Last Sunday after Pentecost – Bill Harkins
Proper 29, Year B
The Collect: 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.
The Gospel: John 18:33-37Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
In the name of the God of creation who loves us all… Amen. Good morning and welcome to Holy Family on this Last Sunday in Pentecost, also known as Christ the King Sunday. It is now late November, and the Winter Solstice is only a few weeks away, as the days get shorter, and the nights grow cooler. As we know, the Celts built great bonfires during this season to ward off the growing darkness and cold. It is in one sense “in-between” time…and yet has an air of Last Things about it… the last Sunday in the long season of Pentecost, the last Sunday of the church year and this year, the last Sunday of Year B, in our three-year liturgical cycle.
We are not quite sure what to do with this time…not quite fall any longer, and not yet winter, between All Saints, and Advent…As I run these days I see this uncertainty all around me: Halloween decorations remain on some lawns, scarecrows now looking very much in character as the first frost and cold Canadian winds have given them a tattered and forlorn appearance. Other homes already display their Christmas finery, lights blazing and Santa and his reindeer riding on a sea of swirling autumn leaves. Even the heavens themselves seem seasonally unsure, with the last of the late summer and autumn constellations visible in the early night sky. Cassiopeia and Andromeda are giving way to Pegasus and Pisces, even as the brilliant winter constellation Orion is spinning into the picture for his long winter visit to our hemisphere. It is a season about which Shakespeare wrote in one of my favorites of his sonnets:
“That time of year thou mayst in me behold… when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold…bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.” The bard is saying to his beloved that at times he may display a side of his personality like the last days of autumn, “the twilight of such day as after sunset fadeth in the west…” but he reassures her not to be alarmed by this, for it is not the final word and, moreover, teaches them to have clarity about what matters most deeply between them… “this thou perceivs’t which makes thy love more strong… to love that well which thou must leave ere long.”
The lovely Beech groves deep in the forests of our neighborhood, especially on longer runs where I reach the confluence of the trail leading up to Mt. Oglethorpe, are an opportunity to pause, and pay attention. And this in turn is an occasion to attempt what I’ve learned from many on my journey in Christian centering prayer and Buddhist mindfulness practice: show up; pay attention; speak my truth (and this can be a deepened, inner self-awareness); and let go of attachment to things I cannot control. The last step, as we know, can be in relation to an infinite variety of issues, including addictive behavior of various kinds, and is at the heart of any 12-step journey. It is at the heart of the Serenity Prayer.
Trail running in the woods near our mountain home continues to teach me to let go of attachment to things I cannot control, and this has in turn had application in many areas of life. These Beech trees, deep in the woods on the Womack Trail, hold on to their leaves until spring—a phenomenon known as “marcescence.” Usually, sometime in March, the leaves will fall, a kind of second autumn, and this is called “abscission.” Even the lectionary seems to reflect our uncertainty about this time… for it gives us two options for the Gospel reading for today. Jesus’ earthly ministry reaches its climax in the crucifixion, so a three-year cycle in any Gospel must bring us to an account of his suffering. Liturgically, such an account belongs at the end of Lent rather than on the Last Sunday after Pentecost. An alternative Gospel is permitted, therefore, that of Luke’s description of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Over the years today’s celebration has come to be known as “Christ the King” in many denominations, most notably Catholic, and Episcopalian, but also UCC, Methodist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian. There seems to be something about seeing Christ in this role as king that continues to be important to us Christians today, even across denominational boundaries. But this begs the question of what picture in our minds the word “king” evokes, and even though this is ambiguous. It is a very different picture for us than it was for the Jews of Jesus’ time or for the early Christians.
Our understanding of kingship today is somewhat romanticized, fascinated, as we are, with royalty. And let’s face it; for most of us these days, royalty is the stuff of tabloids and talk shows. And as we recall, George Washington was deeply suspicious of the monarchy, and hoped we would avoid any remnants of “kingship” in this country. We are uncertain, therefore, what to do with words such as king, kingship, kingdom, rule, and authority; words that often disturb us more than they comfort us. The associations are not hard to discern. A ruler, usually male, not elected by the masses, is removed from the day-to-day world by occupying a palace, living in opulence, wearing splendid clothing and having hordes of servants tending to his or her every need. They make the rules and enforce them at will. They are all-powerful and distant.
Such images can and do lead to what some theologians have called a “performance model” of Christianity. With God or Jesus understood as the ever-vigilant monarch ruling over his subjects as a distant, all powerful king, the Christian life boils down to “meeting requirements” or “measuring up.” Our eternal destiny hangs on how well we “perform.” The self, as a subject of the king, is continually on trial. Sin equals violating the edicts of the King, and propitiation for sin—seeking to appease the wrath of the angry monarch—becomes the focus of the Christian life. The emphasis on sin thus affects not only the way the whole Christian story is told but also confers an identity. It leads to the internal dynamic of thinking of oneself as primarily a sinner who needs to repent, and it defines repentance as feeling bad about oneself. It confuses God with the superego and the Christian life with life under the superego, that critical voice in our psyches that is the storehouse of “ought” and “should” most often heard punitively. We are never good enough. It reminds me of my high school football coach, endlessly replaying the tapes of the previous Friday night’s game, looking for mistakes I and my teammates made. Never good enough. No thanks. And thanks be to God, this is not the kingship of Christ. His is a total reversal of the roles usually assigned to royalty and servitude. His reign subverts our notion of kingship. He is the king who serves the other, dies for the other… is ridiculed, mocked and scorned. When we celebrate Christ the King, we hold up a king who is a redeemer, a reconciler, a servant. And we are linked in today’s gospel in both repentance and forgiveness, and God as king and lord becomes the subverter of systems of domination. Monarchical imagery subverts the monarchical model, as the God of compassion grieves with and takes the side of those who suffer under domination systems.
The theologian Paul Tillich once described God as the “Ground of Being” and “ultimate concern,” both images of radical dependence amidst radical freedom. In either/or, all/or/nothing cultures such paradoxes are difficult to tolerate, but this makes them no less true for their difficulty. Indeed, what we most deeply desire is relationship with God, and today we celebrate Jesus not as a distant potentate, but a loving parent in the fullest sense of that love manifested to us here on earth…as a God who is compassionate and who cares for all of God’s children and longs to be in relationship even when, or perhaps especially when, we stray.
I find Jesus’ words in this Gospel text deeply comforting, especially the part about listening to his voice. Think of those whom we love and trust the most, and of how meaningful it can be to hear their voices. This is a reminder of those deepest, early attachments at the heart of who we become, if those connections are safe, and dependable, and transcend our human mischief. I am reminded of the story of the eight-year-old boy who, angry with his parents, decided late one afternoon that he’d had it with them, and he was leaving home. The parents sympathized and watched him pack a few things into a bag. They told him how much they would miss him and bid him farewell. They watched discreetly from a window as their son walked away from the house and fell into playing in the cul-de-sac with some friends from the neighborhood. Before too long it was dusk, and dinnertime, and the boy’s friends headed off for home. The parents watched their son as he stood for a long while by himself, then for a long while by his little suitcase, and then slowly, dejectedly, began to walk back home. The parents were concerned about what would happen at their reunion. They saw shame on their son’s face, and they did not want to humiliate him further; and so they ended up making what is often a wise choice when one is not quite sure what to do. When their son returned, they remained seated, kept quiet, and offered the boy a compassionate, undemanding attention. They watched as he sat down in a chair opposite them, and then he, too, was quiet, pensive, self-absorbed. No one said anything. Finally, the family cat ran across the middle of the room. The boy looked up and said to his parents, “I see you still have that old cat.” Today we celebrate Jesus as pure Mother/Father love; as the patient, compassionate healer and transformer of life, who waits at home for us to return to relationship, remains steadfast in relation to us, with us, and who heals the sins of the world, for us and for our salvation. Amen.