His government
isn’t shutting down or defaulting on its loans, but it is mistreating its most
vulnerable subjects. A shepherd who scatters the sheep and drives them away
needs to be fired immediately. God promises to do just that, and then to gather
the flock back together from the many lands of the earth. God also promises to
appoint new leadership, shepherds who will take good care of the sheep.
Furthermore, God’s work will be so thorough that, when all is said and done,
not a single sheep will be missing.
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| Nero (image from Wikipedia) |
In the letter to the Colossians,
we hear that Christ is the “firstborn of all creation,” and that the entire
universe was created through him. That’s quite a claim to make of a first-century
Palestinian Jew who only spent 30 years on this earth! But it is a statement of
political opposition. It’s the same language the Roman Empire used as
propaganda to force the submission of the many diverse ethnic and religious
groups over which it ruled. The early Christians boldly re-appropriated the
language of kingship to proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth, recently executed
criminal, was in fact alive again and was actively reigning in their lives in
the place of Rome. And so the language is still political for us today:
whatever other authorities and powers may lay claim to our allegiance, Jesus
Christ is the one who holds the prior and absolute claim on us. He is the Good
Shepherd, the new leadership God has appointed to gather the sheep together.
What does all this mean for our
day-to-day life? In the 21st century, what does it mean to follow
God more closely than we do our elected officials? Just the thought of that
makes me a little uncomfortable. I like separation of church and state,
and I can’t stand the thought of some group of Americans coming to power while
claiming to speak in God’s voice. So it must not mean that we work toward a
theocracy. But it also can’t mean just living our private lives, doing our
private devotions, and not talking about religion at cocktail parties. Religion
that does not take the prophets seriously is ineffective, neutered religion.
Author Jim Wallis once said, “God is personal, but never private.”
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| (image from Relevant magazine) |
We can and must live our faith
out loud and with conviction while also building meaningful
relationships with
those who disagree with us. We can and must look out for the most vulnerable, doing
the best we can to work within the world’s corrupt systems and eventually to
transform them. This is work we can do with Christians of all stripes, with
non-Christians, and with those who follow no god at all. The work of following
Jesus is sacrificial work, even when it takes forms that might seem at first to
require less of us. We said it all through our stewardship season: “We will not
offer to God offerings that cost us nothing.” Christ doesn’t reign from a
throne, but from a cross. Christ showed that he was king of all in the very
process of losing everything in death. Not only his life, but also his death
and resurrection are our blueprint for Christian living.
Each week at the Eucharist, we
offer to God our “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.” Even to come to church
costs time and energy and effort and attention—and if this has been a challenge
for you, well done! We’re glad you’re here. As this challenge becomes less
challenging and becomes a part of the fabric of our lives, our faith deepens,
and we make deeper sacrifices. To follow Jesus costs us our pride, the pride that
whispers, “Don’t get too close to people; you know better than they do anyway.”
To follow Jesus costs us our fear, the fear that whispers, “Keep all the
possessions you can; you might need them later.” To follow Jesus costs us our
need to be right, to be in control, to cling to power and to make ourselves the
rulers of our own private universes.
Now, these sacrifices will do
nothing to save us from the power of death. That was Christ’s work, and it is
already finished. But over time, this sacrificial work will change our very
nature, transforming us into good shepherds ourselves. Through our baptism, we,
too, are called to join the ranks of God’s new leadership, all the while
serving the one Good Shepherd, Jesus, as he gathers the sheep to him. As we
become more like Jesus, we can participate more fully in the Kingdom of God. Does
this level of sacrifice sound like a giant burden? Perhaps. But it is also our
greatest hope. In giving ourselves to others and to the world, we can learn to
“endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks.” No matter what
other kingdom may lay claim to us, we have been “transferred into the kingdom”
of God through Christ.
And when it seems like the end is
near … when it all seems pointless … when entire worlds of meaning come
crashing down around our heads, our King Jesus shows us that it is not the end.
The earliest Christians also had to trust in Jesus to save and guide them as
they, too, sought to transform the world. No matter how scattered we have
become, no matter how many hills separate us from the shepherd, we are
gradually being gathered back together. We’re in a flashback, remember? And in
that flashback, Jesus is reigning victorious from the cross, dying in agony
while simultaneously forgiving his enemies and promising the convicted bandit
in his company that truly he will be in paradise this very day. Christ’s
suffering is the way he becomes our king. Will our suffering hold any less
meaning? Christ reigns victorious from the cross. This is the last word, and
even as we pull it from the middle of the book, it is the last story.
Next week, the new Christian year
begins. Next week we will go back to the beginning, the beginning of a new
church year, a beginning that is also an ending. In the weeks to come we will
hear of the King who is to come—a completely unexpected, revolutionary kind of
king—a king who shows us how to live, how to die, and how to be a part of the
resurrection to come. Amen.
