Season of Creation 2013 Year C 2013
Jeremiah 31: 27-34
Psalm 119: 97-104
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18: 1-8
I am wondering if your first thought was, “Gee what a relief”, when I read the phrase in the passage from Jeremiah, “the soul that sins shall die!” It probably would not have been mine, if this was the first time I had read the passage and had not paid close attention to the context.
The people with whom Jeremiah worked and lived had been through some very difficult times. It seems that they had begun to believe that they were doomed because their ancestors had turned their backs on their heritage, their faith and their God and their expulsion from and destruction of their land was viewed as God’s punishment for their sins.
“The tide is about to turn”, says Jeremiah, “better days are on the way.” One of the purposes of his preaching was to proclaim to the people that they would indeed “turn it around”, that they “could start with a new slate, wiped clean”, or rather God would turn it around. They will no longer have to pay, personally, for the mistakes of their ancestors. They needed to hear that they could inherit the promise made to Abraham and Sarah, so long before. IF they followed the covenant themselves and took on this responsibility their land would grow crops once again and their homes would be filled with children.
The prophet tells them that they must take personal responsibility for their behaviour and no longer would they be bound by the fable about the taste of sour grapes going on and on. No longer would they have the excuse that they were doomed to an existence in exile from their land and the favour of their God.
The news is good, as our passage begins, yet it must have sounded to the people like a “pipe dream”, like a completely unrealistic hope.
“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. “
That’s the good news, the hope for the future. What follows is what they know all too well, (of course, the speaker is taken to be God)“And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil,” - in fact they had known this for so many years, so much so that the next part would have been beyond belief, as God continued to speak through the prophet Jeremiah, “ so I will watch over them to build and to plant.”
This is a passage of hope, of good news, of restoration. This passage tells them that they will become who they were called to be: God’s people in their own land, a light to the nations.
To me, the God who speaks in this passage sounds very disappointed, hurt even; the language used is that of family and home. He refers to himself as the people’s husband. The image is that of a husband and wife walking hand in hand and caring for each other in love, BUT then the people becoming disobedient, despite the care given and received.
The passage involved another chance, a chance to begin over, but it is not a “you can do whatever you please” kind of chance, but rather, “it’s up to you to keep the covenant kind of chance”. Don’t use your history as an excuse, you can have a part in the fortunes of your people turning around.”
Jeremiah speaks of a covenant written on the heart, not in a book. Of course, he is speaking metaphorically, but what a beautiful image.
Reflecting on this image, I come up with some conclusions - it would be impossible to forget something that was written on the heart. It would be as close as breathing, as the heart-beat and as essential to their lives of faith.
Indeed there would be no need to teach these things; it would be in their DNA, to use a more modern metaphor.
I recall taking my nephew for a drive one day when he was three or four and I asked him what a red light meant and he said, very loudly, STOP. He told me I used the same setting on the gear shift as his mother did - the D. He had not been taught these things, like most children, he picked them up by observation. The law of God written on the heart will become part of the community in much the same way and the basics will be passed down in much the same way.
Taking this metaphor a little further, when we learned to drive there were rules we had to learn, and even memorize for the test, but at some point they became almost second nature. As seasoned drivers, no one had to tell us anymore how far from a corner to use your turn signal when you were in the country, or when you were in a town - you just knew and you knew what those different distances looked like.
Sometimes though the law needs to be reflected upon in a little deeper way because the context is new or different in some ways. We know its wrong to steal and most of us would never do a “gas and dash” or steal a bag of chips from the convenience store, BUT at some point we probably had to be told or challenged that copying a song is stealing from the artist who created it.
The Psalmist writes of meditating on the law, of loving the law. In a way it sounds kind of extreme but the way that scripture works in our hearts, works its way into our hearts, or if we extend this metaphor, writes itself on our hearts, is by reading and reflect*ing on the law, on the scripture, not just memorizing it, so that it can be recited but allowing it to become a part of one’s way of thinking, a part of one’s soul, a part of one’s way of looking at the world.
In a time when there was no “new testament’ Paul advises Timothy to rely on the scriptures for instruction in the faith, and of course he was referring to what we call the Old Testament.
Perhaps Timothy and his community looked to the promises made by God through Jeremiah and perhaps he saw Jesus’ teaching as another example of God seeking to write the law, the way of God on the hearts of the people.
Perhaps one could see the ministry of Jesus as an attempt, once again, to call the people to allow the law to be written on their hearts - not just engraved in their brains or written on scrolls stored safely in the synagogues. Perhaps, with Jesus, the law will become part of who they are.
We are preparing a cook book as a fund-raiser and as a way of sharing cherished recipes. I remember a cook book in which there was a mistake - several proof readers had missed it, because every word in the recipe was actually spelled correctly, there were no mistakes, rather there was something left out. As soon as a cook with much experience at all, picked up the recipe that cook would realize something was missing but might not know how much of that ingredient to put into the batter - I believe the ingredient was 2 cups of flour - I think the recipe was for a cake and I think a couple of people had to take each and every unsold book and add that one ingredient to the recipe. When the law is written on the heart, one knows not only that something is missing, but what it is that is missing.
The people of Israel had replaced God with other things, with other goals. Most of the time, I think, the goal of being a light to the nations was replaced with the desire to be or be like the other nations.
The goal of the person of faith is to be able to add to the life of the wider community, to add salt or zest, or compassion, to the communtiy, not to become so much like the community that there was no difference.
The problem with the people of Jeremiah was that they had existed so long outside of their culture and their land that some of the things that made them distinctive were no longer part of their psyche.
I recall something that the Rt Rev Lois Wilson told a group of students when she was moderator, and it’s a little shocking but that was Lois’ style: “We are called to be the salt of the earth, not the whole stew!”
We are called to be followers of the way of Jesus. We are called to place our faith commitments in such a place in our lives that it is like they are written on our very hearts - so that we cannot possibly forget them or ignore them.
Let us pray that this may be so.
Amen.
Joel 2: 23-32
Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4: 6-18, 16-18
Luke 18: 9-14
I’m sure you can recall the first line or two of the Mac Davis song, “O Lord Its Hard to be Humble”.
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way; I just caint wait to look in the mirror, ‘cause I get better looking each day!
The singer is, “the perfect man”, he is a nightclub performer, is trying to figure out why he is waking up alone in the “star suite” when he is perfect “in every way”.
Have you ever turned on your DVD player or sometime in the previous century, slid a tape into your VCR, and realized the movie was half over. So that you would not be “in the dark”, you had to rewind the tape or reset the DVD player so that you could begin watching the movie at the beginning?
Sometimes the lectionary puts the preacher in the position of preaching on a story or text that is part way through a connected series of events and it is hard to get the bigger picture. This is one of those times.
Each of the gospel writers has an overall picture they want to present of the preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, and each is writing for a particular audience. It is very important to pay attention to the stories that are grouped together because they are put together for a reason.
Last week’s gospel was about an unjust judge and a persistent widow and it was explained by Jesus that we need to be as persistent as this widow in our own prayer. That parable argued from “the lesser” to “the greater”. If an unjust judge would give the widow justice just to get her off of his back, even though he did not care a whit about anyone in need, then God could be depended upon to give those persistent in prayer their just reward. The message: pray often and pray until something happened.
It seems to me that this week’s lesson adds some caveats to the teaching about prayer by taking about the kinds of prayer that are appropriate for the faithful.
Pharisees were a social class who were generally wealthy and they prided themselves on following the Jewish laws with precision and passion. Pharisees tended to be a little “holier than thou” and were mistrusted and resented by common folks. Some may hae been hypocrites but most were sincere in their beliefs and devotion.
THIS Pharisee, the one in the story Jesus tells in today’s passage, is like that perfect man in the Mac Davis song; he may not be “perfect as God is perfect”, but in his own mind and heart, he is certainly much, much better than many folks he can think about, such as that miserable tax collector over there. “Why, they should not even let people like that into worship with the good and upstanding folks like us!” This pharisee represents those who seem to want their prayer life to affirm their righteousness. He thanks God that he is not like sinners, and lo and behold, one is just “over there” in the parable, ready to be used as an example. It seems that he thinks his righteousness is all his own doing and that the condition of the rogues, adulterers and other riff raff are their own fault.
He was the stereotype of the person who was above reproach. He was never going to be “known to police”. He was never going to be a suspect in any kind of wrong doing, for he really and truly didn’t do anything wrong.
The tax collector may not have been all that bad, except he collected taxes for the enemy and was suspected of lining his pockets whether he was or not. You see tax collecting was like a franchise and as long as Rome got what it wanted, the local franchise holder could add whatever commission he wanted. It worked like this. Taxes in “Municipality A” were 10,000, 000. As long as Rome received the 10M, the tax franchisee could charge ten percent, twenty, a hundred, two hundred. Many became rich when their former friends and neighbours struggled under the burden of heavy taxation.
The Romans were an occupying force who kept the peace with a heavy fist. Yet, it was a job. This tax collector no doubt knew how difficult it was to live and not be implicated in systems that oppress and be a faithful person at the same time. He KNEW he needed God - not to call him a sinner, he could do that all on his own, but to raise him by grace and mercy so that he could live, he needed God. He knew he did not deserve anything so he does the only thing he can faithfully do, he throws himself on God’s mercy.
Jesus said that only one was justified or made right with God - the tax collector, NOT the Pharisee. The word “justified” is a word best explained in terms of printing and publishing. If you take a look at the bulletin almost all the text is “left justified” which means that all the first letters or the first words on the line are placed against an imaginary line running down the left hand side. That’s how old fashioned typewriters used to work; that’s how the Hilroy Exercise Books, or “scribblers” we used in school taught us to write.
However, many books are printed with the text lined up against an imaginary right hand margin as well. For this you need a computer to carefully calculate the space between each of the letters so that the text lines up with the margins. Most people probably would, not notice anything peculiar about the spaces between the letters; a computer can do it easily and flawlessly. To justify text is to bring it into a line. This passage speaks of forgiveness and reconciliation to God to God as justification, as bringing them into line with God, God’s will and God’s ways.
So this passage is full of surprises. The every day folk would probably be expecting the Pharisee to be praised but he was not, because he was arrogant. The tax collector was justified because he realized that he was far from living in God’s way.
The Pharisee, even though he fasted (which was a traditional sign of piety) and gave a tenth of his money (presumably to the temple) seemed to regard his biggest claim to fame as his lack of wrong doing.
When Jesus first spoke this parable the audience would, no doubt, have been a mix of Pharisees, common folks, and those classed by everyone else as “sinners”. This sermon would have made the Pharisees uneasy, but the regular folks who fell somewhere in between would have left challenged too.
The goal of persistent prayer is not to pray for what we want until we get it - no matter what we want - neither is the goal to become like someone else, a righteous ones, like the ones who are above reproach, like the ones who are holy (rather than “holier than thou”). Neither is the goal to pray for humility so hard so that we are proud when we achieve that!!!
The goal of the life of prayer, the goal of the life of faith is to seek to pattern ourselves after the ways of God. The goal of the life of faith us to cultivate the sense that we do so only by grace and not our own brilliance and prowess.
The faith journey focusses on mission, on the other, and not making the self as “good as possible”.
If our only goal is to avoid sin then we are not accomplishing much at all. If our only goal is to get to heaven, we may become, as one person put it, “so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good!”
Let us persist in our prayers. Let us persist in our disciplines of giving and service but let us persist in our openness to God’s grace so that we can give the credit to God for anything we are able to accomplish as we seek to follow a path of faithfulness.
Amen
Habakkuk 1: 1-4, 2: 1-4
Psalm 119: 137-144
2 Thessalonians 1: 1-4, 11-12
Luke 19: 1-10
There was once a pub whose owners were so certain that their head bartender was the strongest man around that they offered a standing $1000 prize.
How could you win the prize? Well, the bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon to the contestant. If that person could squeeze one more drop of juice out, he or she would win the money. Over time, many people had tried.....weight-lifters, hockey players, farmers, fishermen, labourers of all kinds, but nobody could do it.
One evening when the bar was packed, a scrawny little man came into the bar, wearing thick glasses and a polyester suit, and said in a small voice, "I'd like to try and win the $1000."
After the laughter had died down, the bartender said, "OK"; grabbed a lemon; and squeezed away. Then he handed the wrinkled remains to the little fellow.
The crowd's laughter turned to silent amazement as the man clenched his little hand around the lemon.... and not one, not two, but SIX drops plopped into the glass.
Then the other patrons cheered, the bartender paid the $1000, and asked the little man: "What do you do for a living?”
The little fellow quietly replied: “I work for the Canada Revenue Agency.”
If you work for the Canada Revenue Agency, please remember, it’s a joke!
Before the creation of five school units in the early 1970's, when there were hundreds of school districts, each of which collected the property taxes used to run the schools. my mom was one of those local tax collectors. Our district was so small it no longer had its own school and needed a “bus subsidy” from the provincial government to get us all to school. (And it was not a fancy, schmancy big yellow bus either.)
In Jesus’ day the “tax collector” was much reviled and would have been shunned by most of the community.
Rome controlled vast territories with a cruel hand and to keep it all going there were heavy taxes. I am told that “tax collectors” bid on a tax contract and, of course, the contract went to the highest bidder. They could charge whatever they wanted as long as Rome got what Rome wanted. There were many, many different taxes.
The perception among the common folks was these tax collectors were lining their pockets while they suffered. In addition, working for Rome was considered to be an affront to the God of Israel, who was supposed to be their ruler, through a divinely appointed king. In Israel politics and religion went together, or were supposed to!
Perhaps being “Chief Tax Collector” made Zacchaeus feel important, but it did not win him many friends outside of those who worked for him.
For some reason Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus; wanted to hear what he had to say. Perhaps he had heard that Jesus associated with people who were on the fringes of society. Zacchaeus did what he felt he had to do, so great was his desire to see Jesus. He ran ahead and climbed a tree which was something a grown man would not normally do!
We find out that Jesus notices him and calls him down and invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house, an honour Zacchaeus could hardly have expected. Of course he would be Jesus’ host. The reaction of the crowd was entirely expected. To them, it reflected badly on Jesus that he would associate with a sinner and a traitor such as Zacchaeus. Jesus was going to go and EAT with Zacchaeus; it was truly shocking. For a person of status to eat at someone’s house was to imply an acceptance of them and one had to be careful about things like this.
When it comes to our own houses we tend to invite people who can invite us back. We join clubs and we each take a turn hosting the group. Everyone takes a turn- that’s a social custom unless its family and then it sometimes is governed by the size of house and table needed to hold the entire clan.
I was at a banquet a few years ago and seats were assigned based on how much money you had given to the organization - the lowest givers being in the very back.
Jesus ministry was about welcoming and especially about welcoming the ones who did not often receive a welcome anywhere else. His reply indicated that only the sick needed a physician. Only the outcasts, the sinners and the prostitutes knew they were in need of love, mercy, and grace. The holy people who looked down their noses at Jesus and seemed to think that they had made it all on their own! Jesus associated with them too, of course, but not them exclusively.
On October 23 a homeless man in Berwick Nova Scotia died when he and his belongings were set on fire as he slept in a bus shelter. The shock of the implications of Harley Lawrence’s untimely and gruesome death has spread around the Maritimes and across the country. Who could do such a thing? Robert Pickton was able to fly under the police radar for so long because he targeted prostitutes, people who were ‘expendable’ to so many in power.
When we are talking about people who are shut out of “polite society” there are often good reasons why people shun them. They may have only a fleeting relationship with bathing. They may be suffering from severe mental illness. They may be addicted to drugs and alcohol.
I once told a colleague from Toronto that my church folks in the rural Maritimes did not think they had much connection to street youth in Toronto and he said, “well a lot of them are from the Maritimes, so they should be.” The reasons they are there are often beyond their control.
As Christmas approaches and we look at what it means to welcome Jesus of Nazareth, we need to look at who he welcomed. We need to look at that baby in the manger all grown up and wonder if we are not being challenged to follow in his way of welcoming, the “child of God” hiding beneath the exterior appearance.
It’s not that Zacchaeus was ok just the way he was - no, he had to repent and was clearly intending to make restitution, BUT he had to first be accepted and be considered worthy of a relationship with the teacher Jesus.
Its not that we have it made and can look at others with contempt; we are all in need to grace and life-changing love.
When we realize that we are loved by grace, not because we deserve it, it can free us from that trap of thinking that others need to straighten up, clean up and smarten up, before we welcome them
What face is coming to mind as we think of welcoming and being welcomed - or NOT? How are we being called to welcome the Zacchaeusses we encounter.
Jesus has welcomed us; we are called to do the same.
Amen.
Haggai 1: 15b -2:9
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 2: 1-5, 13-17
Luke 20: 27-38
The Right Question For The Right Day
One of my high school English teachers wrote the following in my Grade 11 yearbook: ”Best of luck to a student who can be depended upon to come up with an “original” answer! I was also known for my “original” questions. I tended to look at things in different ways than my teachers and my classmates. Some of this, as you might expect, was merely an attempt at time wasting - after all, I was in high school.
On the long ago day, in the gospel story I read just a few minutes ago, some Sadducees, who we are told, did not believe in an afterlife came to Jesus with a question about that same afterlife in which they did not believe.
The scenario they posed in their question, while possible, given their traditions, stretches the limits of credibility. They assumed that having children was the only real purpose of marriage!
They were setting a trap so that either way Jesus would lose! Jesus told them they had to change their basic assumptions and imagine an existence in which marriage, as one example, will not be necessary because children would not be needed in order to make up for the people taken in death, because ageing and death will be no more! They needed to find a new question.
Some of you may have heard of a controversy that, this year at least, is centred around some university students in our who nation’s capital, who see the red poppy as a symbol which glorifies war and are instead promoting a white poppy which is said to symbolize peace. This is not a new discussion. In actual fact the white poppy option, you might call it, was a part of the discussion when the red poppy became a Remembrance Day symbol in 1929.
Poppies have been associated with the remembrance of war dead since the time of Napoleon, but their abundance in the bomb and shell riddled Belgian landscape inspired John McCrae to base his iconic poem, “In Flanders Fields”, on their presence. McCrae, a physician, who was also a veteran of the 2nd Boer war, was sure the war must be won for the Empire and the values it represented. To give up was to dishonour those who lay in graves all over the war ravaged countryside.
After its initial publication the poem, written from the perspective of the war dead, was used as a tool for finding new recruits, particularly because of its last verse. We don’t know what he would have thought in later years because he died of pneumonia early in 1918.
Does the red poppy promote war, or peace along with its enduring legacy as a symbol of remembrance?
I would say this is not the right question for this day! On this day, or these few days, I think we should all hone our focus to the sacrifice of the men and women who put themselves in harms way, especially those who paid the supreme sacrifice.
We cannot re-write the past or know for certain the “what if’s” with respect to past wars. Those are questions for historians and those with the luxury of being able to speculate; they are also questions for another day. Any controversy with respect to present engagements should not lessen our support for our women and men in uniform. On this day we honour the memory of those who have died in war, particularly our fellow Canadians - from the first of the almost 1% of our total population who died in WW1 to Cpl. Yannick Scherrer killed by an IED in the Panjwaii disctrict of Afghanistan on March 27, 2011.
My generation are now called to honour veterans the ages of our own children, people with whom we can identify in ways we never could before.
The television has brought to us some of the horror of war, previously known only in fuzzy pictures, dreaded telegrams, and the stories of those veterans who dared to speak of the most horrible years of their lives.
It is my fervent hope that someday human beings, and nation states will figure out how to solve differences without going to war. Someday those who are in power will not abuse their own citizens so that the other nations of the world have no choice but to intervene with lethal force. Someday the principles of the one we call, “the Prince of Peace” will have taken root in all hearts.
When that comes we will have truly honoured those who lie in Flanders Fields.
Amen.
Isaiah 65: 17-25
Isaiah 12
2 Thessalonians 3: 6-13
Luke 21: 5-19
We have all heard of the story of Chicken Little. Henny Penny is scratching in her barnyard one day and gets hit in the head by a falling acorn. Thinking that the sky is falling she decides she must go and tell the king. What the king can do about a falling sky, we are not sure, but off she goes. On the way she meets Turkey Lurkey, Gander Lander, and Ducky Lucky and then all four of them go off to talk to the king. On the way they meet Foxy Loxy who is more convinced of his hunger than he is of the falling sky and he makes a quick meal of all four after tricking them into trusting him to help them in their quest.
Every so often a prediction of the end of the world makes the news and its gives many people pause. I think the last one was as a result of a certain Mayan calendar running out of days. The Christian idea that Christ will return and bring in a new age, which will end “this age” has been around from the earliest days of Christianity.
Early in the life of the church, those who believed in the resurrection of Jesus came to believe that this event had ushered in a new age, that things had been changed forever and death itself had been defected in some way. But they knew that since there was still pain, suffering and death, this age had not fully arrived. They were, in a sense, in an “in-between time”; they lived in that time between the “already and the not yet”.
The fact that the church lives in the “not yet” was part of the struggle of the early Christian communities and forms a large part of the background to the letter to the church in Thessalonica and the Gospel passage, both read a few minutes ago. Church leaders had to “work against” predictions of the end which were not at all helpful for the life of the community.
It seems that since the church has been living in the light of the resurrection but also in a fallen and broken world, for almost two thousand years, more or less, the writings of Paul, containing advice on this matter, are as relevant today as they were when first written even if our context is completely different.
Perhaps though, we are coming into an age when the Christian community is closer to those first churches than we have been for hundreds of years.
vLet me explain.
For about 1500 years we lived in an era of Christendom. We in the western churches were protected from religious persecution and we enjoyed a fair degree of similarity between our vision of the way the world was supposed to be and the way it was supposed to work - or so we thought.
Census reports now tell us that not only are there an increasing number of followers of “non-Christian” religions in our country there are also more and more who follow no religion at all.
People who are involved in the churches these days are making a conscious choice to be involved and participation on Sunday is just an option among those offered to busy families; one that is not always easy.
Thessalonica was a well off Roman city and their prosperity depended upon their devotion to their devotion to the cult of the Emperor. They were ostracized and becoming Christian cost them. It cost them family. It cost them jobs. Being Christian was neither cool nor a private matter when it became clear to everyone that they were no longer acting in appropriate and expected ways.
They formed communities of worship, devotion and mutual support. The new believers became family to one another.
It is in this context that I need to clarify what is one of the most often mis-understood passages in the Bible: the one about not eating because one is not working. It is a warning against those who were so certain the end was just around the corner that they gave up on all personal responsibility and let others look after their basic needs.
What if your neighbour came for supper because they had no food in the house because the moving van carted it and all their furniture away but for some reason the neighbour didn’t leave in the morning and just kind of moved in, indefinitely. These people had become a burden to the community. Paul himself was so concerned about this that he made his own living, likely as a tent-maker, as he travelled around.
It seems to me that the key advice in this passage is the last line that I read from his letter: “brothers and sisters do not weary in doing what is right”.
In the midst of financial appeal after financial appeal for good and genuinely worthy causes we need to hear this: “brothers and sisters do not weary in doing what is right”.
In the face of the global warming and the challenges of environmentalist experts who tell us we need to decrease our footprint on this planet by eating less meat, burning less oil and gas and using fewer chemicals, we need to hear this: “brothers and sisters do not weary in doing what is right”.
In the face of the knowledge that we will need more and more personal savings for our old age on the one hand, but on the other hand hearing the challenges about the ethics of some of the companies in whom we have invested and knowing who is suffering for our profit, we need to hear this: “brothers and sisters do not weary in doing what is right”.
In the face of the expanding gap between rich and poor and the predicted disappearance of the middle class, we need to hear this: “brothers and sisters do not weary in doing what is right”.
In the face of the hard work we have to do with respect to true reconciliation with our First Nations peoples, we need to hear this: “brothers and sisters do not weary in doing what is right”.
In the face of the bad report we receive from our doctor we need to hear this: “brothers and sisters do not weary in doing what is right”.
Its not about hearing all of this and throwing our hands in the air saying that we cannot do “any more”, but its not about putting our heads in the sand and shutting out the world because we don’t want to hear it either. It’s not about ignoring the things around us - and somehow convincing ourselves we are “entitled” to better than that other person over there, wherever that “over there is”. It’s about embracing the word in which we live and applying the Christian vision to it so that our world can be transformed by the powerful and transformative message of God’s love for the world.
Its about community - looking after one another and balancing our particular mix of blessing and need - in community. It’s about deciding what the right course of action is - to the best of our ability - and then once we have done that , relying on the grace of God
In response to the chaos around us we are called to live in faith and “to never tire of doing the right thing”.
What that looks like for your family may not the same as what it looks like in another. A little uneasiness that we are not doing enough needs to be balanced by a sense of God’s grace that makes faithfulness possible in the first place.
Amen!
Jeremiah 23: 1-6
Luke 1: 68-79
Colossians 1: 11-20
Luke 23: 33-43
We’ve all been on one! A long trip with a child (or even an adult) who is tired of the journey and continually asks, “Are we there yet!” The first time is amusing, because we have barely gotten on the road, the second understandable, but the tenth and eleventh, has become a whine and is downright annoying, especially when YOU know it will be many hours before your GPS will joyfully announce that you “have reached your destination”.
This is that day in the church year when we can say, “We have arrived at our destination”.
The people who designed the lectionary, which is the list of readings many churches, including our own, use to select what passages are read on Sunday, designed it so that we travel through the years from hope to fulfilment in a three year cycle. Instead of beginning at January 1 though, like the secular year does, the church year begins with the first Sunday of Advent and end 52 Sundays later with the Reign of Christ.
The baby whose birth we began to expect 52 weeks ago came, has grown up and is seen here as fulfilling his mission. We are where we expected to be 52 weeks ago. We have arrived at our destination. Yet in this cycle, in year C, we are again at the foot of the cross and we wonder what this says about Jesus reign. We may wonder if this is the wrong reading for the “reign of Christ” because he does not look very powerful, hanging there, dying. What is going on here?
What kind of Reign are we talking about? Each of the three years depicts this reign a little differently; after all, how could one passage encapsulate all there is to say about how Christ reigns in our lives and in the world? This year we focus on the power of the crucified Christ.
When we think of “reigns” we can think of hereditary royalty like Elizabeth, our queen, on the throne now for over 60 years or her son, the Prince of Wales, his son, the Duke of Cambridge, or his son George Alexander Louis, now third in line. We can think of President Kennedy, the closest America has come to Royalty since 1776, assassinated 50 years ago this week. We can think of tyrants like Adolph Hitler who engineered a genocide we now know as “the holocaust” or more recent ones such as Saddam Hussein, or some of the leaders their citizens are currently trying to depose. When we think of Royalty, dictators or even elected officials we think of power, money, and excess. If we go online we can find out how much it costs to clothe and transport our politicians so their work can be done in appropriate style.
I could go into detail but I wont. We think of reign and power together, when we think of ways of the world. However, when we look at the reign of Christ we are called to reassess these assumptions and rethink what power means.
It also affects how we think of the church. Back in the days of what we might call “the church triumphant” it did not seem out of place to imagine Jesus on a real throne, with a sceptre and orb and a host of diplomats and servants to carry out orders of all kinds. However, the church has not enjoyed political power and influence for a long time, nor have the mainline churches seen Jesus and the life of faith in that way. The church is now in a place similar to that of its earliest days. We are small, seen by some as insignificant, and struggling to find our mission in the world.
What does this do to our image of Jesus? Do we still want him to come in glory and stomp out sin and all the sinners? Whata sins specifically are we talking about? Stealing? That’s a good one! He would be against stealing, certainly. Stealing from a store, or your neighbour; of course that is wrong but what about the kind of stealing that is encouraged by our economic system. I am talking about the ways in which wealthy corporations steal from the poor, or cause them to live in miserable conditions, in order to make those already rich even more wealthy. If it affects our pension funds, do we really want Jesus to stop it? Is that what we really want?
The important question for today is, “what does a ruler who reigns from a cross say to this? Because of its association with Holy Week and Easter we often see the cross as a symbol of God’s victory over sin and death. And it is that.
Yet, the cross, on the day in question in our passage I read today, was a symbol of state power, torture and execution. It was for Jesus and his movement, a symbol of death and defeat. Execution by crucifixion was an agonizing way to die.
On Jesus’ cross was a sign, “King of the Jews”. It was a mocking statement; an attempt to deride him, but it held more power and truth than the might of Rome could ever have realized at the time.
There on the cross, while he was dying as a criminal, he was healing and loving and showing his real power; the power to reconcile and make new, one prisoner, in the same situation.
It is obvious that he was not interested in saving himself if that meant compromising his ministry, his view of a world made new by the love and call of God. It seems to me that his reign was not OF the world, but it matters a great deal to the way people live IN the world; it has a great deal to say to how we seek to live in the world he came to save. Here he is, the human Jesus, saving others and not himself. Here is giving himself over to death so that the world would see that the way of salvation was not in the things what would only lead to death even though they provided satisfaction for a time.
Those who taunt him believe they have defeated him. Yet, yet, he continues to exhibit love and saving power. In the end, God’s love wins.
We have arrived at our destination; we have been waiting for this moment all year but wait, wait for it, (pause) , WE CAN’T STAY HERE! Our reservation is only for the week and our next 52 week journey begins; next Sunday we start all over again. So come and gather around the Table of Christ, eat and drink for your strengthening, ( and come next door for dessert at 3) because you’ll need energy for the next leg of our journey in discovering the power of the Christ in our lives!
Amen.